You will be really better off, even now, in the despised tents of Israel than in the palaces of Pharaoh. To know that their God is our God,- to feel safe beneath His protection, happy in His service, to have the consciousness of wishing to be right, and, in spite of many failures, of being right, to know what peace means, and rest, and home, after the weary, unsatisfying search for happiness elsewhere, and, though Canaan be yet distant, to have the present hope of it, a strong, abiding, substantial expectation of "an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away," this renders a choice like that of Moses as reasonable as it is right, as profitable to ourselves as it is obligatory towards God. If some pleasures are given up, those which remain are intensified by the consciousness of receiving them from God, and of enjoying them in the light of His countenance. The hope of everlasting happiness can never cast a shadow over any of the lawful and pure enjoyments which He bestows.

"Why should we fear youth's draught of joy

If pure would sparkle less?

Why should the cup the sooner cloy

Which God hath deigned to bless?"

What is the value of that which you relinquish? Grant all that may be urged in its favor. Let money, and luxury, and fame, and power, and the pleasures of sin in their fairest forms and largest measure, be combined in one great mountain of attractive fascination, and the question arises, How long will all this last? You know the story of the Eastern king, one of whose courtiers, surveying the magnificence around, flatteringly asked, “What is wanting here?" The monarch replied, with a sigh, "Continuance." Yes; a worm is hidden in the loveliest blossom, a serpent creeps amidst the fairest flowers, the wealthiest summer beckons winter frosts, and days the

longest and the brightest close in night. Of what avail is it to say, "Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease; eat, drink, and be merry," when the message is given, "This night thy soul shall be required of thee"?

"The boast of heraldry, the pomp of power,

And all that beauty, all that wealth, ere gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour:

The path of glory leads but to the grave.

"Can storied urn or animated bust

Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can Honor's voice awake the sleeping dust,

Or Flattery soothe the dull, cold ear of death?"

What will be your remorse at death if you shall have chosen, as your chief portion, that which thus perishes? How terrible to find everything you had struggled to gain slipping from your grasp! money, luxuries, position, power, learning, fame, all retreating and leaving you alone. Was it for this you refused the enduring riches, the endless delights, of piety? Was it for a master who allured you with such transient and deceitful pleasures that you turned away from Him who entreated you to enter His ennobling service and share in the recompense of an eternal reward? Alas! what multitudes in the unseen world now regret - when it is too late so mad a choice! What to them is every remembrance of the pleasures of sin but fuel added to the fire of their remorse? But who has ever regretted the surrender of sinful pleasures for the service of God? Who was ever known to lament on his death bed that he had suffered and labored too much for Christ? Who now in glory regrets the cost at which glory was secured, or wishes his choosing time back again, that he might reverse his decision?

If you would not in eternity regret a foolish choice,

make the only wise choice now. Decide at once.

Let this be the turning-point of life. Seek forgiveness through Christ for having lingered at all in the palaces of worldly delight for having hesitated a moment when He called you to join His people. Look up for the promised aid of the Holy Spirit, and, in the exercise of Faith, choose rather "to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."

IX.*

SALVATION BY FAITH.

"The hem of his garment."-Matt. ix. 20.

THAT is meant by the "hem of the garment"? Is it

WHAT

the church, the clergy, and the sacraments? And just as the woman was healed by contact with the dress which Jesus wore, are anxious sinners to be directed to place themselves in connection with these outward ministries as the necessary prerequisite, the only sure method of obtaining salvation from Jesus Christ? Postponing the reply to this question, let us consider the interesting narrative of the miraculous cure by Christ of the woman who touched "the hem of his garment."

The miracles of our Lord fulfilled several purposes. In the first place they conferred immediate benefit on those for whose healing they were wrought. They also drew public attention to the Worker of them, and disposed the minds of men to listen to his instructions. Moreover, they clearly indicated that He was no ordinary person, but one specially commissioned from heaven; for, as Nicodemus said, "We know that Thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest except God be with him." Besides this,

* Preached on Thursday evening, October 31, 1867, at the Church of the Ascension (Episcopal), New York, Rev. J. Cotton Smith, D. D., Rector.

some of them seem to have been designed to impart spiritual lessons, and to have been parables in action. We are told that our Lord wrought a vast number of miracles; and yet comparatively few are recorded. What was the principle of selection? Do not the details given of some of these miracles so beautifully illustrate that spiritual healing which was the Savior's great business, as to lead us to infer that they were intended to convey such lessons, and that while these narratives describe actual occurrences, they also illustrate gospel truth?

Such a mode of interpretation, however, requires caution, and must be employed, not to ascertain or even to prove a doctrine, but only to illustrate it. Otherwise we should elevate our own judgment in the perception of analogies into the rank of an inspired testimony in favor of what we chose to regard as divine truth. Let that truth be ascertained by explicit declarations of Holy Scripture, and then the sacred histories, as well as the world of Nature, may be found stored with illustrations of it.

The narrative before us is eminently of this nature, and is replete with instruction. A diseased woman applies to Christ for healing. Sickness of the body is analogous to that of the soul. Figures of speech arising from this analogy abound in the Bible. Sin is spiritual blindness; we see not the truth. Sin is deafness; we hear not the voice of God. Sin is lameness; we walk not in His ways. Sin is leprosy; it defiles and threatens to destroy us.

This woman, who had been a conscious sufferer during twelve long years, may illustrate the case of many, who, during a long period, are burdened with a sense of guilt. Their consciences are convinced of transgression. They feel the aching pains of remorse. They dread the fatal termination of the mortal disease which preys upon them. They cry out in their distress, "What must I do to be saved?"