cultivate the graces and gifts which the Holy Spirit shall gradually bestow upon you. And amidst all your efforts, and whatever may be your success, whether your advance be rapid or slow, beware of being elated or unduly depressed; remembering that Christ's chiefest saint, the foremost of them all, said this: "I count not myself to have apprehended; but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."

SERMON XIX.

Enward Purification.

I JOHN iii. 3.

"And every one that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as He is pure.

WHAT, then, my brethren, is this hope of which

St. John speaks, as implying the necessity of inward purification. On looking to the first verse of the chapter whence the text is taken, you will find the Apostle discoursing on a theme which of all others he loved to dwell on, viz., the marvellous depth of God's love, as manifested in His gifts of grace to the children of men. "Behold," he says, "what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!" He sets before us our present position and calling in all their dignity, and, leading us to contrast them with our fallen condition by nature, would excite in us a fuller and more real appreciation of God's love and mercy. Strangers by nature to God, separated from Him by a great gulf which sin had placed between us, there was that within which made us unfit for, and utterly unable to endure, the presence of God; our inmost nature had become corrupt; the heart,

once pure in its affections, as it existed in Adam before the fall, had become tainted with sin, and the source being polluted the stream that flowed from it was polluted also, and fierce, rebellious passions and carnal desires were its natural productions. The human will, once in harmony with the Divine, and rejoicing in a loving and trustful obedience, had become perverted, and, with self-trusting pride delighted in rebellious opposition to the Divine law of holiness and truth. It had been impossible for such creatures to have reflected on a God of perfect holiness and purity without the most intense fear, and a full conviction that His Presence would be as a consuming fire to them. Powerless to purge their own hearts, and bring their wills into conformity with God's will; unable to find out any atonement for the long catalogue of their sins, to which every day and hour of their lives contributed; without any friend to plead their cause and intercede in their behalf, their condition would, indeed, be most miserable.

Now though these truths of which we have spoken are familar to our ears, and meet with a ready assent, yet it is well for us to have them set before us again and again, that our cold and forgetful hearts may be inflamed with gratitude for our deliverance; for we know, brethren, that, from that perilous and outcast condition in which we find ourselves by nature, we have been delivered. He that created man, and gave him the capacity and opportunity of serving Him and rendering Him the praise and homage of worship and

God

obedience, God, Who is all power and all holiness, has revealed Himself to man as a God of love. is love," says St. John. Love is of the very essence of His being; "and in this," says the same Apostle, "was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent His Only-begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him." Man could not staunch the wound which sin had inflicted on him, and which, but for the love of God manifested in the work of redemption, must have brought death to both body and soul. But the incarnation and death of Christ, the Son of God, has been applied to our souls; the Only-begotten of the Father has taken our nature, in addition to His Divine nature, that He might infuse into it that principle of holiness and purity which had been lost by Adam's sin.

In His person, my brethren, our fallen and degraded being has been restored to the original perfection in which it was created, and exalted even to far greater honour than was allotted to it in the garden of Eden,-for now it is united to the Deity itself, and the Son of God, clothed in our perfected and glorified human nature, is seated for ever at the right hand of His Father. And because He has thus suffered Himself to be brought into such close and intimate relationship to us, and has become the head of the whole human family, the new Adam, from Whom we derive a new principle of life,-so our relationship to God the Father is changed, and privileges and gifts and titles, which amaze us by their

Y

preciousness and honour, and seem too great for earthly beings, become ours for Christ's sake, Who has purchased us with His own blood, united us unto Himself, and reconciled us to His Father. To the natural man God is an object of fear and dread; the thought of his rebellious heart causes him to shrink from His presence; to the Christian He is the one object of his love and gratitude; through the mediation of Christ He becomes accessible to all His creatures, and the voice of prayer and praise and thanksgiving, ascending as sweet incense to the heavenly throne, are rendered acceptable by the intercession of our glorified Lord.

The natural man was bound hand and foot by the fetters of sin, and unable to burst them by any power of his own. Sold under sin, he could not free himself from its thraldom; but the spirit of Christ shed abroad in our hearts has destroyed the dominion of sin, has freed us from its power, and enabled us to become the servants of righteousness; for "what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit." So, again, the natural man was at enmity with God; his whole being was in a state of opposition to his Maker, tending to frustrate His designs concerning him; but, through union with Christ, the spirit of adoption has been shed abroad in our hearts,