us attempt, through God's grace, to advance and sanctify the inward man. We cannot be wrong here. Whatever is right, whatever is wrong, in this perplexing world, we must be right in "doing justly, in loving mercy, in walking humbly with our God;" in denying our wills, in ruling our tongues, in softening and sweetening our tempers, in mortifying our lusts; in learning patience, meekness, purity, forgiveness of injuries, and continuance in well-doing.

1

SERMON II.

SAINTLINESS NOT FORFEITED BY THE PENITENT.

(SEXAGESIMA.)

2 COR. xii. 11.

"In nothing am I behind the very chiefest Apostles, though I be nothing."

SO says St. Paul, after recounting his privileges, his

sufferings, and his services through many chapters, or rather through his whole Epistle. His Corinthian converts had learned to undervalue him, and he confesses that he was by himself as weak and worthless as they thought him. "I am the least of the Apostles," he says, "that am not meet to be called an Apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God." "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves." And in the text he speaks of himself as being

nothing." Yet though such, viewed in himself, far other was he in fact, that is, in the grace of God, which had been shed upon him; or in his own words, " But by the grace of God I am what I and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I laboured more abundantly than they all; of God which was with me."

am,

yet not I, but the grace

Again,

"But our suffi

ciency is of God." And again, "My grace is sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in weakness." And again, "I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest Apostles'.' And in the text, "In nothing am I behind the very chiefest Apostles, though I be nothing."

And in both Epistles he enumerates in detail many of the fruits and tokens of this grace which had been given to him, who was once "a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious." "Even unto this present hour," he

says, we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed, we intreat we are made as the filth of the earth, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day." Again, "In all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left." And again, "Receive us; we have wronged no man, we have corrupted no man, we have defrauded no man." And again, "In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft; . . . in weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness: . . . . .. Who is weak,

1 1 Cor. xv. 9, 10. 2 Cor. iii. 5; xii. 9; xi. 5.

and I am not weak? who is offended, and I burn not?" And again, "I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake for when I am weak, then am I strong1."

Is it possible to conceive a greater contrast than is placed before us in the picture of Saul the persecutor of the Church, and of St. Paul, Apostle, Confessor, and Martyr? Who so great an enemy of Christ? who so true a servant? Nor is St. Paul's instance solitary; stranger cases still have occurred in the times after him. Not unregenerate sinners only like him, but those who have sinned after their regeneration; not sinners in ignorance only, like him, but those who knew what was right and did it not; not merely the blinded by a false zeal and an unhumbled heart, like him, but sensual, carnal, abandoned persons; profligates, who sacrificed to Satan body as well as soul; these, too, by the wonder-working grace of God, have from time to time become all that they were not; as high in the kingdom of heaven as they were before low plunged in darkness and in the shadow of death. Such awful instances of Christ's power meet us every now and then in the course of the Church's history; so much so, that by a mistake, great but not unnatural, it has sometimes been laid down as a sort of maxim, "The greater the sinner, the greater the saint;" as if to have a full measure of Christ's cup, a man must first have drunken deeply of the cup of devils.

Such a doctrine of course is simply wicked and detestable; but still it derives some speciousness from 1 1 Cor. iv. 11-13. 2 Cor. vi. 4-7; vii. 2; xi. 23. 27. 29; xii. 10.

the instances like St. Paul to which I have alluded. Those instances seem to prove something, though not this doctrine; what they prove, it will befit this day, which is a sort of commemoration of St. Paul, briefly to consider.

They prove then this,-that no degree of sin, however extreme (unless indeed it reaches the unpardonable sin, the sin against the Holy Ghost, which of course falls without our subject, but no degree of sin, which can be repented of), precludes the acquisition of any degree of holiness, however high. No sinner so great, but he may, through God's grace, become a saint ever so great. Great saints may become such, either after being, or without being, great sinners. We cannot argue from

what a saint is at his close what he was at his beginning. Look through the lives of the Saints, and you will find that some became such after never turning from God, and others, after turning from Him; and it would be presumptuous to assert that in the catalogue there are not saints as great who have turned from Him and repented, as any of those who have been just persons from their youth up, needing no repentance.

This of course is a very different statement from saying the greater the sinner, the greater the saint. It is only saying that a man may rise as high as he once was low; that great sinners, when they turn to God,-not, in consequence will be greater saints than others, but that they are not hindered from being equal to those others in their saintliness, in spite of their sinning. But even such a statement may seem strong; so now some words shall be added by way of explanation. [S. D.]

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