woe that waits the soul in the second death, and find shelter beneath the cross, and receive life from Him who says, " With everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith the LORD thy REDEEMER"?

PREACHING AIDED OR UNAIDED

BY CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP.*

"After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth; and found a certain Jew named Aquila, born in Pontus, lately come from Italy, with his wife Priscilla ; (because that Claudius had commanded all Jews to depart from Rome :) and came unto them. And because he was of the same craft, he abode with them, and wrought: for by their occupation they were tentmakers. And he reasoned in the synagogue every sabbath, and persuaded the Jews and the Greeks. And when Silas and Timotheus were come from Macedonia, Paul was pressed in the spirit, and testified to the Jews that Jesus was Christ."-ACTS xviii. 1-5.

THE preacher of the Gospel and the believers

in the Gospel with whom he is associated stand together always in view of another, a third relationship which they sustain toward the unbelievers surrounding them. Just as in mechanics where we have two forces in motion which unite at a certain point, and operate no longer as two forces but as a single or resultant force; so in every

*An ordination sermon.

ministerial settlement we have two forces, the religious life-power of the preacher and the religious life-power of the church (which indeed is an aggregate of the piety of individuals composing it), and these two unite henceforth to act upon surrounding irreligion and unbelief. Now the religious life of the minister and the religious life of the church are both subject to great variations, to interruptions, and alienations, all of which will tell upon the resultant power brought to bear upon outsiders in a quite certain and inevitable way.

To look at some of these variations, and to consider some of these results, is my purpose here; and this will be accomplished if there may be granted to our prayerful consideration the unfolding of the truths contained in this passage.

In this narrative Paul the preacher appears in two distinct conditions of heart and life, expressing himself in two distinct modes of preaching, and the lower changes into the higher, just where the Christian Church affects his spirit aright. Let us see,

I. THE PREACHER FACING THE WORLD BY HIMSELF.

II. THE PREACHER FACING THE WORLD AS THE REPRESENTATIVE OF HAPPY CHURCHES.

III. SOME SIGNS FOLLOWING.

I. Paul seems to have arrived at Corinth alone, his travelling companions and fellowlabourers left behind. He came to Corinth direct from Athens, where also he was alone. Previously to this, when he first entered Europe, he had with him Luke and Silas and Timothy. Successful at Philippi and Thessalonica, as a preacher he was in the best and happiest company. At Athens and for a season at Corinth he is quite alone. Bear this in mind, and remember also that at Athens Paul has been obliged to face the second dark problem in the spiritual history of his age. The first was this, that the Jews, everywhere appealed to by the preachers of the Gospel, everywhere refused the appeal, and persecuted the preachers. That was to Paul a daily sorrow to which he could never reconcile his eager affectionate spirit. That spirit had, however, been much buoyed up by the reception given to the Gospel by the Gentiles. "Gentiles besought that the word might be preached to them the next Sabbath-day." In Asia

and in Europe "Gentiles heard and were glad, and glorified the word of the Lord;" in one place Paul declares, "I bear you record, that if it had been possible ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me." Under these circumstances Paul must have approached the metropolis of Gentile thought and feeling with intense interest. Athens was the eye of Greece, and Greece was the eye of the whole Gentile world. Nature had done its best for the city in climate, in situation, in all the elements of good scenery. Art had lavished upon it her proudest conceptions and her most successful achievements; the grandest temples shone upon its hills, and the loveliest statues graced its streets and groves and market-places. Philosophy held here her ablest schools; and while physical beauty trained itself for the race, and decked itself for the joy and splendour of the feast, mental power swept as with eagle flight through realms of thought the most abstruse and vast. Paul, seeing all this God-given wealth of nature, achievement of art, and magnificence of intellect, must have felt that he had come to the head and heart and hand of that western world which had hitherto welcomed the Gospel of Christ.