Breviaries.

Negative and Positive Goodness.

"THEY ALSO DO NO INIQUITY: THEY WALK IN HIS WAYS."-Psalm cxix. 3.

In

HERE we have L-NEGATIVE goodness. "They do no iniquity." their external conduct, and to the eye of society, they appear faultless. There is a great deal of this negative goodness in English society. I offer two remarks concerning it. (1) It is socially valuable. He who in society practically respects the social rights of others, who is free from falsehood, chicanery, and debauchery is certainly a more valuable man than he who is guilty of all these enormities. (2) It is morally worthless. There is no virtue in the not doing of wrong, but there is sin in not doing the right. The young lawyer in the Gospel said to our Lord that he had kept all the commandments. "Yet one thing thou lackest," was the infallible reply. And at last a man is damned, not because he does not do external wrong, but because he does not do the right. "Inasmuch as ye did it not to the least," &c. Old Thomas Manton has put this truth in a somewhat striking manner. "They walk in His ways." "It reproves those that rest in negatives. As it was said of a certain Emperor, he was rather not vicious than virtuous, so of many men, all their religion runs upon nots. 'I am not as this publican.' That ground is naught, though it brings not forth briars and thorns, if it yields not good increase. Not only the unruly servant is cast into hell, that beat his fellow servant, that ate and drank with the drunken, but the idle servant that wrapped up his talent in a napkin. Meroz is cursed, not for opposing and fighting, but for not helping. Dives did not take away food from Lazarus, but he did not give him of his crumbs. Many will say, I set up no other gods; aye, but dost thou love, reverence, and obey the true God? For if not, thou dost fail in the first commandment. As to the second, thou sayest, I abhor idols; but dost thou delight in ordinances? I do not swear and rend the name of God by cursed oaths; aye, but dost thou glorify God and honour Him? I do not profane the Sabbath; but dost thou sanctify it? Thou dost not plough and dance, but thou art idle, thou toyest away the Sabbath. Thou dost not wrong thy parents; but dost thou reverence them? Thou dost not murder; but

dost thou do good to thy neighbour? Thou art no adulterer; but dost thou study temperance and a holy sobriety in all things? Thou art no slanderer; but art thou tender of thy neighbour's honour and credit as of thy own? Usually men cut off half their bill, as the unjust steward bade his lord's debtor set down fifty when he owed a hundred We do not think of sins of omission. If we are not drunkards, adulterers, and profane persons, we do not think what it is to omit respect to God, and reverence for His Holy Majesty." Here we have II.—POSITIVE GOODNESS. "They walk in His ways." To walk in His ways implies three thingsFirst: Spiritual life. A dead man cannot walk. Mortality has paralysed the limbs and they move no more. There is no walking in the Divine way unless the soul is quickened into spiritual life-a life of supreme sympathy with God. It implies-Secondly: Spiritual vigour. A man may live and yet be too weak in the frame to raise himself from his couch or take one step. The man who walks in the right way has moral vigour―a vigour that grows with every effort. "They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength." They go from strength to strength," &c. It implies Thirdly: Spiritual progress. A constant

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advance from one point to another. Every holy volition and aspiration are steps onward. A truly good man is never at the same moral point, he is farther on to-day than yesterday. "He forgets the things that are behind," &c. He enters into new sceneries, new climates, new prospects. "The path of the just is as the shining light," &c. LONDON.

DAVID THOMAS, D.D.

The Supreme Calamity.

"O FORSAKE ME NOT UTTERLY."-Psalm cxix. 8.

The language

UTTER desertion of God is the calamity of all calamities. implies I.-The POSSIBILITY of this calamity. What meaneth this? Forsaken of God! It cannot mean any change on God's part in relation to man. (1) Not a change in space. He does not withdraw from one point of space to another. He fills all space at all times. (2) Not a change in relationship. He is always the Father, Sustainer, Judge, &c. (3) Not a change in procedure. He proceeds on His march from age to age for ever without pause or deviation. No; the desertion is on our part. God says, "My people have forsaken Me." We forsake Him.

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We get into a moral mood or state of soul in which we feel we have lost Him altogether. Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" When we close our eyes sun, moon, and stars seem to forsake us, but they are there notwithstanding, unaltered. The sun will shine as brightly in his own orbit in the darkest day of December as in the brightest day of June, but not so to us. In the city fogs he seems to have forsaken us. It is we that have forsaken the sun, through exhalations in which we have placed ourselves. So God is the same in Himself whether we be in a fiendish or seraphic mood. In sooth, the whole outward world is to us according to the moral state of our hearts, radiant or dismal, beautiful or hideous, harmonious or discordant. The possibility of God forsaking us in this sense is too obvious to require any proof or illustration. The language implies II.-The TERRIBLENESS of this calamity. "O forsake me not utterly." A consciousness of Divine desertion is the "blackness of darkness," is hell itself. A soul in this state is a star that has lost its centre, rushing into the everlasting tumult and midnight of chaos. It is a state-First: Of self-orphanage. Children whose parents have been taken from them by death are objects of commiseration, but those who have run away from their parents, voluntarily left their home and parental care, where the parents are both of loving disposition, and have means to ensure their comfort, are rather objects for denunciation than pity. Sinners are self-orphaned. It is a state-Secondly: Of unpitiable orphanage. Human sympathy generally runs more freely towards the motherless and fatherless in social life. Asylums are founded for them, plans and interests are employed for their benefit. But who is to pity a self-orphaned soul? It cannot pity itself, but otherwise,-censure and condemn. Society cannot pity it, for it becomes invested with those moral attributes that create loathing and disgust. "Do not I hate them, Oh God?" &c. Such is the terrible state of the soul that has forsaken its God. The language implies-III.-The ESCAPEABILITY of this calamity. Otherwise, why this cry, "Forsake me not." How is it to be avoided? First: By the cultivation of supreme sympathy with God. Our universal antipathy to Him has effected the desertion and driven us away from Him, so that He is not in all our thoughts. It is love alone in the heart that will bring us back to Him and place us in close and happy fellowship with Him. The coming into possession of this love is Biblically represented as regeneration, a conversion, a returning. Hence we are commanded, exhorted, even implored to return to Him. "Let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto Me

and I will have mercy upon him." How is this to be avoided? Secondly: By the cleansing of the heart of all moral impurity. It is the atmosphere of depravity that surrounds our hearts that shuts out God from us, as the exhalations of our earth darken and even sometimes conceal our sun. We must have this moral atmosphere of the heart purified. "Create within me a clean heart, O God." "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall SEE God."

LONDON.

DAVID THOMAS, D.D.

Terrible Conclusions Resulting from the Denial of Two Great

Gospel Facts.

BUT IF THERE BE NO AND IF CHRIST BE NOT ALSO VAIN. YEA, AND

"Now IF CHRIST BE PREACHED THAT HE ROSE FROM THE DEAD, HOW SAY SOME AMONG YOU THAT THERE IS NO RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD? RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD, THEN 18 CHRIST NOT RISEN : RISEN, THEN IS OUR PREACHING VAIN, AND YOUR FAITH IS WE ARE FOUND FALSE WITNESSES OF GOD; BECAUSE WE HAVE TESTIFIED OF GOD THAT HE RAISED UP CHRIST: WHOM HE RAISED NOT UP, IF SO BE THAT THE DEAD RISE NOT. FOR IF THE DEAD RISE NOT, THEN IS NOT CHRIST RAISED : AND IF CHRIST BE NOT RAISED, YOUR FAITH IS VAIN; YE ARE YET IN YOUR SINS. THEN THEY ALSO WHICH ARE FALLEN ASLEEP IN CHRIST ARE PERISHED. IF IN THIS LIFE ONLY WE HAVE HOPE IN CHRIST, WE ARE OF ALL MEN MOST MISERABLE.”—1 Cor. XV. 12-19.

In this paragraph the apostle refers to two great facts fundamental to Christianity, and peculiar to it as a system of religion. The one is the general resurrection from the dead, and the other is the resurrection of Christ Himself. In order to make clear Paul's process of reasoning here I see no better way than to exhibit the conclusions which he draws from the denial of these facts. L-Conclusions resulting from the denial of the GENERAL resurrection of the dead. These conclusions are threefold. First: The non-resurrection of Christ. "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen." If you can demonstrate the impossibility of men coming to life again after they have been buried, then you prove, of course, that Christ has not risen. What is true of the whole is true of all the parts. If no man can rise from the dead, then Christ is still numbered amongst the dead. There were evidently men in the Church at Corinth, who, like the Sadducees, denied the doctrine of a future resurrection. Hence Paul informs them that doing so is tantamount to the denial of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, which fact he had

proclaimed amongst them. Another terrible conclusion which he says results from the denial of this fact is, Secondly: That departed Christians are no more. "Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." They also as well as others. If dead men do not rise, then our fellow disciples who have departed this life, and who believed in a risen Christ, are no more. Those thousands who, from the day of Pentecost, accepted Christ, lived according to His teaching, and who quitted this world have perished, can you believe it? Are they quenched in eternal midnight? Another terrible conclusion which Paul says results from the denial of this fact is, Thirdly: That there is no more pitiable condition in this life than that of Christians. "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." How many things are implied in this language. It is implied that there are men in a pitiable condition on this earth, it is implied that the pitiable condition exists in different degrees, it is implied that the degree of pitiableness is regulated by hope. Man is always hoping, man is always, therefore, enduring one of the greatest elements of suffering, viz., disappointment. It is implied that the hope of a Christian if false will make him, of all men, the most to be pitied. (For an amplification of these points see Homilist, vol. xi., page 61.) Of course it is not intended to teach that, apart from the resurrection of Christ, man has no evidence of a future state, nor that on the supposition that there is no future life the practise of virtue is not to be preferred to that of vice. It is implied that the higher the object of our hope, and the more of the soul that goes into it, the more overwhelmingly crushing will be the disappointment. The man who has thrown his whole soul into Christianity, and who reaches a point when he is convinced of its imposture, is at that moment of all "men the most miserable." Observe here, II. Conclusions resulting from the denial of CHRIST's resurrection from the dead. There are three conclusions here resulting from the denial of this fact. First: That apostolic Christianity is vain. "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain." It is vain, void, an empty phantom, a worthless fiction. The resurrection of Christ was the foundation stone in the Temple of Paul's teaching. Take that stone away, it and falls and becomes worthless rubbish. But not only is preaching vain and your faith vain, but we ourselves are "false witnesses." We are impostors ; can you believe this? What motives have we to impose? The supposition either that they taught falsehood, that the disciples believed falsehood, and that they were "false witnesses," is eternally inadmissible. Hence