God." Even if the whole heaven is filled with thronging multitudes, you will seem to yourself to stand as though there were not another person in existence besides you. And all the weight of God's law and of God's authority will centre and rest full on you.

It is your interest to repent and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And while it is a day of mercy; while God is near to you; and while by your conscience, by your hopes, and by your fears, you are being drawn to him, it behooves every man of you to take hold in earnest, so that it shall be not a mere experiment, but a blessed success and victory.

PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.

We bless thee, our Father, for that knowledge which is given us, through Jesus Christ our Lord, of thy being, and of thy heart. We are no more strangers or foreigners. We are now of the household of faith. We are brought near. All our fears are driven away. Our hope grows apace, even uato salvation. By faith working through love, we discern thee. By faith we dwell in thee. We appropriate thy righteousness to ourselves, and enter into all the covenants of love with thee, and are made one-one with God, and one with Christ Jesus, and one with the indwelling Spirit. And so our life is comprehended in thine. So all our ways follow thy ways.

We rejoice in the blessedness of this communion: in all the peace which we have had; in all the joy which it has inspired; in all the promises which it holds out for the future, and which are Yea and Amen. Not one of thy promises shall fail. We may put our foot upon every one of them, and they shall not give way beneath us.

Thou, O God, dost love us better than we love ourselves. Thou art more gracious unto us than we know how to be unto ourselves. And therefore the more is the guilt of our destruction, and the more wicked is our breaking away from thee and turning to ourselves, and hewing out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

We rejoice, O Lord! in thy recovering grace; in thy patience which works in these obdurate hearts; in that fatherly kindness which thou hast shown, and art showing. And we pray that thou wilt not weary of the work of subduing that fractiousness of our dispositions which provokes thee.

Be pleased, O God! to spare us. Look upon the face of thine anointed. Behold us in Christ Jesus. And we pray that we may be, by thy care and culture, transformed into his image. And if we shall yet stand confirmed in virtue, and strong in all that is good, and fruitful in love, holy and beauteous, it will be by the grace of God. Not unto us, but unto thy name, shall be the praise. For, thou shalt work in us, and fashion all our goodness for us, working in us to will and to do thy good pleasure.

Now, we beseech of thee, accept our thanksgiving for the blessings of the day. It has been a day of rest. It has been a day of knowledge. It has been a day of incitement. Thou hast made the sanctuary pleasant unto us; and thou hast made our homes as another sanctuary. And we thank thee for all these relationships, and all the enjoyments which flow from them.

And we pray to night, in the hour that is set apart, walled in by darkness and by storms, that we may find that peace of God which passeth all understanding. May we rejoice in the sanctuary again, and take new courage, with new confession, and new hope and faith, for the life which is to come. And we pray thee, when we shall go down into the morrow, that it may be with our loins girt about, with a clearer sense of duty, with more manliness, and with more Christian fidelity. And may we thus live from Sabbath to Sabbath, until all our days on earth are over. Then throw wide open the gate. Then stand thou therein to receive thy prodigals home. Then put thine arms about our neck, and clothe us, and put the ring upon our hand, and bring us with joy and rejoicing into our Father's house.

And to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, shall be praises everlasting. Amen.

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON.

Our Father, we beseech of thee that thou wilt bless the word which has been spoken, of caution, and interpretation, and warning. May we find in it reasons for more vigilance. May we be more earnest, and take heed to the things which are within us, as well as to the things which are without. Reveal to us the relations of the life to come. Make us to feel that we are casting ourselves away. The most precious of all things to ourselves, we are selling for dross. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?

O Lord, our God! we beseech of thee that thou wilt, by thy Spirit, bring men to thoughtfulness, and to a better purpose. May there be many that shall be gathered, by the power of thy Spirit, into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

And to thy name shall be the praise for ever and ever.

Amen.

FOLLOW THOU ME.

"Then Peter, turning about, seeth the disciple whom Jesus loved, following; (which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrayeth thee ?) Peter seeing him, saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith unto him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me."-JNO. XXI., 20–22.

It is evident that the first writing of the Gospel of John terminated at the last clause of the 20th Chapter. It has been thought, by many, on that account, and from the nature of the 21st Chapter, that it was added by another hand; but the ripest opinions, I think, agree, now, that this was a supplementary chapter added by John himself at a later period. Of the four Gospels, the first that was written was that of Matthew; and it is probable that it was written a few years after our Master's decease. Then came the Gospel of Mark; and then, that of Luke, at variable periods, with several years between.

The old tradition is, that on a certain occasion some holy men, elders of the church, came to John, then extremely old-somewhere between ninety and a hundred years of age, probably-and, showing him these three Gospels, asked him to add anything to them which, in his judgment, would make them more complete. And that he there upon drew up his own Gospel, as adding to the others that which he thought they lacked. Very certain it is that the Gospel of John has more matter which the others have not, than it has of matter which is common to the four. However that may be, his is the last Gospel that was written, and this twenty-first chapter is the last part of the last Gospel. So that when he had read the other Gospels attentively; when he had drawn up his own; and afterwards, while recalling, by memory, the various scenes of his Master's life, having expended the whole force of his narrative upon that part which was enacted around about Jerusalem, the other Evangelists mainly concerning themselves with the Galilean life, John added much which refers to Christ's life in Galilee, and this one incident besides.

Jesus had been declaring to Peter, prophetically, the manner of his death. He was to die a death of violence; and Christ had predicted

SUNDAY MORNING, July 10, 1870. LESSON: 1. THESS., V. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection): Nos. 31, 454.

it. Peter, seeing John following, says to the Master, with that intrusive curiosity, almost meddlesomeness, which belonged to Peter's character, "What shall this man do? I am to be slain; but what is to be the history of this man?" And Jesus said,

"If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? Follow thou me."

John adds,

"Then went this saying abroad among the brethren that that disciple should not die."

Misinterpreting the phrase, "If I will that he tarry till I come," men got the notion that John should not die. And he quotes the incident to correct that saying. He declares that the Master did not say that he should not die, but only this:

"If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"

He does not expound the meaning of the passage. He uses it simply to refute that rumor, which was founded upon mistake. That there was meaning in it far beyond that which he developed on this occasion, there can be no doubt.

Peter's intrusive boldness seemed, at this time, as usual, to exercise itself in putting every man in his right place. He was unconsciously attempting to govern others, or to find out about others. He did not reflect that it was opposed to the Christ spirit. He did not reflect that personal consecration was the first thing in every man's life, and continuously the most important thing; but he was busy in respect to the probable history and condition of those around about him. As if the external history of any of them was a thing to be compared, for one single moment, with their adhesion to Christ; with the relationship of their spiritual union with their Master and Head!

Or, if Peter's motive were different from this meddlesomeness; if it were an anxiety to know what God provided for his people, and what was to be the providential dealing with his brethren, and particularly with John the beloved, even then it was carrying the matter beyond wisdom, in the presence of Christ, and in the nearness of his parting from them.

In either case, the reply was pertinent-namely, "What is that to thee? Your history is important to you; but what concern is it of yours that another man's history is to be this, or that, or another thing? (Your history is in me. Follow thou me." Follow thou me." And to each man,

Christ says,

"Follow thou me--never mind others." The emphasis of this cannot be estimated unless we consider that Peter was an apostle, that it was to be his mission to make known the Lord Jesus Christ to men, and that he was about to be sent out to bring in disciples, to found churches, to institute a polity whose main principles should operate to the end of time.

All the more, therefore, it was requisite that he himself should follow Christ, and be filled with his Spirit, not making his mission, nor his external duty, nor his work in time, the main and chief part of his concern, but founding all this work upon a personal, interior experience of the love of God in Christ Jesus as the one thing needful to his immortality.

And we may fairly deduce from this instance several points, such as these:

1. Following Christ is a personal work preceding all official work, underlying it, as the soil out of which all official work is to spring. To follow Christ is to reproduce in ourselves his dispositions, to accept his ideas of life and of duty, to fulfill his commands, and to be in union with him by love and sympathy.

The servant of Christ has all the instruments belonging to the work of education which philosophy has, and has, over and above all others, his own personal experience, by reason of the intimate communion of his soul with the Lord Jesus Christ. The power by which we are to instruct men is not simply the ordinary didactic power. The power by which we are to teach and preach is not simply the expository power which any man may have. It is not that which secular education may give. It is that which has been wrought in us, distinctively and peculiarly and personally. It is that which makes us individual, and our experience individual. It is that which constitutes the personality of every man's ministry in this world. And although the resources of learning are to be availed of, although all ordinary causes are to be employed for ordinary effects, we are never to forget that the distinctive and peculiar power of the Christian teacher or the Christian worker, lies in that which has happened between his soul and God, and which is original, native to him, and distinctive above that of every other. For as no two persons are alike, so the work of grace in no two hearts is alike. And every man has a teaching and a power dis-tinct from that of any other man.

Following Christ, then, is the main preparation, though it is not the only one. It does not disdain any other preparations; but it is that foundation on which all other preparations are to be built. It is that spirit which is to quicken all other influences and instruments. It is that which God hath taught us by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, filling our conscience, and giving intuition to our whole moral. sense, so that every part of us has been inspired-not authoritatively inspired, but inspired in other respects just as much, and just as really, as the apostles and holy men of old themselves were inspired when they taught sacred things.

2. One is in danger of losing his personal relations with Christ