undertakes to deal with and to remedy. In common disorders, it usually happens, that if you can tell what has caused the disease, you are in a fair way to find the remedy. Christianity proclaims that the primary cause of all this disorder is, that man has forsaken God, the child has abandoned its home,the feeble sheep has strayed from the fold. We are out of our place-dislocated-off the rails-rocking and jolting in a wrong groove, and rushing on to an awful crash. It proclaims, likewise, that what first of all is most indispensable to a cure is, that man come back to his God. The prodigal must return to his home; the dislocated joint must be set; the train must be replaced on the right rails; the sheep must let itself be laid on the shoulders of the Shepherd who has come to seek for it, and be carried back to the comfort and security of the fold.

But Christianity not only teaches what has caused the disease, and what would cure it, it also provides the remedy. The Son of God has been manifested in the flesh to bring back wanderers to their home. And whereas they have broken God's law, and incurred its penalty, and the holy God cannot pass by such transgression without satisfaction, Jesus has made that satisfaction; He has made it at unutterable cost, completing it by his agony and death on the cross: and God has accepted it in full. And

now, through His messengers, God everywhere proclaims this great truth, and invites all wanderers to return to His favour, and to the privileges of their recovered home; assuring them that their return will be to Him the occasion of exceeding joy; partly because the bereaved Father loves to recover His erring children; and partly because their return will redound to the glory of that well-beloved Son who came to seek and to save them, and who desires no other reward than the joy of the husbandman who goes forth and weeps, bearing precious seed, but comes again rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.

If this be the first grand design of revealed religion, why should any, and above all, why should the working classes distrust it? In the view even of the life that now is, is it not a great matter to be at peace with God? Is it not a great matter to have your own place again at home? To have access to your Father, to have the benefit of His kind training, His wise counsels, His wholesome influence? To know that He loves you, that He is interested in you, that He possesses everything that you need, that in trouble He will deliver you, that He will calm your passions, strengthen you for all your battles, soothe you in all your sorrows,-in short, hat He will withhold no good thing from you while

you walk uprightly? Christianity comes offering to every one of you the friendship and highest favour of the Almighty. If it can be shown that it does not provide what it promises, let that be the avowed ground on which it is rejected; but never let it be said that any one believed its offer, but rejected it or treated it with indifference because it was not worth his pains!

Besides the great blessing that has now been adverted to, there are many other aspects of Christianity so very favourable to the circumstances of working people, as to make their indifference towards it wear an aspect of singular infatuation. Our time will not be mis-spent if we touch briefly on a few of these.

Let us begin with what may be called the steadying and strengthening influence of Christianity. By its steadying influence we mean the power which it gives a man to walk erect, unseduced by temptation, uncorrupted by pleasure, unbeguiled by the love of ease. To do this is often far from easy. There are few men but have some weak point, where temptation is peculiarly dangerous. It is painful to mark, when men and women are setting out in life, with the dewy vigour of youth upon them, how soon many of them faint and grow weary, and some even utterly fail. There is one whom intemperance has

begun to destroy. There is another lured into dishonest ways. There is a third becoming the victim of licentiousness. There is a whole cluster, tiring of work, becoming idle, aimless, good-for-nothing. How many shipwrecks take place year after year from such causes, and in how many other cases, where the wreck is not complete, do we see the man and woman crippled for life, trailing a shattered frame along a path alike painful and dishonoured! What a blessing to the working classes, and indeed to all, if any one could hold them up, could steady and strengthen them, when such perils surround! But Christ is that very friend. Under His guidance they will steer clear of all these rocks and quicksands, they will move erect and steady through all these tempests and hurricanes. From Joseph they will have their ready answer for temptation, "How can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?" The apostle will give them their motto for daily work, "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." The emblem of their course in life will be the "tree planted by the rivers of water, that brings forth fruit in its season; its leaf also shall not wither." The soaring flight of the king of birds will represent their sublime destiny: "They shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not weary; they shall walk and not faint."

Or again, consider the protection and sympathy which Christianity brings to the working man. In all ages of the world, oppression has been the heritage of the weak. Those who have had no might to enforce their claims, have commonly been treated as if they had neither rights nor feelings. The poor man has been held down, as if he were fit for nothing better than hewing wood and drawing water. It is the Bible, beyond all doubt, that forms the poor man's charter. From first to last, the Bible stands up for the needy, and him that hath no helper. What withering blasts did the prophets direct against those who ground the faces of the poor, and cheated the hireling of his wages! Then, too, the whole spirit of the Bible is one of respect for man as man— not for a few whom artificial distinctions have raised above others, but for every one that has been made in the likeness of God. And in the New Testament, when the Christian Church is formed, its members are all brethren in Christ. The strong are called to help the weak, the rich are called to succour the poor, and all are called to bear one another's burdens. And the more that true Christianity spreads, the more will this spirit spread with it. The rich man's scorn and the poor man's contumely will more and more become things of the past. The humblest labourer will feel that he has the respect and sym