Blessed

Blessed be thy name for this fullness and freeness of invitation. be thy name for this largeness of mercy, which, beginning here in time, runs on down through ages uncountable, forever more fruitful, the fruit being more and more blessed. We rejoice in all these things. And yet, while we think of them, and compass them with great feeling thoughts, our imagination, overlapping them, still goes further, until the inconceivable rises as the cloud in the far distance, infinite still in the midst of all this expectation.

Thou art the God that dost exceeding abundantly more than we can ask or think. How great will be the triumph of thy grace, and the marvelous, celebration of thy mercy to us, when we shall meet in Zion and before God! May none of us fail by the way, by quick flying temptations. May none of us be struck down unprepared. May none of us go steadily astray. May we cleave to the Lover of our souls. May we rejoice in the Lord, and be strong in the Lord, and in the Lord stand continually, and having done all, and overcome all, stand faithful and steadfast unto the end.

Bless those who are gathered together this morning. Comfort those who are drinking the bitter cup of affliction. And may they remember that the Lord drank before them, and, touching his lip to the cup, made it sacred; and as he would not put it from him, may none of them put it from them until his will shall be done.

And we pray that thou wilt give comfort and strength, in thine own time and way, to those who are weak; and direction to those who are in perplexity; and consolation to those who are disconsolate; and help to those that are in care and trouble in this world, that they may bear manfully their share of the world's burden, and do their duty wherever the Lord has appointed their way, more anxious to please thee in the place where they are, than to change it and find some fairer sphere.

We pray that thou wilt bless all the churches that are gathered together to-day. May thy servants preach the Gospel in simplicity and power from on high. And may thy people worship thee acceptably, and with great joy to their souls. We pray for the spread of the truth. We pray that throughout our land justice and righteousness, and purity may prevail. May we be saved from avarice, and greediness therein; and from pride of power. May we be saved from irreligion, and from outbreaking vices and crimes.

And we pray that thou wilt sanctfy the power and strength of this nation, and make it not selfish, nor grasping, nor cruel, but full of manhood, and full of protection to the weak, and full of blessings to all.

Pity the nations of the earth. Behold how they are driven, as in the night, upon the ocean, fierce winds drive fierce waves. Behold how the nations lift themselves up, and toss themselves in their fury before thee. O Lord hast thou power to control the fury of the people? Hold back the guilty arms of the oppressors, and purge the minds of the nations from their guilty insanities. We beseech of thee that thou wilt stop the prevalence of war. And grant that these great evils which have made it needful, and which still require this medicine of God-the overflowing cup of fire itself, may be purged away, and that justice and humanity may take the place of avarice and ambition. We pray that the time may speedily come when nations shall be permitted to be at peace, and when all shall know their true manhood in Christ Jesus, when men shall be self-governed, and shall no longer need the iron scepter. And grant that the nations of the earth, thus rising into their true stature before God, may inherit this promise, long made, long delayed, long lingering and still to linger. Lord Jesus! make haste, for the whole earth doth wait for thee, and groans yet, and travails in pain. We beseech of thee, overturn and overturn, until He whose right it is shall come and reign.

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son and Spirit. Amen.

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON.

Our Father, we pray for thy blessing to rest upon the word spoken. Teach us all how to teach others. May our life itself be a teaching. Grant that we may so live as to be full of the fruit of the Spirit; that we may overflow in joy and peace; that we may have enough for ourselves and for others; that our hearts may be fountains at which the weary may drink. And grant that we may be more and more ri h-hearted: that we may be saved from all those evolutions and oscillations, and incidental sins which come while striving to enlarge our nature God-ward. Yet grant that our faults, if we needs must carry them, as the weeds and tokens of the earthly state, may be faults on our heavenward side. And so may we live, never unconcious of our need of Christ; never unconcious that we are saved, not by right or merit of our own. So may we live that when we shall behold Jesus, we shall see in him all our victory, and recognize, in that glorious vision and moment, that power of thought and ideal by which we have been incited and carried on through life. And when we behold thee as thou art, and the mystery of our life is explained in thy look and in thy words, at thy feet, O Jesus! we will cast our crowns, saying, Not unto us, but unto thy dear name, be the praise of our salvation forever and forever. Amen.

TESTIMONY AGAINST EVIL.

"Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good."-Roм. XII., 9.

There is a coördination here. We are neither to be satisfied with hating evil, nor with loving that which is good. We are to do both. They stand in this intimate relation with each other, and are tests each of the other's genuineness, in that each begets the other. If a man hates evil, and it is a genuine moral revulsion, it will show itself to be genuine, among other ways, by this, that it will be accompanied by, or will have as its alternative, a strong attraction toward that which is good. On the other hand, if a man supposes that he loves that which is good, and springs to it with appetite and desire, he may test the reality and genuineness of that loving by the corresponding emotion -the abhorrence of its opposite.

It seems impossible that the soul should not act in this way. If it love concord, it must revolt at discord. So that these two phases are counterparts. One is the fulfillment of the other. A man who loves the truth must hate lies. A man who is sensitive to honor, must have great revulsion from everything that is dishonorable. A man that really loves purity, must really abhor impurity. If a man's heart goes out toward fidelity, he must have a great hatred of treachery. It seems impossible that the mind should act in any other way.

This is very strong language. Abhor-there is no stronger word than that in our tongue; and it does not strain the original at all. It is justified. And, on the other hand, cleave is an equally strong word. As a mother puts her arms around about the child in the moment of love, in the gush of affection, and holds it fast, so that nothing can get it away, and her clasp is a clasp of retention, so when we are commanded to "cleave to that which is good," it is as if it were said, "Love that which is good; hold it fast in your arms; do not let it be taken away from you. Both of these are pretty strong expressions, because the things that they mean are pretty strong, too: for intensiveness is the typical idea of Christian experience. Because there are in the New Testament such words as mildness, and gentle

SUNDAY EVENING, July 24, 1870. LESSON: PSA. I. HYMNS (Plymouth Collection) Nos. 1295, 500, 907.

ness, and meekness, a great many persons think that Christian character means a sort of pale, pulseless state of mind—a transparent nothingness-a bland emotion-a state that is like glass, which has no particular quality of its own-something that you can look through. But no; the typical idea of Christian experience is that of depth of power, preeminently. We are to love the Lord our God with all our heart, and mind, and soul, and strength, and our neighbor,-not with a little gentle well-wishing, not with a little superfluous generosity after we have taken care of ourselves,-but as ourselves. It is a Lordly conception that comes into the idea of duty in the Christian life-something of largeness, and of power; so that when we love that which is good, we love it with vigor; and when we hate that which is evil, we hate it with thunder and lightning!

But he is a We take the

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To be sure, we make allowance for men who cannot rise up to that; but we do not take them for our models. A man may be a Christian without any great power of hating; without any great power of loving; without any great power in his being, at any rate. babe; he is a child; and that is not the typical idea. Bible notion of Christians. It is a thing of proportion. power of excitability, and power of intense emotions, one way or another; as we have fervidness; or the power of burning, in our feelings, we are thereby brought into line with the typical Christian. So that we are to have the most vigorous likes and dislikes. Likes are not strong enough. We are to have the most vigorous loves and hatreds for things moral or immoral, as the case may be.

We are not, though, to suppose that this exhortation gives us the liberty to hate evil men. We are to hate evil. We are to abhor it. We read in the Scriptures, Ye that love the Lord hate evil; but nowhere, from the beginning to the end of the Bible is there an exhortation to hate wicked men. On the other hand, God, that is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; whose fury against wickedness burns to the lowest hell, so far from hating men, loves them with an unutterable love-loves them with a love which could have been signified by nothing less than the death of Christ-the most stupendous exhibition of sacrifice and witness of affection that could be raised up in the circle of human experience and knowledge. And we are not to suppose, because we are commanded to abhor evil, that therefore we have a right to curse and swear at all wicked men, and hurl our denunciations at them. Far from it. Hate evil; but it is quite possible for a man at the same time to be full of sympathy and yearning toward men who are committing evil. There are none who know how to hate evil so much as those who love good. The largest love takes everything unto itself; it has pride in the object loved, and is made happy by

seeing the object of love beautiful, noble, excellent; and it is wounded by seeing the opposite qualities. There is nothing so sensitive to blemish, to disfigurement, to unsymmetry, as the truest love. A mother who loves the child may mask his faults, and may soften them, from the very pain that the recognition of them gives; but when she does discern a sin, a wasting and withering wickedness in the child, there is no one who abhors that evil so much as she. A mother's abhorrence of evil in her child is in the proportion of her love for that child.

Do you suppose there is any human being who hates drunkenness as much as the wife does, who cannot give up the husband of her youth. All her being is centered in him. All her early hope, all her love, went out unto him. She holds him with cords that neither life nor death can break. And yet, he is a drunkard. And if there is anything in this world that typifies hell, it is a pure and noble woman sleeping in the arms of a drunken husband. Is there anyone who does so abhor the passion and the evil as she who would lay her life down, if she could redeem him from it?

We are not, therefore, to suppose that because we are commanded to abhor evil, we are commanded to hate bad men, or to abhor them.

Men should have a clear and positive revulsion from evil for their own protection. It is not safe, considering what the nature of evil is, how it is graded, how it springs out of things that are not evil, or how it becomes so by circumstances, to look upon it with allowance. The power that evil has of masking itself, the power that it has of becoming beautiful, renders it the more dangerous. The fact that much in this life is an amalgam, made up of gold and base metal together; that good and evil are twined and plied together so that we are constantly in danger of taking the one for the sake of the otherthese things require that a man who means to live a truly manly Christian life-a life of manhood in Christ Jesus being the highest type or conception of manhood-must train himself to abhor what is evil, or he will, in the adulterations of things, find himself drawn insensibly along, little by little, little by little. Plausible lies, and oblique deceits, and reflected dishonesties, and semi-transparent wickednesses the thousand gradations on the scale-will lead him step by step, so that, if he have not a sovereign revulsion from wickedness, before he is aware he will have become an apologist for it, if not a partaker of it.

Such is the nature of the stomach that whatever things are revolting to it, it rejects. It throws them off spontaneously, and so saves itself. Yet it is quite possible for one, by minute tastes, to accustom himself to take arsenic, tartar-emetic, things the most destructive to the animal tissue and to all the functions of the prime organs; it is