But again, if we are to enlist beneath the banner of Christ, we must ever speak the truth in all singleness and uprightness of heart. Can there be anything more hideous to Almighty God than to hear the lips of His children utter the language of devils; for are we not told that the devil is the father of lies? Let me not be misunderstood. Few of us, perhaps, are capable of a direct lie, knowing as we do that we are in the sight of Almighty God. But is exaggeration so rare among us? Does not our conscience convict us too often of clothing and painting the naked truth, for the sake perhaps of making a good story, and raising amusement or wonder in the minds of an admiring audience? And is this the sort of character which Christ would approve, Who silenced the pretensions of the boasting Pharisees? Is this the temper which the Holy Spirit loves, by Whose dread wrath Ananias met his awful death?

Once more, can blasphemy any more sully the lips of any here who claim to be the children of God? Can He Who gave us His divine command, "Swear not at all," look with anything but fearful anger on those who take His name in vain? Is it fit recompense, think you, to Him Who lived that we might not die eternally, Who died that we might ever live with Him, to couple His name-that name at which every knee should bow-with drunken revellings; or even to profane it by adjuring Him to

witness if we lie, because, forsooth, we fear that others will not believe our unvarnished word?

Or can a want of charity be compatible with an earnest Christian life? Most of all in matters of religion ought we to take to heart the divine principle of charity. Because our neighbours may have different ideas of religious worship, different opinions on religious questions, different beliefs on religious truths, we have no right and no reason to suppose that they have necessarily lower aims, or are destined to lower grades of eternal happiness, than ourselves. Remember what Jesus Himself has told us: "In My Father's house are many mansions." Difference of circumstance, difference of education, difference of mind, may make others tread a different road to ourselves; we may well hold fast to the eternal truths which we have been taught, and yet not deny the prospect of eternal salvation to those who press onwards in other company to the gates of heaven.

And once more, brothers and sisters, if we would really present our bodies a lively sacrifice unto God, we have all most need of prayer. Prayer, indeed, is co-extensive with the idea of religion itself; it is its very essence. Why have we need of prayer? Why, but because it is the natural expression of a human heart to pour out its wants and longings to a Higher Being? We cannot imagine a world without prayer. Even the savage prays to his fetish, the

heathen to his sculptured god. There is no human heart so high but it feels this need. Not so long ago there lived a philosopher who denied Christianity, and denied the existence of God, and yet so felt the need of prayer that he prayed to the spirit of his dead wife. But why do we Christians feel the need of prayer? It is because we feel the need of Christ. Have you never felt the need of Christ? Ah, then! it is because you have never known sorrow.

Have you ever bent over the bedside of a dying child, whose bright career you have looked forward to with enthusiastic hopes that he would be an honour to his home? Have you felt this, or any sorrow like this, and yet never felt the need of Christ?

As you sit here in this church to-day, do you not see vacant places by your sides, where well-remembered, well-beloved forms once sat? Ah! believe me, truth is never felt so much to be truth as when it is shaded by sorrow.

Pray, then, in memory of those dear ones, as you fall on your knees to-day, to be brought nearer to the love of Christ. What more awful agony than this— that those whom we loved so dearly here, should, when they have reached their heavenly home, be forced to turn away their eyes from us because we have been unworthy to obtain a share in their immortal bliss?

Come, then, to Jesus now, if you have never felt the

need of Him before. "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." To-morrow-to-morrow is too late. "Seek ye the Lord while He may be found, call on Him while He is near." He is here now in this very church, asking you to come. To you, to you it is that He is holding out His everlasting arms ; and do you refuse His proffered aid? Do not shrink back at His loving call. Listen to his words, spoken now as He spake them nineteen centuries ago

"Take My yoke upon you, and learn of Me: for I am meek and lowly of heart, and ye shall find rest unto your souls."

Before you leave the church, pray; pray for this rest for your souls, and the souls of those you love.

Present your bodies now a lively sacrifice unto Him; direct your life by no unworthy aims, but by the sacred purpose of a Christian life and the sacrifice of prayerful hearts; that so, when the evening of your life is nearing, when the shadows grow longer and longer on the path of your earthly pilgrimage, you may see that you are coming close to the everlasting hills, and that you may hear the voice of your dear Master from out the gathering gloom breathe these accents to the loving benighted and stricken soul

"Well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."

SERMON V.

The Panoply of Faith.

PREACHED AT LOUTH PARISH CHURCH, FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 1878, TO THE VOLUNTEERS.

"Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.”— EPH. vi. 13.

"Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”2 TIM. ii. 3.

NOTHING perhaps strikes the thoughtful reader of the Bible, and of the early history of the Church, more than the enormous difference in the relations which then subsisted between Christianity and the heathen world, and those in which Christianity stands to society now. In its beginnings it was a system which had to defy the highly organized forces of paganism and philosophy. It depended for its very existence on the untiring zeal of its devotees, on the single-hearted energy of those who freely offered their lives to the propagation of its great truths, and too often sacrificed them in the cause of their Divine Master. It was for ever struggling against principalities and powers, against spiritual wickedness in high places. The early