garments which she had made for them. They did not ask that she should be raised from the dead; but their sending for him and their tears were even more powerful entreaties than their words would have been; so, putting them all forth, and kneeling down by the body, he prayed; then, turning to the corpse, he said, "Tabitha, arise!" and her soul came to her again. Then, taking her with him, he presented her alive to her friends, and turned their mourning into joy.

Here was a miracle; yet, in the manner of its performance by Peter, much more like the miracles of Elijah and Elisha than those of Christ; for he, like these ancient prophets, was a servant, while Jesus was the Lord from heaven. Not in his own name, or in his own power, was this great work accomplished. It was wrought by Christ at his entreaty, and it resulted in a great spiritual revival; for as at Lydda, so now at Joppa many believed in the Lord.

I have dwelt so much already on the practical bearing of this narrative, and have had so frequent occasion throughout these discourses to refer to the miracles of Christ and his apostles, that I need not now advert to either of these matters. But as in this chapter, for the first time, we come upon one of the most significant names of the Christian disciples, it may be well to conclude our present lecture with a brief consideration of that.

When Ananias was commanded by God to visit Saul at Damascus, he said, "I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem." When Peter went on his apostolic tour throughout all quarters, he came down also to the saints at Lydda. And when he had raised Dorcas from the dead, "he called the saints and widows, and presented her alive."* Now, these are the first occasions on which this term was employed to designate the

*Acts ix., 13, 32, 41.

disciples of Christ; and the very enumeration of them may serve to correct the mischievous impressions which men have received regarding it. By some it is exclusively employed to designate the apostles and evangelists. They always say St. Paul, but they never think of saying St. Abraham or St. Moses. Others confer it only on those who have a place in the Romish calendar, in which truthful history is obliged to confess that we may find the names alike of the worthiest and of the vilest of our race; while others still use it in a cynical and contemptuous fashion, to describe those whose religiousness wears a crabbed, gnarled, and repulsive form. Now, coming upon it here, where it first occurs in the history of the Church, we learn to rectify all such opinions.

Its primary significance is-individuals set apart to the service of God: and as only those who had been ceremoniously purified were, under the Jewish law, thus set apart to God's service, the term came to have associated with it the idea of purity. Thus it means persons consecrated to, and purified for, the service of God. Now, this consecration was, on the one side of it, the voluntary dedication of the individuals themselves, but, on the other, the anointing of them by God with his Holy Spirit. Therefore, combining these two things, we may define saints as those who, purified by God's spirit, have dedicated themselves to God's service; and, as thus explained, the name is appropriate to all true believers who are seeking to walk in holiness and love. There is no Scriptural warrant for restricting it exclusively to any persons as a title of special honor, distinguishing them from all other members of the body of Christ. Paul, in writing to the Christians at Rome, addresses them as "called to be saints ;" and he speaks to the Corinthians as "to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints." So he begins his epistles to the Ephesians, Phi

lippians, and Colossians thus: "To the saints which are at Ephesus;" "To all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi ;" and "To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse." Every one, therefore, who has been regenerated by the power of the Holy Ghost, who is washed from his sins by the blood of Christ, and who has consecrated himself to the service of the Lord, is a "saint."

And, as we see from the narrative before me, taken in connection with the passages to which I have just referred, their sainthood is to be manifested, not by forsaking the world for a conventual life, but by staying in it, in the places where God has put them, and seeking to benefit those who are around them. Here was Dorcas among her widows doing a work for Christ, and she was a saint indeed. So, in afterdays, there were saints in Cæsar's household and in the Roman army; men who, by their earnest piety, were as pleasing to the Lord Jesus in their own callings as either Paul or Peter was in his. This is the kind of sainthood which we need to-day. Show me the man who spurns from him every bribe to do evil as an insult offered, not merely to himself, but to his Lord, and who turns away from it in memory of the Redeemer's cross; show me the merchant who, out of regard to Jesus, is willing to lose money rather than do a dishonest act; show me the mechanic who works on at his bench, making every article with care and conscience, because he is making it for Christ; show me the politician who will forfeit even the prizes of his party rather than do what he knows to be against the will of God; show me the woman who will brave the scorn of fashion, and the ridicule of society, rather than yield to customs which disgrace her womanhood, and dishonor her Lord; and in each of these I will show you a saint indeed. Yea, wherever a disciple of Jesus is not ashamed to own and obey his Lord, though an unbelieving world should taunt him as a Methodist, you

have saintliness of the truest type. Courage, then, my hearers there is hope for you that you may win the honor of this name. You may be already nobler saints than any in the purest calendar, for there is a holiness in labor done for Christ; there is a saintliness in the wearing of a constant cheerfulness, when that is felt to be the reflection of the Saviour's smile; there is a halo, brighter than ever artist painted, round a mother's patient love for the children whom she has consecrated in baptism unto the Lord; there is a canonization, more real than ever pope decreed, in the father's faithful toil as, week in, week out, he goes about his round of labor that he may support his family, and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And, haply, in the day when God makes up his jewels, it may be found that out of the ranks of our modern and ordinary life, commonplace as men may call it, there have arisen more Christian heroes than in the time when the disciples sought refuge in the Catacombs, or when the martyrs burned at the stake. It is an easy thing, comparatively, to die for Christ, but it is a hard thing, and a noble thing, to live for him. Such a life is the highest sainthood, and to that I incite you

now.

"We need not bid, for cloistered cell,
Our neighbors and the world farewell:
The trivial round, the common task,
Will give us all we ought to ask—
Room to deny ourselves, a road
To bring us daily nearer God."

Follow that road; it is the way of holiness; "The unclean shall not walk there; and the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall not err therein."

THE

XIX.

CORNELIUS.

ACTS X.

HE city of Cesarea was situated on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, about thirty miles north of Joppa. It was built by Herod the Great, about twenty-two years before the birth of Christ, and named by him after his imperial patron. It was the civil and military capital of Judea so long as that remained a Roman province; and it had a certain pre-eminence belonging to it as the residence of the procurator. Its population was mainly Gentile, though some thousands of Jews dwelt within its walls. At this time it was garrisoned by soldiers, most of whom were native Syrians; but there was one cohort composed of volunteers from Italy, and over a division of that there was a certain centurion named Cornelius, whose character is very pleasingly sketched by the sacred historian. He belonged to an illustrious Roman clan, which had given to the State some of its ablest and most distinguished men; but greater than the glory of Sulla and the Scipios, who had made the Cornelian family everywhere renowned, is that which is conferred on this centurion when it is said that "he was a devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God always."

These words have been understood by many as equivalent to a declaration that Cornelius was a proselyte to the Jewish religion. But that opinion seems to me to be erroneous; for had he been all that is usually implied in that