highest moral attainments. It is useless, He said, to refrain from injuring your neighbour, if, notwithstanding, you have the wish, the impulse, to injure him. The movement of hatred is, according to Christ, morally equivalent to a murder. And even if you have no such immoral impulses, yet if your disposition towards your fellow-creatures be purely negative, if you are not actuated by an enthusiastic love and benevolence towards all mankind, you are morally good for nothing. Christ was not content, like the earlier moralists, with prohibitions, with condemning those who did wrong. He condemns those who have not done good. The sinner whom Christ habitually denounces is he who has done nothing. This character comes repeatedly forward in His parables. It is the priest and the Levite who pass by on the other side. It is Dives, of whom no ill is recorded, except that a beggar lay at his gates unrelieved. It is the servant who hid in a napkin the talent committed to him. It is the unprofitable servant who has merely done what it was his duty to do. And Christ not only raised the standard of morality to the highest possible point; but further, He insisted far more vehemently than previous moralists had

done, upon the necessity of attaining the standard. He does not say-This is morality, but, as it is difficult of attainment, God will forgive your shortcomings. On the contrary, He says -To be moral in this high sense is life and peace; not to be so is death and eternal damnation. Every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand; . . . and it fell and great was the fall of it."

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To say, then, that right-doing is unimportant for the Christian, or of secondary importance, is to give a flat contradiction to the words. of Christ. He has never been more horribly blasphemed than by those professed disciples who insinuate that His gospel is not a gospel of right - doing. "The gospel," says Ruskin, "let His life rule your lives,' is eternally true and salutary. The gospel, 'let His life be instead of your lives,' is eternally false and damnatory." Ruskin is right. Ruskin is right. The one is the gospel of Christ, the other is the gospel of the devil. They are as opposite as light and darkness; and yet, unhappily, the one is sometimes mistaken for the other. It is an appalling fact (unfortunately so common that we sometimes

forget its deadly significance) that a sermon which aims at exhorting men to right-doing, would be characterised by some professing Christians as not a Gospel sermon. Not a Gospel sermon! Then Christ did not preach the Gospel, did not even comprehend it. He must have been sent into the world too soon. If He had but enjoyed the advantage of listening to these enlightened critics, they would have instructed Him in the way of salvation! In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ does not tell His hearers that He is going to do everything for them, and that they may sit still and take their ease. No! He gives His benediction to those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. "Except your righteousness," He warns them, "shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." He exhorts them to let

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their light shine, so that men may see their good works. He commands them to avoid even an angry thought, or an unkind word, or a wanton look, and to be perfect even as their Father in heaven. Every tree," He assures them, "which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire." "Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we

not prophesied in Thy name? and in Thy name have cast out devils? and in Thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity." "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father."

I 2

Defects of Modern Christianity.

II.

WANT OF ENTHUSIASM.

"Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple."-LUKE xiv. 33.

THERE HERE are many persons in the present day who never manifest enthusiasm about anything. The nil admirari theory of life, suggested formerly by Horace, and reiterated by the lovesick hero of Tennyson's Maud,' is one of the gospels of the age. "Not bad is about the highest praise which some persons would think it respectable to bestow. They consider enthusiasm to be a sign of under-breeding, or, at any rate, of ignorance. They imagine it shows wisdom to seem bored, to appear “used up" in the fruitless endeavour to discover something that has anything in it. When the eccentric leader