heaven. After ten days they celebrate Whit-Sunday, or the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Ghost, the promised Comforter, was given. After this they devote one day to the contemplation of the mystery of the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, Three Persons and One God. They realize that each Person of the Godhead has taken to Himself a part in our salvation, and that these Three are One.

Having thus laid a good foundation for their faith, the Church proceeds to build upon it. So far the Object of their faith has been passed before them, and for the rest of the year they are invited to witness the exercise of that faith. Christian duties are seen in their true light, Christian promises in their full power. Till, thus occupied, with their eyes straining forward into the future, the Church's year begins anew, and the thought of Christ's Second Advent, as it were, overlaps and blends with the thought of the First.

This is surely to "rightly divide the word of Truth." This is to omit nothing, to transpose nothing; to give to each doctrine its proper place and proportionate weight. Even if the minister fail, the Services preserve

the proportion of faith." It is, so far as any human system can secure it, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

And how great is the power of such a preaching of the Gospel! There are some who follow no such system, but claim to be ever preaching Christ, and yet but little fruit is brought to perfection. Is not the flaw easy of detection? They have been preaching a name, and not a person, and this for lack of such a system as the Church supplies. They forget that "the

Gospel according to St. Matthew, and St. Mark, and St. Luke, and St. John" in each case proclaims the life and conversation of Jesus Christ, step by step, to those great final acts, the Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension, while they have dwelt almost exclusively on the Death. From the lips of one who has followed the outline of this consecutive teaching the Name of Christ comes with a new power. Before, it was no more than a familiar word, now it is a person, very Christ." A new light gathers round the Cross of Calvary which, in his mouth, had been so long a lifeless dogma. "I know whom I have believed," said St. Paul (2 Tim. i. 12), for " in knowledge of Him standeth our eternal life."

In supplying, therefore, a framework of consecutive teaching, the Church has but followed the structure of God's Word, and acted on her Lord's assurance, "This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent" (John xvii. 3).

Probably Dissenting teachers are far more indebted to the Prayer-book for the completeness of their teaching than either they are aware of or care to admit. The round of the Church's seasons recalls to them also the several doctrines in the "proportion of faith."

It is a false shame that scorns to tread in the footprints of other men when it is thus written, "Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein" (Jer. vi. 16.)

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iii. We shall not be asked by God whether we are Churchmen or Dissenters, but whether we are converted.

The position here taken up rests on at least two false assumptions.

I. That God's commands on the unity of His people are small matters, while conversion is a great matter; and provided we attain the latter He will be indifferent to any breach of the former.

The obvious retort is, if those commands be unimportant, to what end were they given ?

It may be said, "There is only one way to heaven," but then is not "every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God" a sign-post to that way which cannot safely be disregarded?

But to examine the question more closely can we discover from what is revealed of God's character any indifference even to the minutest detail?

Look at any one of the manifold works of the God of Nature. Magnify a thousandfold the foot of a fly, so designed as to walk on the ceiling, or the exquisite construction of the feathery snowflake so marvellously adapted to furnish a warm mantle to the earth. Watch the stars in their courses, or summer following winter and day giving place to night, and then say if God be not a God of order even to the minutest detail. He notes the fall of a sparrow to the ground and numbers the very hairs of our head. Is there any ground here for assuming that God is indifferent to the keeping of His own commandments? The Apostle tells us that it is open to us to read the character of God from His

created works, and if we shut our eyes to the lessons there taught us, then are we, "without excuse" (Rom. i, 20).

God's written Word confirms what we read in the Book of Nature. The Last Judgment will be marvellously minute. All Scripture goes to prove that. Every guilty wish, every motive, every thought of our heart is noted in His Book. To Him all hearts are open, from Him no secrets are hid. For all these things God will bring us into judgment. Well may we quail 'as we read the description of that day: "Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the Day of Judgment" (Matt. xii. 36).

Place side by side these two pictures of the Last Judgment, and mark the contrast. "God will not ask us whether we are guilty of the sin of schism, but whether we are converted." Now hear the Word of the Lord, "I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God: and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works" (Rev. XX. 12).

But we may be asked whether we would maintain that one, who had broken the unity of Christ's Church, will on that account be excluded from heaven.

That is not the question. The question is this, Are we free, while we are here on earth, to disregard a plain command of God, on the expectation of being able to plead our conversion when we stand before the great white throne? We contend that the only rule

for to-day's duties is perfect obedience to the law of God.

With regard to the future, we can believe that God is not extreme to mark what we do amiss; He will forgive those who, thinking they do Him service, do not scruple to make divisions in His Church. But it is plain it is a disturbance of God's design, it will require an adaptation of His law to the wilfulness of man. If from His Word and our own experience we learn anything, it is that His love goes beyond even the limits of His bounteous promises; the river of His mercy will rise and overflow its banks. But shall we sin that grace may abound?

In the tempest on the Sea of Galilee the ship in which the Master was asleep battled with the storm; and He arose and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still. And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. And that calm fell also on "the other little ships," which St. Mark says were with Him (Mark iv. 36).

That ship with the Master in it has ever been regarded as a type of the Church, and it has been suggested that those "other little ships" may represent the denominations. And is it not true that both participate in the blessings of His holy presence? (Archer Butler's Sermons.)

Let this be granted, yet assuredly it were safer to keep the whole law and not to offend willingly even in one point. Only those who have set their feet on the Great Rock can look calmly on the flood surging beneath them. Others may have taken refuge on this or that detached fragment of the Rock, and as