his halting" and hastened to "take their revenge upon him." In the night of his failure, the timorous tender-hearted man was left to stand alone. Solitary, forsaken, he was made the butt on which friends and prophets and priests practised their wits, wounding him with the keen rankling shafts of their unnatural enmity.

the

And then, in his loneliness and desertion, there came back on the dejected prophet the saddest and bitterest thought of all-the thought that his calling was not a true one, that he had mistaken his vocation, that he had misinterpreted the voice which spake within him; thought, the conviction that he was not wise enough, nor good enough, nor strong enongh for the prophetic function. Old memories of failure, byegone torments of self-distrust revive; all his former misgivings gather into a thick menacing cloud which seethes and billows around him, darkening the heaven of his hopes, shutting out all light of day. And so the temptation comes: "Give it up. You were never fit for the work. Why strive any more? Why weary yourself in vain? Are you so much wiser and better than these grave priests and loud confident prophets who thwart and rebuke you? Why should you any longer cross your nature to utter words which only anger them-the words of a God who cares neither to fulfil His word nor to vindicate His servant?" The temptation comes: and for a moment, the prophet yields to its wasting magic. He takes his resolve: "I will not make mention of Him, nor speak any more in His name." Again I ask, Who can wonder at it? Who will be the first to cast a stone of reproach at the humbled, self-distrusting, self-tormented prophet? Not I, for one; nor I think any of you who have to speak for God. Our hearts are much more likely to ache with sheer sympathy as we con

sider this supreme instance of ministerial defeat, bewilderment, and shame, under trials which we ourselves have had to bear, and have not borne so well perchance as the priest of Anathoth.

III. But I am not careful to vindicate Jeremiah: God has long since done that: to his own Master he stands, even though to us he seem to fall. Let us rather learn from him what we may. All who work for God have entered or will enter into the painful experiences of this man of God,-all at least who attempt the kind of work which is most acceptable to Him. If indeed any of us are content with traditional dogmas and current moralities; if we do not care to seek truth for ourselves and to follow it in scorn of consequence; if our aim be to live on easy terms with the world and the church rather than to discover and enforce the whole counsel of God, there is nothing in the story of Jeremiah to trouble us. We are by no means likely so much as to come within wind of the scourge, and need have no fear of the stocks. But if we have devoted ourselves to God and His service; if we aim above all things to bring our whole nature into harmony with His will, to try all men and all questions by the sincere and uncorrupted tests supplied by His Word, to form our own convictions and shape our own lives for ourselves and according to the light He has given us; if we aim to apply the present truth to the popular sin, to deal with every man's conscience, and first of all with our own, as under the swift and searching eyes of Christ:-we must look to pay the usual penalty of fidelity and boldness. Sharing the endeavour of prophets and apostles, we shall also share the shame which was their glory, the reproach which was their plaudit, the suffering which was their joy. It is not easy for

"such creatures as we are, in such a world as this," to be true and good in any high or noble sense of the words. If we would possess ourselves of the very truth, we must buy the truth: buy it? ah, yes, and pay ready money for it, and even then not get it for a time, or only for a time. If we would be sincerely good, we must take up the cross: and the cross is heavy and sharp; it will often seem to wound and bring us to a pause when it is but shedding sweet healing balms into our infected nature and strengthening us to encounter the difficulties of the way. In proportion to our real successes will be our apparent failures if our fidelity be great the sharper will be its trials. Our very susceptibility to spiritual influences will bring doubts that will smite and fears that will fetter our souls. The more clearly we discern what we should be, the more profound will be our discontent with what we are. The more justly we appreciate the greatness of our work, the more bitterly shall we rue our unfitness for it.

Nor will all our troubles be the logical and inevitable results of the disparity between the lofty task to which we are devoted and the weakness and imperfection of the nature we bring to it. One of our keenest, as it is also one of our most frequent, pains arises from our want of success and the mystery which overhangs it. We know that the Father loves all men and desires that they should come to the knowledge of the truth. We know that Christ died for all, that He might redeem them unto God. We know that the Spirit strives with all, that He may bring them to a better mind. And yet how few, alas, how few are brought to a saving knowledge, or to anything like a complete knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus! Is the fault with us, with us alone? Without thinking of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, without any

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sin against Christian modesty, we may surely be conscious that, in giving ourselves to the work of the ministry, we very cheerfully renounced many of the "chances" and gains and comforts which our brethren unblameably pursue and enjoy, from a sincere desire to do them good to the utmost of our ability. We may have the witness in ourselves that the truths we speak are very dear to us, and that we speak them with a sincere devotion; that we anxiously study how to convey them in forms most likely to arrest thought and to induce conviction: that our supreme aim and desire is to win men to a more perfect love and obedience of the truth. Yet we do not win them, or we win only a few of them. Many, perhaps most, who listen to us remain unimpressed, unconvinced. Of those who receive the truth many do not hold it very fast, or do not suffer it to touch more than a narrow superfice of their lives. As we look back on a ministry of ten, twenty, forty years, even the most successful of us can recall no results at all commensurate with the means at our command. We have drawn no large number of souls into the Christian fellowship : and, with all our desire to do much for those who have been won, we have been able to do little more than maintain them on the lower levels of obedience and devotion. They are not transfigured by the truth. Now and then, perhaps, this or that face shines as it comes from the Sacred Presence of a divine communion; but it is not for long, nor at the best is its radiance so dazzling that it need be veiled lest men should be unable to endure the lustre of its holiness, In some moods, in moods that are by no means infrequent with us, we are fairly overborne by the sense of failure, by the vanity and futility of the work it has cost us so much to do. Like the prophet, we mourn and complain in our

prayer that, although we have not spared our labour, we have laboured in vain; that, with but little strength to spend, we have spent our strength for nought.

And with us as with him, this mood of spiritual dejection is often induced by the opposition of those from whom we expected, and had a right to expect, sympathy and help. We at least, whatever may be the case with other servants of the altar, have about us men who are every whit as much priests and prophets as we ourselves,--and who are quite conscious of the fact; now and then, perhaps, a little too conscious for our peace. From these, or some of these, we often receive a sympathy the most delicate and cordial, a help far beyond our deserts, if not beyond our hopes. Yet I suppose at times we all meet men who, though bound by office and profession to uphold and further us, are of a narrow ungentle spirit, contracted in view, uncertain in temper, and who retard the very work which, in their sweeter moods, they are concerned to promote. If they do not smite us and clap us in the stocks, they are sometimes, perhaps, a little too ready to suspect our motives, to fetter our liberty of thought and action, to send us comfortless to a task which can hardly be achieved save in freedom and buoyancy of spirit: to assume that, without much study, they are familiar with questions which have been the main study of our lives to resent almost as an insult the mere suspicion that we may have advanced to views of truth and duty which as yet are concealed from them. Not all who choose a teacher are willing to be taught. From what I have heard and read, I can well believe that many a faithful pastor has left his vestry, or church-meeting, or even the house of some dear good-natured friend, with a heart as heavy and despondent as that of Jeremiah when he sat in the temple

stocks with the dark night rushing down upon him. The stocks of the Temple indeed are apt to be terrible instruments of torture to a refined and sensitive spirit, even when they are used more for want of thought than want of heart. Nay, however happy we may have been in our relation with deacons and arch-deacons, and some of us have to thank God that we have been very happy,

although no neighbouring minister should have been ready to suspect our orthodoxy, no officer of the church to restrain our freedom, no dear friend to whisper biting jests, we all know at least one priest and prophet who is very apt to betray

us.

A man might surely account himself his own best friend and hope to have some comfort from himself. But we, unhappy that we are, soon discover that we are our own worst ene

mies; that we are more unfaithful to ourselves, to our own best interests and highest aims, than any of our friends. Ah, how often and how bitterly have we to lament the infirmities of temper, the inconstant will, the lack of faith, and charity, and devotion, by which we hinder our own work and thwart our own endeavours! How often, with what bitter tears of contrition, have we to cast ourselves at the feet of the Divine Compassion, and to confess to Him who is in the secret of our hearts that we are not worthy to make mention of Him, nor to speak any more in His name!

And then to us, as to the Prophet, there comes the temptation: "Give it up, give it up. You were never fit for the work. You have mistaken your vocation. You would have been happier in it and more successful had God called you to it. You have found yourself out at last-that is all. And now go into a quiet place apart, and humbly begin a lower task." And for the moment

but, ah, how often that moment recurs!-in our misery and self

abasement, we yield to the temptation, not knowing it for what it is, mistaking for a divine monition the impulse of a weary and impatient heart.

IV. We need not, however, and we must not, limit the application of these thoughts to pastors and teachers. You, my brethren, who have no public ministerial function to discharge, are nevertheless "ministers of the Lord Jesus Christ." You have each a word to speak and a work to do for Him. At the lowest you have to appropriate His truth and to act upon it, so bearing your witness to His grace. And that is by no means an easy task: of all tasks it is the most arduous as it is the most blessed. It is a task which will bring with it frequent accesses of despondency and fear. You will You will meet, or seem to meet, little success. The sins you have renounced will come back upon you' when you look not for them, overtake you when you think them left far behind, and reduce you to the old bondage. Truths and virtues which you supposed you had at last made your own, will evade your grasp as you are rejoicing over them, just as the Master vanished from His disciples the very moment their eyes were opened and they knew that it was the Lord. The more resolutely you

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crucify the old man with its lusts," nay, the nearer it is to dissolution, the more vigorously and convulsively will it assert its vitality. The more absolutely you "put on the new man created after Christ Jesus," the less will you trust in your own wisdom or righteousness. Often

enough, and too often for your peace, the work which is drawing toward its completion will seem as though it were barely begun, and you will feel that you also have spent an ebbing strength for nought.

And you will meet with opposition where you little looked to find

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it. Habits which you once thought friendly to godliness will prove hindrances of which at any cost you must be rid. Dogmas which you once held to be absolute expressions of absolute truth will become dubious to you, perhaps incredible. Rites and forms which you once deemed of all but saving efficacy will turn out to be of lesser value, possibly of none. You will often have to "pluck out a right eye," from which you expected no little guidance; and to "cut off a right hand," with which you meant to do no little work. Nor will all your oppositions be from within. Men will disappoint you as well as you yourselves. Brethren will fail you at your need, proving deficient in the very graces for which you gave them credit. Priests will show no sanctity, prophets breathe no inspiration, teachers of the truth will prove to be of those who "walk in lies," ministers of the altar servants of unrighteousness." Even friends and familiars may "wait for your halting," and not be overmuch grieved should you stumble and fall. You will know at times what it is to sit lonely and forsaken, your heart swelling with a strange bitterness as the starless night of a broken and defeated hope darkens down upon you.

And then, in times like this, when the sense of failure is at its keenest, and friends leave you unsolaced in your misery, you will enter into the depths of the prophet's experience. To you the temptation will come: "Your calling is not a true one. You have no vocation for the Christian life. Give it up; you were never fit for it. Why strive and weary yourself in vain for One who has not kept faith with you, nor given you the blessedness you sought." The temptation will come; it will surely come; and the thought, the resolve, will flash into your heart, "I will not make mention of Him, nor call any more on His

name." Well for you, my brethren, if the resolve be withdrawn as soon as made. Well for you, if in your heart, as in Jeremiah's, the sacred fire burn on till, weary of forbearing, you can no longer stay.

V. For here, finally, is the Secret of our Constancy in Christian work notwithstanding its manifold difficulties and discouragements. We do not possess the word of God: it possesses us. The purifying refining fire, when once it has fallen from heaven, burns on and on till it has consumed all our dross. If it be hard to speak for God, it is harder still to forbear; for it is not we who speak, but the Word in us, the Word which is so much stronger than we. If it be hard to pursue the work, it is impossible to "stay" from it; only those can stay who never really began. Here lies our hope. We did not choose God, but God us; and He chose us, not because we were wise, or strong, or good, but that He might make us good, and strong, and wise. We did not put His word into our hearts; He put it there and will keep it there till it have wrought us to His mind and made us meet for His service. We did not kindle the heavenly fire of love for truth and duty; God kindled it, nor will He suffer it to go out until it destroy our evil self and the sacrifice be complete.

It was because Jeremiah knew this that he withdrew his resolve so soon as he had uttered it. With all his consciousness of defect, and though that consciousness sometimes obscured his better knowledge, he knew that the word he had to speak, the work he had to do, were given him of God. To him it had been revealed, "Before I formed thee, I knew thee; and before thou camest out of the womb, I sanctified and ordained thee a prophet." His vocation did not rest on his aptitude

for foreseeing things to come, or for uttering eloquent discourses. If it had, he could have stayed from it when it seemed to lead to no good result, and, still more, when he came to doubt whether any such aptitude were in him. He was marked and sealed for his vocation before he knew good or evil. All his capacities and endowments were to fit him for his vocation, but they did not constitute it. They might perish; his inward satisfaction in the work might perish with them. It might bring nothing but pain to him or to his people. Others might hate him for it. He might be tempted to despise it himself. But still his vocation must be pursued, for it was given him of God. And the proof was, that through all, under all oppositions from without and all misgivings from within, the sacred fire burned on and would shed its light. He could not stay; to forbear was a weariness transcending all other ills. He must bear witness to the Word, if not by speaking it, then by patiently enduring whatever sorrows and shames his proclamation of it had brought upon him.

Is there not a solid and reasonable hope for us in that, my brethren, if we are his companions in the kingdom and patience of the Lord? If God has called us to speak for Him, our vocation does not depend on our success in it, nor even on our love for it or our satisfaction in it. If He has kindled the sacred fire in us, we cannot but let it burn on even though it should burn up comfort, hope, life itself. We are where He has placed us, and we dare not desert our post because of wind and rough weather: we are doing the work He has assigned us, and we must go on doing it even though it should not seem to prosper in our hands. But how shall we know that He has called us to speak for Him? Do we, by assuming the vocation of