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SERMON is real and shall be permanent, as well as much to remind him that both he and his hearers are sinful men, and that all which is man's only must waste and fail and perish.

It is my purpose to stand as much aside as possible, and to let the Word of God have free course and be glorified. The Scriptures which furnish the regular instruction for each Sunday, more especially the Epistle and the Gospel for the day, shall be brought before you in due order, and we will seek to learn together out of them. We will begin to-day. The Epistle for this day shall be our morning subject, and the Gospel for this day our evening subject. And may God Himself by his Holy Spirit be the inward teacher and light of each one of us.

I will read you the Epistle once again, with a brief word or two of elucidation, and then turn your thoughts to the especial topic suggested by the text.

We are celebrating at this season the Epiphany or Manifestation of Christ, typified by the visit of the wise men from the east to the lowly cradle of the infant Saviour; realized in fact by that proclamation of His name to all nations, which began in the conversion of the first Gentile, Cornelius, and is still (though too faintly and intermittently prosecuted) the work and office of the age in which we live; hereafter to be perfected and consummated in that glorious season to which faith looks forward, when the earth

shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the SERMON waters cover the sea.

At this season it is appropriate that we should be reminded, as we are in the chosen services of our Church, what Christ Himself was in His earthly life, and what we must be who would hereafter see Him as He is. The Gospel for each Sunday, speaking generally, gives us the one, in some special phase of its manifestation; the Epistle gives us the other. Listen to its teaching.

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I beseech you therefore, brethren. The words follow, Verse 1. in the place from which they come, a large disclosure of the truth of Redemption; its basis, a work of propitiation and atonement; its condition, a hearty acceptance by faith in Christ; its compass as coextensive with the world; its effect, in each individual who receives it, a life of inward peace, of inward strength, of assured hope, of final glory. Such is the force of the word therefore. Since God has done these great things for us; since such is the safety, such the happiness, such the hope, such the present and such the future, of every one who will have Christ for his Saviour; I beseech you, as the first and natural consequence of these things, and by the mercies of God, as my argument and your motive, to present your bodies a living sacrifice; to set yourselves, your living selves, with every power of action and service, as it were beside the altar of God, for Jesus

SERMON Christ your great High Priest to offer up daily to His

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Verse 2.

Verse 3.

Father, making that surrender acceptable through His own most precious blood. A living sacrifice; not, like those offered under the Law, one of dead victims: holy, that is, consecrated and set apart from all profane uses for God's use only: and further, acceptable unto God, through his Son: which is your reasonable service. And be not fashioned according to this age

-we will return to this clause presently-but be ye transformed by the renewing of the mind: that is where the work must begin, with the mind; the act will follow the renewing of your mind; the renovation, as by an act of new creation, of your whole spirit and inward being by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit of God. That ye may prove, put to the test of personal trial and experience, what the will of God is, even that which is good, and acceptable, and perfect; that you may not only know, as a matter of theory or of sound doctrine, what God would have you to do and to be, but may put it, as it were, to the test, by setting yourselves to do it.

The Apostle proceeds to illustrate this will of God in some special points of duty. For I say, through the grace which was given me, in virtue of that undeserved favour of God which made me an Apostle, to every one that is among you, not to be high-minded beyond what he ought to be minded, but to be minded so as to be sober-minded; according as God, in the dis

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tribution of His gifts-and the especial reference SERMON is to the gifts of His Holy Spirit following upon Baptism and the laying on of the Apostles' hands -dealt to each one a measure of faith: that is, according to that measure of faith which God assigned to each. Each one of us is to see in himself, not an isolated being, possessed of independent gifts, which he may boast of as his own and vaunt as superior to those of another: such a view of our Christian standing is as false as it is mischievous. For as in one body, in one natural human body, we Verse 4. have many members, and all the members have not the same office; so we, the many, we collectively, are one Verse 5. body in Christ, and, regarded one by one, individually, each other's members; fellow-members, that is, of the same body. Instead of being all isolated, independent, and self-contained, we are mutually related, mutually dependent, mutually interested and concerned, even as a human body, in which the eye and the hand, the foot and the head, have indeed each one its own work and function, but cannot exercise that function, any one of them, without the energy and cooperation of all the rest.

There the Epistle for this day ends, and certainly not without having suggested matter enough for reproof and for correction, as well as for doctrine and instruction in righteousness.

But of all the topics here suggested, could I have selected one more suitable to the wants of this con

SERMON gregation than that read as the text, Be not conformed to this world?

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How familiar the words! The world, conformity to the world, are phrases often on the lips of religious teachers and well they may be. But let us be quite sure that we first understand them.

There are two terms in the original language for this expression, the world. One of them regards the things that now are in reference to time, the other in reference to space. The one means the things that are seen, this material world, with all its enjoyments and gratifications, its riches, pleasures, and honours; the other means the time or age to which these things belong, and by which they are limited and circumscribed; the period, longer or shorter-we know not its duration, but God knoweth-previous to what we are taught to designate as the end of all things; that consummation of the old, that introduction of the new, which shall be the concomitant of the second Advent of Jesus Christ, the consequence of that second and greater Epiphany for which the Church on earth and in heaven is ever waiting and watching.

The two terms are often employed separately, and once at least in the Scriptures they are combined. Eph. ii. 2. The phrase, according to the course of this world, is an example of that combination. Ye walked in

sin, according to, following the rule and direction of, the age, or period, of this present world.