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still worse effect which they must have on the minds of the priests, who have power to play fast and loose with mortal and venial sins, with terrors and with pardons, with dispensations and excommunications!

About all these things we in Protestant countries hear warnings enough, warnings often so fierce and ill-timed that we cease to believe there is any ground or necessity for them. Would to God there were not! But the facts are clear and patent; it is a childish affectation of liberality to deny them. It is, indeed, a solemn duty to acknowledge that beneath them there lies, in every Roman Catholic country, a better faith, a deeper Gospel, which they have overlaid and half smothered, but which they have not destroyed. It is a duty to see that we assert that better faith, that deeper Gospel, for them and ourselves. It may be hidden from us as well as from them; the same tempers of mind, differently exhibited, may undermine it for both. If we do not adopt St. John's interpretation of the faith of Christ the Son of God; if we do not think that God has manifested the true eternal life in Him, has given it to mankind in Him;-we may be confusing eternal death, the separation from the divine Life of which His sacrifice and death have made us heirs, with certain outward punishments to be inflicted here or hereafter; we may begin to ask whether we cannot make compensation by outward acts or inward, by some great deeds or by professions of faith, for our sins, and so escape their punishment. And so our English morality may become as insincere, treacherous, venal, as any Papal morality ever was. On the other hand, if we declare that the sacrifice of Christ was made for the whole world, that the eternal righteous love and

truth of God are revealed in Christ to every sinful man; that he may cast off his death, his unrighteousness, hatred, untruth, and enter into possession of them; we shall be bearing a testimony which the same creeds and sacraments bear to Romanists and to Englishmen, a testimony to which there will be a response in the inmost conscience and heart of the Catholic as well as of the Protestant.

LECTURE XIX.

CHRISTIAN CERTAINTY.

1 JOHN V. 18-21.

We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not. And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.

CAN we be certain of any principles in Ethics? St. John declares that we can. He says that he has not been making probable guesses about the grounds of human actions, the relations of man to God, the nature of God Himself. These are things that he knows. Nay, he is not content with claiming this knowledge himself. He uses the plural pronoun; he declares that his disciples, his little children, 'know' that which he knows.

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I. What do they know? He had just said, 'All unrighteousness is sin: there is a sin not unto death.' He He says now, We KNOW that he that is born of God sinneth not.' You may remember that we met with this language before. I inquired how it was consistent with the words, 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' Evidently we could not bring these statements into accordance by modifying either. We could not, for instance, pretend that he meant merely that those

who were born of God did not sin a great deal, very terribly. Or again, that he did not address himself to Christian men, to 'true believers,' when he spoke of confessing sins. These would have been dishonest subterfuges, which would have robbed us not of one of the Apostle's assertions, but of both, and would have left an impression on the mind of every reader that he was himself an untrustworthy man, who played loosely with words. I said, we must determine to construe each sentence accurately, to give it its full force; then we might consider how they should be reconciled. So we discovered that the apparent contradictions in St. John arose from a real contradiction in us; that sin itself is a contradiction, and that we cannot express ourselves rightly and satisfactorily about it, so as to describe undoubted facts, without using phrases, which, when they are looked at on the surface, clash with each other. The way to ascertain the meaning of each, and the veracity of each, was to bring them home to our consciences. 'Man, 'dost not thou know certainly that there is something wrong in thee, something that is struggling against the truth in thee? Darest thou deny it? Hast not thou found 'that when the truth is strongest within thee, when it is clearest to thee, thou art least disposed to question the 'existence of this enemy; thou art most aware of his pre'sence? Is it not, then, thy indifference to truth, thy wish to ignore it, which leads thee to say, "I have no sin in me?” 'Is there not a self-deception, a lie, in that denial?' I do not think any man will bear this probing without being either brought to the confession which St. John demands of him, or stammering and shuffling in a way that is equally decisive about the fact, though far less creditable to him.

WHO DO NOT COMMIT SIN.

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But in the process of this inquiry, what has come to light? There is a truth in him, in the man who confesses his sin. There is a truth against which the sin is fighting; there is a truth with which the man has a right to associate himself, to say, 'It is for me; I am for it.' There is a truth which authorizes him to disclaim his sin, to say, 'I 'will none of it; closely as it approaches me, I entirely repudiate its pretension to be a part of me, or to govern 'me.' The confession of the sin that is in us is nothing less than this disclaimer, this renunciation, of the sin. But to whom do we confess the sin? who, besides ourselves, do we conceive is interested in that renunciation? We confess the sin to GOD; we believe He is interested in our renunciation of it. Why? Because we confess that the truth in us' is His truth; that it is there because we are related to Him; there, because we are not our own, but His. The sin is the denial of this relationship; the setting up to be independent of Him. The truth which the sin rebels against is, first, the truth that is in God Himself; secondly, the truth that we are born of Him, that we are His children.

Here, then, is the vindication of the proposition, taken in its broadest, strongest form: He that is born of God doth not commit sin.' Fix upon a set of persons, proclaim, 'These are God's children;' and you must dilute the doctrine, you must reduce it almost to nothing, in order to make it coincide with the facts of these persons' lives. But take the Apostle to say to each man, that in you which ' is born of God doth not commit sin, and if you habitually, at every moment, claimed your rights as a child of His, 'you would not commit sin;' and I believe the conscience