rainbow, when you see the arch forming across the heavens -not expect all the signs and fruits of summer, when the renovating power of the Creator hath accompanied the bygone spring! Brethren, we sin, we wrong Christ and his grace, when we do not expect to find Churches growing up into the full stature of perfect manhood; when we feel that it is a matter of course that the body should be stinted or decrepit, or diseased, or even mutilated; having disease of the heart, it may be, or disease of the head, with palsied limbs or jaundiced eyes; or perhaps lacking some organ altogether, either an eye, or an ear, or a hand, or a foot. It was not to form such a body that Christ died. It is not to form such a body that Christ lives. Next to the pain with which we regard fallen man, is the pain with which we regard the fragmentary character of the goodness which most men attain even when renewed. Whereunto shall we liken it? You stand on the margin of a lake when the winds are bound. From its placid bosom the beauties of the surrounding scene are reflected as from a polished mirror. The majestic tree, the "fairy flower," the greensward, and the rock, and the mountain, the sun, and the golden beams which illumine heaven, are all thrown back on you smilingly. And as you gaze into the waters before you, you see in their depths a world brighter and more beautiful than the real world around you— "As if there lay beneath the wave, Such was human nature, when, as formed by the Divine hand and inspired by the Divine breath, it reflected purely, and placidly, and unbrokenly, all the excellences and beauties of the Divine law-every excellence and beauty deriving a glow of warmth and life from the soul, from whose pure depths they were thrown out in visible and palpable forms. But as you stand on the margin of the lake, a storm arises, the waters are troubled, and wave lashes wave in its fury. Where is now the liquid landscape, the reflection of all the glory and beauty and majesty of the scene around you? You gaze, but it is not. There remains not one fragment of it. The agitated bosom of the waters knows nothing of what it had but an hour before exhibited so truly and brightly. They are strangers to each other. Such is human nature when subjected to the disturbing and deranging forces of sin. The Divine law finds it no longer a reflection of its beauty and glory. You still stand on the margin of the lake. An unseen power allays the storm. The winds cease, but there is not a perfect calm. The waves no longer roar, but the waters are slightly ruffled. And as you gaze you observe the landscape again forming itself on the surface. But not as before. It is thrown back upon you in fragments. Trees and rocks are incongruously mixed. One object is brightly reflected by the surface of the ripple which is now passing before you, and another by the surface of the next. But they do not appear in their natural relation, and more than half their beauty is lost in consequence. You see every thing in parts and pieces, nothing in all its beauty, and many things so confusedly that you can scarcely recognise them. Such is human nature under the operation of the Gospel. The disturbing force of sin has been subdued, and the law of God is again reflected from living man. But, alas! it is in most fragmentary forms; disjointed and broken pieces, rather than a uniform and consistent whole, attest the fresh communion which has been established between the law of God and the soul of man. Our illustration is designed to exhibit a fact, not to offer an apology. We find it true of individual men and of Churches. And the truer it is in reality, the more need there is to enforce our Saviour's command, "Be ye perfect." Isolated virtues, one-sided excellences, fragmentary graces these are not our Lord's requirement. If he commends us for what we are, he reminds us of what we are not, and says with authority, "See that ye excel in this grace also. Be ye perfect." Secondly. You are called on to-night to rise to the height of the requirements of your age and position. "Be ye perfect." You will not be offended that I do not assume that you have already attained, either are already perfect. Where is the Church that is up to the standard which the demands of our age and position require? The responsibility of ministers in this great metropolis is the frequent subject of remark. And most fitly. I tremble-and which of my brethren, and even of my fathers, does not tremble in view of it? But the responsibility of Churches-is it less? Churches are often said to be what ministers make them; but the converse may be said with nearly equal truthministers are often what Churches make them. And my province at present is to speak of the latter. My dear brethren, when we talk to you of your age and position, our words perhaps seem shadowy and dreamy, fit enough to point a sentence or inspire a declamation, but containing no reality of which you can lay hold, or of which it concerns you to make any practical use. But we mean them not so. We mean to speak of a grave something which concerns you most deeply. We mean to stimulate you to deserve the commendation bestowed on certain men of Issachar, who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do. When the Caffre chief, who visited us a few years ago, was lingering in the lobby of the House of Commons, he was asked by Dr. Philip what he was thinking? He replied, "I have been thinking how strange it is that I have seen within there the spring of the power which moves the world." Do not the Churches of London sustain some such relation to Christianity, in all parts at least of the British dominions? There may, it is true, be life and energy in the extremities when there is coldness and death at the heart. In the spiritual system to which we belong, warmth and power may originate in obscure and distant parts, and be drawn thence to the metropolis. But it is still true that the metropolis is the centre to which distant parts look for holy impulse, and whose example is of tremendous power for good or evil. Of the Churches in this metropolis it may be said emphatically, that they do not live unto themselves. If earnest-hearted professors ask us how the Churches to which they belong may rise to the requirements of their position, our answer will perhaps appear too simple, and quite unequal to anything so great. But all practical truth is simple; and all great doings originate in very simple principles. He First. Let every right-hearted Christian realise his individual responsibility. Let him not lose himself in the mass, or wait until the mass around him be moved. has his own obligation to Christ, unaffected by the obligation of others. He shall have to bear his own burden, unaffected by the position of others in the day of accounts. Let him realise this acknowledged truth. And then, Secondly. Let him return to the word of God for his absolute and sovereign practical guide. "Return," we say. We assume that, more or less, the great bulk of Christians are influenced and moulded now by the maxims of the world and of a conventional Christianity, rather than by the simple and authoritative dicta of the word of God. What we want is a return to individual and simple-hearted allegiance to the authority of our King, Jesus Christ. The immediate result will be, that Christians will cease to ask how their brethren act, what their brethren give, what the world and their brethren will think or say of them. And the further consequence will be, a revision of the standard by which they have regulated their lives and their benefactions. They will then be less conformed to the world in their lives, and less conformed to the Church in their benefactions. Their ambition will not be to have a place among the princes of the earth, but among the princes of heaven. And it will be, if not the boast, at least the joy of the Churches of Christ, to have in their fellowship, not the men whose mansions and equipages vie with those of nobles, but the men whose deeds of faith and love vie with those of the men of other times, who sold their possessions to maintain an infant Church, and devoted their lives to the honour and work of their Master. Brethren, do we ask too much when we ask that every one of you will seek, through Divine grace, to realise his individual responsibility, and will immediately return to the word of God for your absolute and sovereign guide in all things? This is our prescription for the cure of the evils which afflict the Christian Church. This is our plan for replenishing the exhausted treasuries of all Christian Societies. This is the only way we know in which our Churches may rise to the demands of their age. We have no specific that will save from the necessity of treading in the olden path of self-denial, and nonconformity to the world. We cannot find in the intelligence and refinement of our age, or amid our inventions and discoveries, any elements of success which will supersede the necessity of a rigid and honest recourse to the first principles of practical Christianity. And we trace much of the evil which throws so deep a gloom over the Churches of our land to this, that these principles are either buried beneath a superincumbent mass of worldly maxims and conventional |