the Indian, a hunting-ground; to the old Norseman, a battle banquet; to the Mahometan, a place of earthly rapture; to the man of science, a place where Nature shall yield up all her secrets. "We see through a glass darkly: we know but in part." But just what the going out of a room lighted through horn windows into the clear daylight would be to us now, will be the entrance of the purified spirit into God's realities out of this world of shadows of things half seen

of restless dreams. "It doth not yet appear,' says St. John, "what we shall be: but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." "And every man that hath this hope in Him purifieth himself, even as He is pure."

Here, therefore, we bring the subject to a conclusion. All gifts are to be cultivated; let no Christian despise them. Every accomplishment, every intellectual faculty that can adorn and grace human nature, should be cultivated and polished to its highest capability. Yet these are not the things that bring us nearer God. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” "If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and His love is perfected in us."

You may have strong, eagle-eyed Faith: well-you will probably be enabled to do great things in life, to work wonders, to trample on impossibilities. You may have sanguine Hope: well-your life will pass brightly, not gloomily. But the vision of God as He is, to see the King in His beauty, is vouchsafed not to science, nor to talent, but only to Purity and Love.

LECTURE XXV.

MAY 2, 1852.

1 CORINTHIANS, xiv. 1. -"Follow after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy."

THE first verse of this chapter contains a résumé of all that has been said in the thirteenth and fourteenth chapters, and serves as a point from whence the fourteenth chapter begins. And we observe that charity holds the first place, and then spiritual gifts follow in the second. And of spiritual gifts, some for certain reasons, as for instance, prophecy, are preferable to others. And this is exactly the subject of these three 'ast chapters. He says, graces, like charity, are superior > gifts: "Follow after charity, and desire spiritual ifts, but rather that ye may prophesy." We will consider why is prophecy preferable?

It will be necessary, in order to explain this, to define what we mean, and to show the difference between a grace and a gift. A grace does not differ from a gift in this, that the former is from God, and the latter from nature: as a creative power, there is no such thing as nature: all is God's. A grace is that which has in it some moral quality; whereas a gift does not necessarily share in this. Charity implies a certain character; but a gift, as for instance that of tongues, does not. A man may be fluent, learned, skilful, and be a good man likewise, another may have the same powers, and yet be a bad man proud, mean, or obstinate. Now this distinction explains at once why graces are preferable.

Graces are what the man is; but enumerate his gifts, and you will only know what he has. He is loving: he has eloquence, or medical skill, or legal knowledge,

or the gift of acquiring languages, or that of healing. You only have to cut out his tongue, or to impair his memory, and the gift is gone. But on the contrary, you must destroy his very being, change him into another man, and obliterate his identity, before he ceases to be a loving man. Therefore you may contemplate the gift separate from the man; and whilst you admire it, you may despise him: as many a gifted man is contemptible through being a slave to low vices or to his own high gifts. But you cannot contemplate the grace separate from the man: he is loveable or admirable, according as he has charity, faith, or self-control.

And, hence, the Apostle bids the Corinthians undervalue gifts in comparison with graces. "Follow after charity." But as to gifts, they are not ourselves, but our accidents, like property, ancestors, birth, or position in the world.

But hence also, on the other hand, arises the reason for our due admiration of gifts: "desire spiritual gifts."

Many religious persons go into the contrary extrême they call gifts dangerous, ignore them, sneer at them and say they are of the world." No, says the Apostle, "desire" them: look them in the face, as goods: not the highest goods, but still desirable, like wealth or health. Only remember, you are not worthy or good because of them. And remember other people are not bound to honor you for them. Admire a Napoleon's genius do not despise it: but do not let your admiration of that induce you to give honor to the man. `Let there be no mere "hero-worship that false modern spirit which recognizes the "force that is in a man" as the only thing worthy of homage. The subject of this fourteenth chapter is not the principle on which graces are preferable to gifts, but the principle on which one gift is preferable to another. "Rather that ye may prophesy." Now the principle of this preference is very briefly stated. Of gifts, St. Paul prefers those which are useful to those that are showy. The gift of prophecy was useful to others, whilst that of tongues

was only a luxury for self. Now the principle of this preference is stated generally in the twelfth verse; "Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the Church."

We come, therefore, to-day, to the exposition of a chapter confessedly of extreme difficulty, a chapter on Prophecy and the gift of Tongues. It was from a strange and wild misinterpretation of this chapter, untenable on any sound grounds of interpretation, that the great and gifted Irving fell into such fatal error.

For some reasons it might be well to omit this chapter altogether; in simple modesty for one, since I cannot but feel diffident of entering upon ground where so many have slipped and fallen. But this would be contrary to the principle I have laid down, of endeavoring with straightforwardness and simplicity to expound the whole counsel of God.

I must ask you to bear with me while endeavoring to expound this extremely difficult question. There is no ninister of the Church of England who can pretend to power of infallible interpretation. I give you the reult of patient study and much thought. Let those who are tempted to despise flippantly, first qualify themselves for an opinion by similar prayerful study.

To-day we shall exclusively direct our attention to acquiring a clear view of what the prophecy was which the Apostle preferred to Tongues, as this will of course be necessary, before we can proceed to apply his principle of preference to our own day.

I. What was prophecy?

In these days, when we use the word prophet, wo mean it almost always to signify a predictor of future events. But in the Old Testament it has this meaning only sometimes, whilst in the New Testament generally it has not this interpretation. A prophet was one commissioned to declare the will of God—a revealer of truth; it might be of facts future, or the far higher truth of the meaning of facts present.

Hence, in the third verse, "He that prophesieth, speaketh unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort." Here, then, is the essence of the prophet's office, but there is not one word spoken here of predic tion. We can imagine that it might have been necessary, in order fully to expound a spiritual principle, or a principle of divine politics, to foretell the result of transgression against it; as when the captivity, or the fate of Babylon and Nineveh was predicted; but this was not the essence of the prophet's duty: the essence of his duty was to reveal truth.

Again, in the twenty-fourth verse, the exercise of this gift is spoken of as one specially instrumental in the conversion of unbelievers. "If all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all." Observe here, prediction has nothing to do with the matter; for before a prediction could be fulfilled, the unbeliever "falls down, acknowledges God," and reports that "God is in you of a truth." Moreover, the prophecy was something which touched his conscience, read his very soul, interpreted the secrets of his heart: "he is convinced of all."

And this surely makes the question sufficiently plain for all practical purposes. Prophecy was a gift eminently useful: it was the power of expounding the Will and the Word of God. And for us to embrace the essence of the matter, it does not signify whether it is, as it was then, a gift miraculous, or, as it is now, a gift slowly improved. The deep insight into truth, the happy faculty of imparting truth; these two endowments together made up that which was essential to the prophet of the early Church.

II. We pass on now to a subject much more difficult : what is meant by the gift of tongues.

From the account given in the second chapter of Acts, in which "Parthians, Medes, the dwellers in Mesopotamia," and various others, said of those who had the gift of tongues that they spoke so that the mul