mind; by which each at the same moment is made acquainted with his mind, and partakes, may be, of his emotions. This is a great mystery to us; and yet we know it to be a fact. Why, then, may not believers have a similar verification of the Holy Spirit in the habitations of their hearts? Again: the natural sun is one, but his beams are many; yet if we place a mirror before him, his one distinct warm image is made to appear instantly therein. Let there be a million of mirrors, or ten hundred millions of mirrors, one for every person now upon the earth, and it would be just the same-a warm, well-defined image of the sun would appear in every one of these mirrors. But why may not the Spirit of God, though one, be able also to appear in the heart of one, or a million, or ten hundred millions of believers, at the same moment? Or can the sun, which is but a creature, or creation of God, do more than his Creator? even that Divine Spirit, which we learn in the beginning of the creation 'moved upon the face of the waters.' God is one, and his voice is one, yet when that voice from Sinai entered the ears of Moses, it entered at the same moment the ears of two millions of people who surrounded him." Would my friend venture a reply before that school next Lord's day? Let him recall the story of Alexander's courtier and the painter's boys!

9. One remark more; and let those whom it may concern listen. When absurdities run into heaven-insulting blasphemies, equal to that chain-shot which it was said one hurled upward, as if he thought to make the windows of heaven shake; why, then, like Hezekiah of old, whom Rabshakeh sent to blaspheme God, we may fall to our prayers, and humble ourselves before insulted majesty.

10. But in parting, let me drop this word in your ear: it

was said of the Sodomites their eyes were full of uncleanness, and they were smitten with blindness; they burned with lust, and God burned them with fire; they sinned against nature, and, against the course of nature, God rained on them, but it was a rain of fire and brimstone from heaven. A strange punishment, sirs, is decreed for those who strangely sin, and " who turn the grace of God into lasciviousness." We read in Revelation how that the men who blasphemed God, afterward "gnawed their tongues for pain." (Rev. xvi. 9, 10.) The member that sinned, suffered. Those two questions of Job are still receiving their respective answers: "Is not destruction to the wicked? and a strange punishment to the workers of iniquity?" So it has been, is, and ever shall be, till all finally impenitent sinners become as chaff, stubble, and tares, and the sentence goes forth," Gather, bind, and burn.” May God prepare us all for that day, and not Satan! Amen!

11. Dives complains bitterly in hell about his torment; but the member for which he craved alleviation most was his tongue. "Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my TONGUE, for I am tormented in this flame." The member that sinned most, perhaps, suffered the keenest anguish. Not the tongue of his body of course, that had received a decent burial, but its counterpart, the tongue of the soul, that which speaks within, before the tongue of the body stirs. Man is a compound being of body and soul, a duplicate in more senses than one. In hell he had eyes by which he could look up, and tongue to speak. A terrible hour it will be to Dives and to all the wicked when both the tongues of body and soul begin to suffer the pains of hell-fire together. Ah! sirs, men little know what they say, when they proudly boast, "With

our tongue will we prevail; our lips are our own: who is Lord over us?" (Ps. xii. 4.) No sentiments more prevalent in our day! The Psalmist had a deep meaning couched in those inquiries: "What shall be given unto thee, or what shall be done unto thee, thou false tongue? Sharp arrows of the mighty, with coals of juniper." And a deeper meaning yet did Jesus Christ couch in that awful declaration: "But I say unto you, That every idle word that man shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned." Hear that, all ye who count words for nothing! Let me repeat the declaration again, “But I say unto you, That,” etc. See how your eternal justification, or condemnation—your eternity depends on them! Will you not after this have some care upon your words, and a bridle on your tongues?

12. The prophet Nahum tells us that sinners are but stubble laid out in the sun to dry, that they may burn the readier. (Nahum i. 10.) In Rev. xiv. 18, we hear an angel uttering the vintage cry against the vine of wickedness: "Thrust in thy sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe." And it was done, and they were cast into "the great wine-press of the wrath of God." Mark this the same sun that dries the stubble for the fire, ripens the grapes for the wine-press. Sinners who sit under truth, if not saved by the Gospel, dry or ripen fast for hell. No stubble dries so fast as that which grows in Gospel fields, which Satan has either beheaded of all belief, or so rubbed that the place of cars is grainless; and no branch of the vine of wickedness or skepticism ripens faster in its fruit than that which shoots over the walls of Christian congregations.

T depends unto whom the Spirit of God may send the message or the warning. We must distinguish char

acter. "Answer a fool according to his folly, lest he be wise in his own conceit," is an injunction of Scripture. But a caution is previously given, as if the Spirit desired us to mark the priority of its importance: "Answer not a fool according to his folly, lest thou also be like unto him" (Prov. xxvi. 4, 5)—like unto him in spirit and temper, allowing your zeal for the right to degenerate into anger or impatience or vulgarity. There is a hidden meaning, I have thought, couched in that hint of the apostle in Ephes. vi. 12: "For we wrestle not against flesh and blood"—as we may think we do when contending with sinners-that they are but men, when they are more, the devil being in them to help them to wrestle with us; so that " we wrestle not with flesh and blood" alone, but with the devil therein. A mighty argument with me to have " on the whole armor of God "—for "the wiles of the devil," in flesh and blood, are beyond all that wrestlers ever experienced in the Grecian arena.

2. Impatience is a bad companion in the pulpit, and should never appear there. So far as I know my own heart, I felt none of it on that occasion; but strong and burning words of

truth were given me! It is not unusual that such are considered, by some, as marks of impatience. In the days of Baxter it was even so, as now. That holy man complained: "If a minister deal plainly with you, you say he rails; and if he speak gently or coldly, you either go asleep under what he says, or are little more affected than the seats you sit upon." And thus it is to the present day.

3. When one is "grieved in spirit" by the hardness and unbelief of some, to say nothing of their impertinence, there is a liability of saying too much, or too strongly, and with more emotion than some phlegmatic temperaments would consider becoming. Paul exclaimed, "Who is sufficient for these things?" when he found that the word preached had become a savor of death unto death to some, though a savor of life unto life to others. That I have detected something like impatience in my own spirit, under sore trial, I will not deny, and have had to mourn over it, and humble myself before Godalthough it is hard sometimes to distinguish between a temptation to impatience, and impatience itself. In either case it is a matter of feeling, and so also is the state of being "grieved in spirit"—yet that may exist without any impatience of spirit. (Mark iii. 5.) However, at such times, to be on the safe side, judgment has gone against myself.

Whether mistaken or not, I have found it good to imitate God's people, of whom it was said in ancient times that, when nature rose against the hard usage received from their persecutors, they soon clubbed it down, and reasoned themselves patient, like David, and prayed down their distempers like Paul! With the spirit and actions of some leading men in Conference*

* The British Wesleyan Conference.