silence when the character of the absent was being endangered; and sometimes we have heard him speak resolutely against this too common sin. His colleagues in the ministry ever received from him the greatest kindness; their "good name" was safe in his hands and in his presence, and they found in him a brotherly affection which will make them long cherish for him the most tender memories. His piety was of no ordinary kind. It was deep, without being ascetic, fervent without show: and those who knew his inner life can tell how everything was made a subject of prayer, how earnestly he was accustomed to pour out his supplications for the people of his charge, and how he rejoiced over the success of the preached Gospel. In connection with his piety there was nothing that struck those closely associated with him so much as this, he brought all his personal and relative concerns, great and small, to God. Mr. Sharp's habits were studious, and his attainments in scholarship were considerable. We cannot refrain from saying that in his study of the Word of God, especially, he is worthy of being followed. He read the Greek Testament with care daily. The morning was always spent in prayer and in the study of the Sacred Scriptures. This was the case at home, in the quiet of his own study, in the homes of his friends, in the bustle of a Conference or District Meeting. This accounts for his habitual prayerfulness, and for his constant devotion to his ministerial work. It is only justice to his character to add that his conduct as a pastor was exemplary. He visited from house to house, and among groups of cottages was wont to hold a short service, and then visit a few families. The poor were not neglected, and the sick had his kindly attention; no matter what the repute of the suffering person, he was there to recommend the Saviour, and to improve, if possible, the affliction to the profit of the afflicted. In such labours he was often made a great blessing. The last manifest fruit of this kind in which he rejoiced was a person in the neighbourhood, who was brought to God through his efforts, and who died two days after. It only remains for us to speak of Mr. Sharp as he appeared in the pulpit. In the popular sense of the word he was not a great preacher indeed, he never aimed at greatness, but at being useful. His one object in study, in prayer, in preaching, was to do good, to save souls. His sermons were prepared with far more care than many, from the mode of their delivery, would have supposed. There was a constant freshness in his presentation of Divine truth; and he tried at all times to use such plain Saxon words as the most ignorant could understand. His manner in the pulpit was grave and quiet, but he always preached under deep emotion, and not seldom wept when urging his fellow-sinners to accept of the terms of salvation. The power of the Spirit frequently rested upon him and his hearers while he opened unto them the Scriptures. In the midst of life and of plans for usefulness-while it was yet morning-God called this earnest young minister to rest. He had heard the calls of God in revelation and Providence, and, with a constancy and ardour rarely seen, he set himself to prepare for eternity's grand harvest, the Divinely-appointed fruit of earth's well-directed toils. He felt himself in the midst of great principles, and knew that, as a "worker with God," his actions would produce results important and endless. He now therefore reaps "life everlasting." We, too, are now sowing; if faithful, we soon with him shall also in like manner reap. Reader, "Sow truth if thou the true wouldst reap; Who sows the false shall reap the vain; And find a harvest-home of light." THE PRAYERS OF ST. PAUL: UNITY AND HOPE. ROMANS XV. THE two Prayers which are so closely connected in this chapter might, on the first glance, appear to be the broken fragments of one concluding supplication. But, when closely examined, they are found to be perfectly distinct, having each its own most appropriate reference to the general strain of the preceding Epistle. The former reverts to the blending of Jews and Gentiles in the one Church of Christ, and prays for the grace of unity in its manifestation towards each other and towards God. The latter takes up the fundamental doctrine of Christian salvation by faith, and prays for the abounding experience of the blessings of that salvation, as they are reserved for hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost. These Petitions have their specific bearing upon the state of the church on whose behalf they are offered; but, like all the Prayers of St. Paul, they are so framed as to belong to the universal Church, in all its communities and in all its individual members. Hence we may fairly give them general titles, and expound them in their general application. UNITY. "Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus: that ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ."-Rom. xv. 5, 6. Ir will be observed at once that the several words here used are peculiar, scarcely one of them occurring in any of the other Prayers. The customary invocation has a striking turn given to it, and the description of the unity asked for is no less characteristic. In the interpretation of both we shall have more than usually to explore the context. 1. God is addressed as the God of patience and consolation. If we throw our eye backward, we see the meaning to be this, that God is the Giver of that steadfastness and encouragement which it is the design of the Holy Scriptures to inspire. The Apostle has just been paying a grand and precious tribute to the ancient oracles of the Old Testament as given for the instruction of Christians, which instruction, sealed upon the heart as passive patience and active comfort, feeds and strengthens the principle of hope. But the Scriptures, whether written aforetime or by the Apostles themselves, are only the instrument which God uses for the maintenance in our souls of a sure and efficacious confidence of future glory. This hope was the end of the Old Testament, realized in Christ; in Christ the same hope is raised to a higher life, expanded to embrace a larger object, and sustained by fuller promises. But we are still saved by hope. And the God of the Christian hope is still the God of patience and comfort. His Spirit still teaches us by the finished Scriptures to endure steadfastly, strong in the consolation of grace, until the sum of all Christian expectation is reached. Thus here, and here only, God receives a name derived from the Bible as His instrument. higher testimony could be given to the written Word than this. The Scriptures are the power of God for the infusion into human souls of fortitude and strength. And God is the God of that patience and consolation which only through the Scriptures He imparts. No 2. The connection between this invocation and the subject of the Prayer will now be sufficiently obvious. But it requires us to remember St. Paul's habit of passing silently, as it were, and without warning, from a single and isolated quotation to the general scope of the Old-Testament Scriptures, as well as his habit of leaving his readers to supply many of the links of his argument and exhortation. Had he here filled up the measure of his meaning, many verses would have required to be inserted before the petition commenced. We must be bold to read his omission into the text. His purpose was to exhort the Gentile and the Jewish Christians, or, in other words, the strong and the weak, to mutual self-renouncing forbearance, requiring "patience" on both sides, and mutual self-forgetting joy in the "consolation" of the Christian fellowship. Now both these exhortations the writer enforces, as his manner is, by an appeal to the sovereign authority, even Christ. As in the previous chapter he had solved the difficulty between the two parties by bringing both into the presence of the common Lord, at the foot of whose throne all dissensions should expire, even so he does now, but with a most affecting variation. First, he appeals to the Saviour's example of self-sacrifice, which he makes Him utter from the familiar sixty-ninth Psalm. Then he appeals to the Saviour's revealed will touching both Jews and Gentiles in their unity. Our Prayer comes in as a parenthesis. Before we proceed to expound it, let us glance for a moment at the two branches of the exhortation. The duty of self-sacrificing regard to the edification of others is a law of the Christian fellowship enforced by the example of Christ. He "pleased not Himself." This remarkable expression, which simply declares the one principle of the Redeemer's selfrenunciation for the good of man, might have been illus. trated by an appeal to the entire sum of His history. But the Apostle chooses instead an obscure word from a Messianic Psalm, in which a typical sufferer cries unto God, "The reproaches of them that reproached Thee fell on me." He seems to put these words into the lips of Christ Himself; and they refer, not so much to His vicarious submission to judgment on behalf of man, as to His meek endurance of the indignities cast upon Him on the way to that final judgment on the Cross. As the supreme self-sacrifice of redemption is the sum of all example, so our Lord's innumerable lesser abnegations bring that example home to our daily life. And here is the connection with our Prayer. The suffering Christ, whether in His types in the Old Testament, or Himself the Antitype in the New, teaches His people to endure the contumely of the world and to bear with each other's mutual recriminations. There was grave need for this appeal to the last and highest argument. The church at Rome was in great danger. Bigotry on the weak side begat intolerance on the strong side; and the animosity that was common to the two was contrary to the first principles of the law and example of Christ. Hence the pregnant reference, which hints far more than it expresses, to the great lesson of self-sacrificing endurance taught throughout the Old Testament. Hence the solemn supplication to God that He would raise them to the high pitch of their duty by imparting to them the strength of His patience and consolation through the study of His Word. Here comes in the Prayer, then, as it were before its time. When it ends, the same exhortation to mutual forbearance and love is further enforced by the declared will of Christ Himself as the Fulfiller of ancient prophecies concerning the blending of Jews and Gentiles in the Church. The Apostle bids them "receive" one another a word that must have its most intense meaning. The Jewish Christians should receive the Gentile and the Gentile the Jewish in the same spirit as Christ had received both into equal fellowship with Himself, thus advancing the glory of God. The argument, if expanded, would be this. The common Redeemer of all men, for the manifestation of the highest glory of God, in the accomplishment of His purposes, admitted the two classes of mankind to the same privileges. He was in an especial manner the Minister of the Circumcision, and the first stage of His career limited His high service of the Father to the covenant People. Not only so, in every stage of His career He would minister to the glory of God by the exhibition of His truth in the fulfilment of all the promises to Israel. As the Redeemer He would never forget the tribes of the Election. But, as He glorified the fidelity of God towards the covenant People, so also He glorified the mercy of God towards the Gentile nations. Here, however, the Apostle, by an exquisite refinement, changes his style. He returns to the OldTestament predictions, all given "for our instruction," and chooses three which prove that in Christ the Gentiles also were to bring to the Author of redemption a tribute of glory as loud, and as full, and as lasting, as that which Israel should bring, and much more abundant. 66 First, the Redeemer Himself is their great Representative, and gathers their Catholic thanksgivings up into His own lips: "I will confess to Thee among the Gentiles." But the second makes them their own representative, and commands all the nations by a double prophecy to join the ancient people in their praises Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His people." The third lays the common foundation of both in a prediction of Isaiah, that the true David should "reign over the Gentiles," and that "in Him the Gentiles should trust." At this point, the Apostle bursts into a second prayer; but the entire assemblage of these quotations belongs to the first, and are really, though following it, its introduction. They explain the great Hope which the Old Testament, interpreted by Christ, inspires. They give the reason why the God of the Apostle's supplication derives His title from the "patience and consolation" of Scripture in the one Prayer, and from its "hope" in the other. They finally illustrate the phraseology of the petitions now to be considered, so far as they have a specific reference to the church at Rome. Against the latent dis |