you as important in relation to the opposition which we should give to Popery?—Yes; all who wish to take the fangs out of the mouth of that persecuting system, and to deprive it of all power to injure its opponents, should labour most earnestly for the severance of religion from State control and from compulsory support.

27. Was it not by the aid of the civil power that Popery was enabled to carry out its intolerant desires, and to murder, and otherwise maltreat, millions of men and women who opposed it?-It was: it could neither fine, imprison, torture, nor murder its opposers, if all the Governments of Europe treated it and their subjects as they ought to have done.

28. How, in this matter, does Popery oppose the just principles of civil magistracy?-No rulers have any right to persecute, nor should they suffer others to molest, any of their subjects on account of their religious opinions; but Popery glories in having legal power to fine, imprison, torture, or even put to death, those who hate or oppose its dogmas and practices.

29. What do the leading Romanists in many places say ought to be done in order to put down Protestantism, and what they call heresy and schism?"-They say that, in order to do this, the Inquisition ought to be worked with all vigour; for that nothing short of the civil sword, unsparingly used, will ever check the spread of Protestantism!

30. What lesson should we learn from the views which they entertain and publish on this point?-We should learn that, as they declare their willingness to use the sword of the ruler to uphold Popery, and to uproot and destroy Protestantism, nothing can be more dangerous, in reference to the peace, conscience, and liberty of any people, than that Romanists should be able to carry out their cherished convictions on this point.

31. What do you believe, then, of those rulers or governments who obey the wishes of Romish or other priests, in persecuting by fine, imprisonment, or torture, any of their subjects who assert that their souls are their own, and that, in matters of religion, they are responsible only to God?-I regard them as acting in opposition to the clearest rights of justice, conscience, and God; as using powers with which they ought to protect the conscientious for their punishment,

and that in matters with which they have, as rulers, no concern whatever.

32. Do you think, then, that all who desire to oppose Popery, and to prevent it from destroying our fellow-creatures, would do well to labour for the severance and separate action of Church and State ?-I certainly do: when this shall be effected everywhereas justice and conscience demand that it should-Popery will not be able to hurt the hair of any man's head, and all men will be at liberty to teach others, to oppose Popery, and to follow, without fear of penal consequences, their own convictions.

33. Have we any reason to hope that Popery will ever be driven from the earth?We have not only reason to hope, but positive grounds for believing, that the Popish system is travelling to its downfall, for "the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it," 2 Thess. ii. 8; Rev. xviii.; xix. 1-6.

34. Will not that be a blessed time when this baneful code of men's inventions shall cease to deceive the nations?-It will, indeed; and to hasten on that most desirable and glorious period, all who value truth, love men, and fear God, should live, labour, and

pray.

35. Do you not think that earnest love for Romanists, as for other men, should stir us up to labour, in all Divinely-approved methods, for the extirpation of Popery from the earth? I do: we cannot show our love for men more strongly than by seeking to save them from soul-destroying errors, and pressing on their attention the truths of the holy Scriptures.

36. It is very delightful to learn, as we do from the word of God, that the Popish system shall be ultimately destroyed from among men will you now repeat Rev. xviii. 20, 21, relative to the downfall of Popery ?--(The pupil reads or repeats.)

37. Be kind enough to conclude your present exercise by repeating the lines in which Dr. Watts paraphrases these important

verses:

"In Gabriel's hand a mighty stone Lies, a fair type of Babylon: 'Prophets, rejoice, and all ye saints, God shall avenge your long complaints.' "He said, and dreadful as he stood, He sunk the millstone in the flood: Thus terribly shall Babel fall; Thus, and no more be heard at all.'"

ON CARE FOR THE BODY.

REMEMBER you are in the body. The body is the workmanship of God-one of the most astonishing proofs of his power and skill. How beautiful the

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MINISTERS.*

organization! how surprising the living operation of all the parts! You would not trample on a beautiful flower while the gardener who had planted and watered it stood by your

side. You would not damage an exquisite piece of machinery while the inventor showed you its parts and its operations. Far less, surely, would you blunt, or soil, or clog that which should be the crowning wonder of all material wonders to you-your own living body, the Almighty Maker of it looking on. The body is the instrument of the mind. If it is overstrained, the mind will act less pleasantly and less powerfully by its means. If it is not in health, it is hardly possible to conceive of a purely healthy action of the mental faculties. Your perceptions will become uncertain; your emotions will be restrained, or directed into unprofitable channels; your labours will be less abundant and less effective. Do not think that there will be any special indulgence or immunity granted to you on account of the superiority of your aims and labours to those of secular life. You dwell but in a house of clay like other men. You have a mortal body, subject to the same conditions and laws which affect the bodies of all your fellow-creatures around you. You are called to earth's greatest work-a work into the wonders of which even "angels desire to look;" but the instrument of all this labour is a body which has received a fixed constitution, which is governed by unchangeable laws, and has limits of capability which cannot be overpassed without penalty and suffering. The penalty will come upon you as certainly, after the most self-denying labours and the most spiritual excitements, if they be excessive, as if the toil had all been in the service of Satan, and the excitement all that of sin. He who uses more vital energy than his constitution will fairly and easily reproduce, takes what is not his. He makes large draughts upon the future. He incapacitates himself for the work of the days which are coming. It is not too much to say that he grieves the Spirit of God; for "Know ye not," says the Apostle, "that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost?"

ON PROSPERITY OF SOUL.

I would remind you how much the state of the heart affects all the powers and susceptibilities of the man. God himself is perceived and felt less by the intellect than by the affections. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." The mysteries

of Divine government also, the disclosures of redemption, the glories of the Son of God; these things all break upon the mind through the medium of pure affections. Divine truth opens its richest treasures and its deepest secrets, not so much at the command of a penetrating intellect, as at the gentler touches of a prayerful and inquiring heart. Thus the culture of your personal piety will be connected with the expansion of your understanding, with the increase of your intellectual wealth, with the confirmation of every good principle, and with the due expression of such principles in all the habits and labours of a consecrated life. Doing the will of God, you will know of the doctrines whether they be of God. By the same spiritual faculty, you will know also the character of the things which happen within all the circle of your life. Your inward senses well exercised, purified, and refreshed, day by day, in the atmosphere of the Divine presence, you will easily discern the good and the evil; and your preaching then will be more than a statement of truth, however clear-more than a firm array of arguments directed to a particular end -it will have in it an element of persuasiveness, which a believing heart alone can breathe. It will be almost the contact of soul with soul. Your own soul, alive, and vibrating with life evermore renewed, will communicate of its vitality to those who hear you; and the Spirit of the living God, with such instrumentality, will conduct his own work-that resistless "demonstration" for which he alone is competent, and by which the people are "made willing in the day of his power."

ON FIXEDNESS OF VIEWS AND FAITH. I believe if we could make minute examination into the immediate causes of ministerial failure and success, we should find imperfect and vacillating views the precursors of failure; and clear, fixed faith, other things being equal, the invariable means and the bright augury of success. There may be brief seasons of blank and awful doubt in the experience of any man, as there are clouds sometimes on the fairest skies; and there may sometimes be a distressing sense of the mysteries of the Gospel in connection with a vigorous faith in its revealed

run

truths. But to hold everything, or any of the main things, as unsettled, as things which may be kept under prolonged consideration, while the preaching goes on, this is to " uncertainly," to what goal I know not; this is to "fight as one who beateth the air," and for what end the redoubtable warrior himself would be puzzled to tell. For serious, earnest doubts or difficulties, every serious and earnest person must have generous consideration but for preachers who, on the great matters of life and salvation, have little else but doubts to preach, and who continue to cast the perplexing haze of a metaphysical in certitude over truths which stand out as clearly as the light of Divine revelation can show them, I, for one, have no allowance. Such a man is a living impertinence. He does, not follow his profession-he insults it. Certainly there be," says, Lord Bacon, "that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief."

ON THE CLEAR EXHIBITION OF TRUTH.

Preachers are, perhaps, more apt than even other public speakers, to think that, because they have them, selves clear perceptions of the truth while speaking, they have made clear presentation of it to their hearers. It is by no means always so sometimes far otherwise. And it is a serious pity when wise and weighty thoughts drop between the mind that conceives them and the lips that should express them, or between the lips that express them inaptly and the minds that should receive them. There is no operation more delicate, beautiful, and beneficent than that by which the truth which has given life to one soul, passes on, by language, look, and tone, to another soul. This transmission of living truth from heart to heart is far more wonderful than the power of that electric chain which is to carry the voice of Britain in a few moments of time, through all the storms of the Atlantic, into the heart of the great empire of the West. What a power for a man to wield! and how enviable the full possession of it! Depend on it, it is a great faculty, that by which a man makes another see what he himself sees. Some have it in pure

gift from God; all the means of presentation come easy to them. Others obtain it by travail of spirit and many hard endeavours. And others again never obtain it at all, and yet have little sense of their deficiency, but speak on through many years, wandering in a forest of words, and imputing want of success to the enmity of the human heart, or the mysterious restraint of the Spirit of God; when, in fact, the truth has never been seen by those who are thought to have rejected

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PORTION.

-got-hdm bo gr1 DEY OJAS God makes the seasons follow each other, through the years, educing the one from the other, and mingling them in all perfect forms and colours as they succeed, in a chain which never loses a link, so let facts, and principles, and duties, and promises, all have proper and proportional, exhibition; and thus, in the house of God, over which you are steward, there will neither be the religious, voluptuary," turning the grace of God into lasciviousness," nor the poor starveling, waiting in vain for bread; but each will receive his portion of meat in due season." The CROSS stands at the centre of all facts, of all principles, of all duties. As you expatiate over the field of redemption, you must pass and repass that sacred symbol, and have it ever in your eye. It connects, explains, conciliates the parts, while it agitates and developes the whole of the grand system. It links earth to heaven; commands time and eternity. It reveals the whole nature of God, and redeems the whole nature of man. It says to mystery, to death, and to all the future," Let there be light! Standing often by that cross yourself in a mood of solemn faith, you will have no difficulty in declaring the whole counsel of God. And while you will not waste your strength in the vain attempt to solve insoluble problems, you will keep nothing back, and throw nothing into the shade, but deliver your soul fully of every "burden," and of all "glad tidings," leaving the Lord himself to justify your mi nistry, and give his own word suc

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race, that he was by birth a Jew. He was the Branch referred to, that was figuratively represented as the highest Branch of the high cedar. Observe in passing, that Jesus Christ is designated Branch in certain portions of the inspired record. Isaiah referred to Christ when he said, "There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots." The plaintive Jeremiah designated Christ" the Branch of righteousness," and it was in reference to Christ when he said, "Behold the days come, saith the Lord, when I will raise unto David a righteous Branch." And the prophet Zechariah spoke of Jesus when he said, Jehovah would bring forth his "servant the Branch;" also when he exclaimed, "Behold the man whose name is the Branch." The Branch! a name this how appropriate to the Divine Saviour-how expressive and full of meaning! Take the figure, and at once how suggestive! For as the natural branch is at first but slender and feeble, just a sprig shooting from the trunk of the tree, and then grows, increasing in size and strength, bears foliage and fruit, attains to maturity, and withstands the tempest and the storm, so the world's Saviour, whilst in reference to his Divine nature he was without beginning, the eternal and omnipotent one, yet, in reference to his human nature, was at first feeble and helpless, being but a child- -an infant. The Branch was then weak and slender indeed; but, like the natural branch, the Branch Christ Jesus grew. He increased in wisdom and in stature, in favour with God and men, and attained to a maturity of perfect and inimitable manhood. His humanity was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, without an infirmity, or blemish, or spot. Look at the moral foliage of the Branch; how beautiful, and luxuriant, and heavenly! without even one withered or blighted leaf; and, like the fragrant cedar, how fragrant his humanity with the sweet and holy fragrance of heaven! At the same time, as the full-grown matured forest oak grasping the soil with its iron roots withstands the fierce hurricane and storm, so did this Branch, rooted in the wise-in the pure-in the good-in the Divine, withstand the fierce hurricanes of human prejudice and malice, and the yet more terrible hurricanes and storms raised by the malignant furies of hell.

The Divine Jesus is truly the Branch, the Branch of mystery to the universe, of delight to the eternal Father, of joy to angels, and of terror to devils; the Branch of peace, waving over earth, of hope to man, and of salvation to our world; and he is the Branch of life. What clusters of everything good, and precious, and saving to man, hang therefrom. There is enough for heaven, enough for earth. The world may come, and eat, and live for ever.

But we must give more significancy to the position of the Branch. The branch spoken of in the book of Ezekiel was not one of the lowest branches in the cedar, nor one of the branches somewhat higher, not even the next in height to the highest, suggesting inferiority; but in truth the highest branch, towering above all the branches of the high cedar. Now, what was Christ's true position amongst the Jewish people? Was it in any sense, either official, moral, or beneficial, inferior to any of the Jewish worthies? to any of the illustrious men which the Jewish nation produced, and whose names make her history so resplendent? Justice to the Jews demands the acknowledgment, that amongst them, as a people, were men of the highest order; men illustrious for their religious lives, sublime devotion, and godly acts; men of whom the world was not worthybeacons on the sea of life to warn and direct-suns in the heavens of humanity to illumine and bless. Amongst their number are to be found such men, great, gifted, and holy, as Moses and Joshua; as Samuel, David, and Solomon; as Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, and Ezekiel; and others whose names brighten the pages of Jewish history, and whose deeds reflect upon themselves honour and high distinction; but was Jesus Christ inferior to any one of them? Did he find a superior in any of the great and noble men whose names we have enumerated, or in any one of the Jewish race whose name stands invested with such lustre in the sacred pages? In the goodly cedar of the Jewish nation, to use the figure before us, was there a higher branch than that which represented the Messiah-the Divine Saviour? Emphatically, no. Jesus Christ was above all the Jews, because he was Divine-the Father's equal;-above them all, because he was the Creator and Preserver of the universe; and the