sailed over Gennesaret, or travelled through the wilderness, but has gone further than is fancied of the doomed wanderer that offended him, and is here, as truly with us, if we open the door to him, as we are with each other, communing with us in the emblems we use, as really as we with him; (said he not, "Lo I am with you always, even to end of the world?") the church that he founded and purchased with his blood, still enlivened by his Spirit. His Spirit, I say; for Bible and Church the first and second steps, must bring us to that, the third, or they can neither of them be of saving profit; and his past and present must blend in that eternal influence which is independent of and superior to fleeting time. The Bible and the Church are indeed great necessary stages to reach the "Spirit;" they are organs by which the "Spirit" speaks, channels through which the "Spirit" flows, and, if you will, supporting hands to lift us up to the "Spirit;" but there is something in the "Spirit" itself, of Christ, uncontained in words, unexpressed by symbols, something measureless and everlasting. It is round the believing soul as an atmosphere. It overhangs our thought, it inspires our affection. It is Christ's abode in us, Christ formed within, the hope of glory. It is an incarnation or expression through the flesh, through human life and nature, of God's wisdom and goodness; and therefore not local or temporary. It is worn by no change of circumstances, wasted by no lapse of years, works upon us by divine right, makes a deeper demand

than human genius or any ordinary virtue of human character, being an influx of what is best in the universe for the assimilation of our souls.

We can reach no such position or height as properly to question the claim of this superhuman energy of the Spirit. As the thing made cannot find fault with its maker but by finding fault with itself, offering a suicidal quarrel through its own substance, so we cannot criticise or abate from the spotless and supreme excellence of Christ. It fills our highest thought of what is pure and good. It makes our ideal of all that is to be loved and followed. By a Christian birth and nurture, it is in us like the print of the Almighty's creating fingers, and is the best part of us. Even as the strength of these hands or the sight of these eyes involves and refers back to the mother's milk we in infancy drew, so whatever meekness, humility and self-sacrifice we can exhibit, we owe largely to Jesus Christ, to his word from the past, to his church in the present, to his eternal Spirit.

This three-fold method of Christ's salvation, the past, the present, the everlasting, begins to operate upon us without our will, but can be carried on and completed only by our voluntary seeking of Christ. As the sick of old took their station in the path along which he was to pass, so we must put ourselves in his way.

The Bible, as a mere book, will, for us, soon be closed; the earthly church as an organization, will soon, for us, be dissolved; and then the only question

will be, whether, through these agencies, or by laying hold of the winged inspiration of God lifting us above them, we have come to apprehend and participate of that in Christ which transcends every process and all duration of time, which our dissolution in death shall not alter, nor the circling of Eternity reverse. Does our Saviour invisibly go with us, a holy companion? does he hover over us, a spiritual guide? does he descend upon us in the gentle flight of a dove? give the serpent's wisdom to our action and speech? and, “broad and general as the casing air," compass our walk?

Then is he Jesus Christ to us, truly so called,— the anointed, Jehovah's help, our healing Redeemer by a past, present, and eternal power; with his touch taking the pain from our wounded spirits, with the voice that once drove out demons expelling our evil passions, and with the breath of his devotion calling forth good affections in us, as, by a less important exertion of his power, he once raised the dead :yesterday in our knowledge of him, to-day in our new sympathy with him, forever in our increasing experience the same. Our own heart's witness alone can verify the fact!

For, in fine, Christ's method of accomplishing his object is, through all the instrumentalities of his gospel, to regenerate the individual soul. This is the basis, centre, and end of all religion. The whole bible is hardly more than a conversation between God and the individual soul. The old Dispensation is a training of the conscience and will,

and the New, moreover, of the affections of the individual mind. Jesus and his Apostles ever insist on the necessity of our being born again. Nor is this an irrational, arbitrary, or wholly mysterious injunction. The nature and need of regeneration are manifest. What is the too common fact with regard to human beings? We begin life and go on engaged in earthly things, fastening upon them our senses, pursuing them with our inclinations, transforming them into the means of our gratification, or promotion, making of all nature a ladder for self to mount upon. This is not all of human life and human nature, but it is a very strong and wide propensity and procedure. Selfishness is the grand, original, prolific sin of the human race. Every form of merely private, exclusive gain, pleasure, or aggrandisement is one of its steps. Moving slowly and winding cautiously, or striding hotly to its ends, -paving its way with falsehood and fraud, or wielding pride, anger, and revenge for its weapons, boldly snatching its objects or cunningly secreting them,-appearing in its gross deformity, or covering itself with a decent and polished courtesy,-content with safe and petty indulgences, or rushing on to pollution and murder,-in every shape and motion selfishness is the first principle of human depravity, the progenitor of all wrong.

Now regeneration is the change of the selfish into the spiritual mind, by an unfolding, through the help of God, of devout and generous affections above all mean desires, and the substitution of

God's

heavenly objects for those of this world. being, goodness, and purity, with Christ's love, meekness, and self-sacrifice, regenerate the soul. The action of these divine realities is the holy Spirit. Meditation and prayer are the hands that open for it the door. All the institutions and ordinances of religion are instruments to invite its access. The truth of revelation is its voice, and the divine Providence, through every mode of human condition and chastening, its channel.

Nothing else in religion is to be proposed as the great end, nothing else will answer our Lord's demand, but this unfolding and consecration of the individual spirit. The most perfect, beautiful and orderly church-organization cannot stand in its stead. When this organization is offered as the saving power, it is displaced from its true office as a conductor of the soul to Christ and God, and made to choke and eclipse the spiritual energy which through it should shine and flow. We are not Christ's disciples and God's children simply by being members of any organization however sacred, but only as far as, in any ecclesiastic or other manner, we become conscious of and faithful to our relationship with God and Christ themselves. Moreover, this is the only way in which the church itself, in its unquestionable importance, can be truly constituted. It is not by merely putting certain individuals together under particular names and symbols to act and react on one another, that the church of God and Christ can arise in its reality and glory, but