be in interpreting his secret desires and intentions. You will apprehend what he wishes you to do before he expresses his wishes. You will divine his unuttered thoughts, and run on his unbidden errands. And without any word of command from him, you will render all and the very service he desires at your hands. It is the same with love to Christ. Of two men—the one largely acquainted with the precepts of the Gospel, the other poorly informed, but full of love-it is ever found that the latter, not the former, is the better interpreter and doer of the law of the Lord. Knowledge without love is of little practical avail in helping a man to "feed the lambs and the sheep." But love is of avail even without knowledge, for its intuitive insight supplies the place of knowledge. The arduous ascent of Christ-like usefulness is ever most easily climbed by the feet of love.

My hearers, do you love Christ? Some of you, surely, can say that you do; though, perhaps, you may have to add that your love is not equal to His deserts or even to your own desires. O cherish and cultivate this holy affection! Remember it cannot grow without careful and persevering culture. And that it may grow and grow until it become the master-affection of your souls, be exhorted not only to bring Jesus near

that you may contemplate His love and feel its captivation, but also to give yourselves to the practical work of serving Him and promoting His cause-superadding to devout meditation on His glorious character a diligent performance of His holy commandments.

Do you love Christ? Some of you, perhaps, are not certain that you do. But how wrong is this! Not certain that you love "the Saviour and the friend of man!" O do not consent to remain in doubt on a point which so vitally concerns both your present peace and your future wellbeing! Recall and ponder the evidences of His love to you, that your hearts, as you meditate thereon, may be warmed with responsive love to Him. Implore Him to shed abroad His love in your hearts. And leave not off this twofold exercise of meditation and prayer until you are able, like Peter, to appeal to His own omniscience, saying, "Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee."

Do you love Christ? Some of you, I fear, are in no uncertainty on this point. You know that though you love many persons and objects, you love not Him. Infatuated men! How blind your understandings not to perceive any attraction in One who is the chiefest of ten thousand, and altogether lovely! How callous your hearts not to vibrate and respond to such amazing love

and generosity as His! Can you call yourselves Christians? O be humbled for your blindness and insensibility. And while yet your despised Saviour has an ear open to your call-while yet there is "rain enough in the sweet heavens" to wash out your deep-dyed guilt-be persuaded to flee to Him for the free pardon and the new heart which, in spite of your base ingratitude, He is still waiting to bestow. Remember the awful words of the apostle, "If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema-maranatha."

199

SERMON XIII.

A HELP TO HEART-RELIGION.

"While I was musing the fire burned."-Ps. xxxix. 3.

IT is painful to observe how feebly the beliefs of many professing Christians act upon their feelings and affections. Their judgments assent to the grand truths of the Gospel, but their hearts remain unaffected, or at least receive no lasting impression. They believe in God, in Christ, in sin, in redemption, in heaven, in hell; but their sympathies do not respond and vibrate to those beliefs. There is intellectual assent, but no corresponding emotion. There is knowledge without love-faith without feeling-light without heat.

In the case of unfallen beings there is no such disharmony. In them the head and the heart move in unison. In them the thoughts determine and rule the feelings, as certainly and invariably as the moon the tides. They never exhibit the moral incongruity of approving the better, and

yet following the worse. But, unhappily, in our fallen nature the judgment has lost that commanding hold on the feelings and affections which is essential to the harmonious working of the intellectual and moral powers. Our mental constitution, in its present fallen state, resembles "a machine whose secondary wheels are stantly liable to be thrown out of the catch and grapple of the master-wheel." And, what is yet more hapless, those secondary wheels-the feelings and affections-do not come to a standstill when detached from the master-wheel, the judgment-no, but continue to move recklessly on with a strong and independent activity of their own. In many men there appears to be, not only a schism, but a total severance between their intellectual beliefs and their moral sentiments. You shall see the drunkard pursuing his besotted course, though he is perfectly aware that it is the road to ruin. You shall see the procrastinating sinner deferring from year to year his purpose of repentance, though no one knows better than he that such delay is alike criminal and perilous. You shall see the worldly-minded professor striving all his life long to reconcile the service of God with the service of mammon, though he is quite persuaded that the attempt is as impracticable as it is impious. A rational being, it might be thought, had only to know