death; but it would not be a higher life, for it would be formless, while the progress of life is the perfecting of form. III. The moral improvement of a man PRODUCES ACUTER SYMPATHY AND MORE INTIMATE FELLOWSHIP. The man of sensibility has a higher sympathy with his race than any other. He knows what is in man. He reads to some extent all hearts. The poet knows all our secrets, and we see our most hidden thoughts exposed in his pages. The sensitive man enters into the spirit of all good men; he understands them, values them rightly, and vindicates them if they are misunderstood and falsely accused. Fellowship.-In his personal relationship his sensibility is exhibited most perfectly. If he has for companions others like himself, as he must have or be alone, how perfect is the understanding between them; how they share each other's joy and each other's sorrow, and grow almost into one in the communion of knowledge and hope and love. So that the question of recognition and fellowship in heaven is one of the most idle. We are sure to meet those whom we love; and our knowledge of them must be more intimate than it is now, because a more perfect life implies a more perfect consciousness and a finer sensibility. "Will it evermore be thus, Spirit still impervious? Soul to soul as hand to hand?" Undoubtedly we shall; because the finer organization which we shall acquire, the incorruptible which this corruptible will put on, will make us capable of meeting those we love in a nearer embrace than ever mortals knew. Nearer than hand to hand, it will be "soul to soul"; spirit will beat with spirit in one blissful vibration, and we shall see each other face to face. But one step higher: "the pure in heart shall see God." The spirit, clouded by no fleshly veil, will be conscious of His presence, and eternally and vividly satisfied with His love. IV. MAN'S CAPABILITY OF IMPROVEMENT GIVES US HOPE FOR ALL. As we have admitted that indulgence in sin renders the man organically corrupt, it may be urged, that if the pursuit of holiness tends to a higher personality, that is, to more life,does it not follow that sin tends by its growing corruption to lead a being from worse to worse until he reaches a point where he becomes extinct. Of course we presume, upon other grounds, that the individual in every man is so far advanced that extinction is out of the question-that, according to our old-fashioned doctrines, the spirit of man is deathless-that the immortal spark cannot be put out. At any rate, resting our argument upon the unity of the race, if any are immortal, all are. What then? The wicked cannot go on corrupting eternally; in the nature of things that is impossible. They must descend until they become extinct, or until they reach a point where reaction sets in; that is, where they will come under the regenerating influence of the love of Christ. And it is for this we hope, that all life is struggling upward in spite of its many failures; that evil is not an ever-descending plane, but a curve; that below the deepest depth of sin there is a deeper depth of mercy; that beyond all death there is life; that encircling all existence there is Love. WALTER LLOYD. The Preacher's Finger-Post. Prayer: A Spiritual Current that may be "Hindered." "THAT YOUR PRAYERS BE NOT HINDERED."—1 Pet. iii. 7. PETER utters these words as an argument for purity, fidelity, and affection in matrimonial life. He meant to say, that anything unvirtuous, unloving, unpeaceful in this relationship would tend to the hindering of prayer. His language suggests three things. I. That PRAYER IS A HABIT OF LIFE. The words do not suggest to you prayer as a service, a profitable practice, an invocation for favours, but rather as an habitual course of life, which may be obstructed. The conventional idea of prayer is foreign to the Christian idea. An old Puritan author has given more of the Scriptural idea of prayer than is promulgated in modern religious teaching. 66 how It is suggested, II. That THIS HABIT OF LIFE MAY BE OBSTRUCTED. "That your prayers be not hindered." The current may be arrested, the life may be checked. How can it be obstructed? By living in an impure moral atmosphere. The man who goes into foul air gets hindered in his breathing and interrupted in the circulation of his life's blood. So the man who gets into the atmosphere of worldliness, fashion, sensual indulgences and vain amusements, will find that his current of devotion is arrested. "It is not" says he, the arithmetic of prayer, many they are; it is not the geometry of prayer, how long they are; it is not the rhetoric of prayer, how eloquent they may be; it is not the music of prayer, how sweetly they may sound; it is not the logic of prayer, upon what considerations of force they may be based; it is not the method of prayer, in the scientific arrangement of its different parts; it is not the diversity of prayer, in the many objects which are to be presented before God, that is here more expressly meant by the Apostle. It is that spirit of prayer which is the spirit of true Christian trust and consolation. For prayer is simply bringing one's pitcher to the fountain and supplying its emptiness; is the whisper about others in an ear that is never dull to hear, and the repose of faintness upon a bosom and arm that always are strong with faithful love." The essence of prayer, in fact, is this-aning, but the quenching of abiding consciousness of absolute dependence on God. This consciousness keeps the soul ever in connection with Him and turns the material universe into a mirror, reflecting everywhere the invisible, an organ speaking out everywhere the eternal. This is prayer, and in this we are commanded to be constant. "Pray without ceasing." Again: The man who takes into his system unwholesome food, will experience a check in the flow of his vitality; and so with the man who neglects food altogether. So in relation to the spiritual life. The man who takes in to him the mere trash of human genius, and not the word of God which is the breath of life, will soon experience, not only the weaken spiritual vitality. As a physician will advise his patient to avoid such food, that his circulation may not be embarrassed, remove from that climate that his breathing may not be impeded, adopt that exercise and temperance that all the vital functions may be kept in healthful play, so Peter recommends a certain moral course of III. THAT THIS OBSTRUCTION IS A CALAMITY TO BE DREADED. "That your prayers be not hindered," which is as if Peter had said, will be a "terrible calamity." If your prayer is "hindered," then your intercourse with the spiritual world is interrupted and you get enshrouded, encased in materialism. "We may imagine" says a modern author, "an exile in a land far off, separated by wide oceans from his home, his birthright, and his relatives. If he by negligence or by mishap forego or long suspend all intercourse and correspondence with his distant friends, he will lose by degrees his fellow-feeling, his affinities, his sense of relationship with them; and even if he were by some unexpected chance suddenly restored to them, he might find himself a stranger amongst strangers, ignorant of their laws, their ways, their customs, perhaps alienated from their sympathies, with no community of taste, impatient of their company, hankering after more congenial associates. Therefore it is that absence is ever prone to compensate and repair its losses by correspondence, mutual presents, affectionate messages, flattering reminiscences, and fond memorials; and every occurrence of such intercourse attachment of the exile towards the home which he is expecting to regain." Oh, if our prayers be "hindered," if our conscious dependence upon God be interrupted, we get disconnected even from God Himself. It is only as the soul realises God that it gets life, and power, and growth, and happiness. It is only as the earth turns its face to the sun that it gets quickened into life and adorned with beauty; and it is only as the soul is brought into conscious contact with God that it lives and grows and flourishes. re-enlivens the Soul Liberty. "WHERE THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS, THERE IS LIBERTY."-2 Cor. iii. 17. By the spirit of the Lord, we mean the spirit of Christ; and by the spirit of Christ, is meant His moral temper. If any man have not this "spirit of Christ," this disposition, he is none of His. Now, what is meant is, that the man who has this disposition of Christ enjoys true liberty. I. He is FREE FROM THE BONDAGE OF CEREMONIALISM. The more destitute a Church is of the spirit of religion, the more active it is in building up a system of Ritualism, and this Ritualism becomes the The soul prison of souls. II. He is free from the TRAMMELS OF LEGALITY. The man who is controlled in his actions by prescriptive rule has the fetters on him. He who does a thing simply because he is commanded to do it, moves, not as a free man, but a slave. He is a machine, not an agent. Now, the man who has the "spirit of Christ," the disposition of Christ within him, is above law; Sinai lies like a smoking mole-hill at his feet. The right thing is done, not because it is commanded, but because it is admired, and because the Legislator is supremely loved. The authority which governs the soul, is not legislative but moral. The ruler is not regarded as a taskmaster or judge, but as а friend devoutly loved. "Ye are no longer servants," said Christ to His disciples, "Ye are my friends." III. He is free from SUPERSTITIOUS FEARS. Fear is bondage; and some, through "fear of death," are all their lifetime "subject to bondage." Dread of trials is bondage, dread of death is bondage, dread of hell is bondage. What millions are held by crafty priests in the dungeon of superstitious fears! The man who has the "spirit of Christ" within him, is free from such bondage. "Perfect love casteth out fear." Crafty priests, with their ecclesiastical menaces, and vulgar preachers, with their horrid descriptions of future punishment and their heartless denunciations, may bring the base in spirit crouching in terror to their feet; but the Christ-loving man rises as superior to all as the orbs of heaven to the rolling thunders of this earth. The spirit of Christianity is not fear, but love, power, and a sound mind. CONCLUSION: Who will not seek this spirit? This spirit is at once the guarantee and the inspiration of that liberty which no despot can touch, no time destroy-the "glorious liberty of the children of God." Life as it is, and Life as it might become. "AND THE MEN OF THE CITY SAID UNTO ELISHA, BEHOLD, I PRAY THEE, THE SITUATION OF THIS CITY IS PLEASANT, AS MY LORD SEETH BUT THE WATER IS NAUGHT, AND THE GROUND BARREN. AND HE SAID, BRING ME A NEW CRUSE, AND PUT SALT THEREIN. AND THEY BROUGHT IT TO HIM. AND HE WENT FORTH |