souls, far beneath His love, infinitely unworthy of His care, ever ready to sink before any enemy, to be over-mastered by every temptation; ever ready to fall away utterly, yet held up by His hand; and from the crumbling brink of perdition brought safely through to crowns and to His presence. Oh, unutterable wonders of the loving kindness and faithfulness of God! Oh, mysterious deep of His counsels of redemption! Oh, blessed work of the life-giving cross, and bitter agony of Christ our Lord! Oh, glorious hope for every one who cleaveth closely to His righteous life for acceptance and for strength! This day does indeed bring very nigh unto us these stupendous wonders of His love. For we in our weakness, and these His perfected, are all one. Already from the weary trembling strife they who are one body with us have been lifted up to rest in paradise. And if we cleave to Him we shall not long be left in these dungeon garments, and this far distant banishment.The long procession winds its appointed way; in it are not only mighty servants of our God, holy Apostles, noble martyrs, undaunted confessors; but all His Saints; our own dead in Christ; those with whom we have trembled, and wept, and prayed, and given thanks, and communicated; they too are there. Only let us press

in, and through God's grace we shall find our places in those ranks; and for us too shall be fulfilled, even to the uttermost, the blessed word, and we also shall be counted amongst those "who through faith in Christ out of weakness were made strong."

But there is another application of this truth, which we may profitably make; for this which we have seen to be a special note of the separate spiritual life of every Saint of God, is also the character of the corporate acts of the Church which is their common body. From her earliest planting this note has been especially stamped upon all which has concerned her spread and up-growth. Thus, when our Blessed Lord Himself, in His earthly ministry, gathered in the first fruits of His elect, He so veiled His glory in the likeness of our flesh, that in Him there was for the common eye of men no "beauty that we should desire Him;" and so, plainly, He meant that it should be with those who bore His commission to their brethren. His chosen followers were fishermen of Galilee; and when He sent out the seventy, He sent them "two and two,"* with no outward accompaniment of power or presence to challenge the attention of the world. How could the note of an external weakness be d Isaiah liii. 2. • Luke x. 1.

more plainly stamped upon the infant Church? A new Jewish teacher in a little corner of the great Roman world had gathered an obscure company around Him. His ministry had continued for a considerable time, when not even "did his brethren believe in Him;" and at last He died an ignominious death, leaving behind Him but a scanty following of the least esteemed amongst His countrymen. Yet what a manifest strength sprung out of all that weakness! How by it had man's redemption been already achieved; how by it was Satan's power to be abated, and God's honour magnified: how through these feeble instruments was the mighty harvest of the earth to be hereafter gathered in! And so it has continued always. The very signs and symbols of the new faith seem chosen specially to mark their own intrinsic feebleness. Water from the spring; the bread and wine of common life. These are made the signs and means of working the most awful changes in the spiritual kingdom. And so it was in the preaching of the Gospel afterwards. "I came not," says St. Paul, "with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God." It was through the "foolishness of preaching" that he sought to "save them that believed;" and he declared that he was 1 Cor. i. 21.

John vii. 5.

with them "in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling." Yet did he "labour more abundantly than they all," and his was the preaching, and his were the labours by which more than by any other, the kingdom of the prince of this world was overturned, and the rule of Christ established; "because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men." Surely this was the manifest fulfilling of the word of Christ. For still, as from the first, the Kingdom of God was "like leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened;" still was it the growth from the smallest seed of the mighty tree which should shelter in its boughs the fowls of Heaven. And so it has been ever since. It would not be difficult to produce a multitude of instances in which it would be clear that whenever the Church has made any signal advance, it has been not by the strength of any arm of flesh, but through the power of God's Grace working mightily through feeble instruments. So, (to touch merely upon one example,) it was manifestly, when the goodness of our God towards this land enabled His Church here to cast off that long accumulation of cor

ruptions in doctrine, discipline, and conduct which had been heaped upon her truth, and well nigh choked her life. By what unlikely instruments, and with what an apparent feebleness of means, did the arm of God begin and carry through amongst us the blessed work of the Reformation.

So that we may take this as an undoubted mark of His working in His Church, that the work may be seen to be wrought "not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." So that we may even expect to find the chief instruments of her increase marked with this character, that "out of weakness they have been made strong."

And now, my brethren, let me pray you to apply this text to that Institution to which I am this day specially to call your notice. Look first at its beginning; see how truly upon that was stamped this mark of earthly feebleness.

Its first beginning seems to me even to force back our thoughts to that great seed time of all Christian growth, when the Church was gathered into an upper chamber with the door shut upon it for fear of the Jews. Fifty years ago a handful of parish priests meeting together for mutual edification proposed to form for the

m Zech. iv. 6.