plainly, that there can be little consolation for the wounded conscience, except in the contemplation of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ; and there it is abundantly and unfailingly furnished. Do we feel the burden of our guilt pressing upon us? We can remember that Christ hath taken it upon himself; that burden that would have crushed the creature is laid upon the Incarnate Creator. Do we feel that the very holiness and happiness of God are what shuts us out from communion with him? We remember Jesus came to bring reconcilement with the Father. Do we feel that there are sore afflictions before us? Jesus has contended with our foe: he has won the victory for himself and for his people: he has trampled his own enemy and their enemy under his feet: and therefore we fear not, for we are fighting under the banner of a most resistless Captain. Does pain press upon us? Is there the weary hour of sleepless night, agony and mortal anguish appointed? O! what is this to the anguish and the agony which the Saviour bore, when his body was lacerated with the scourge, and when he hung upon the tree, an object of execration to a malignant multitude? Do we feel that which is a more painful visitation than any bodily affliction-do we feel the sadness of a temporary separation from God? O, even in the depths of that spiritual calamity we cannot appreciate what the Saviour endured when he exclaimed, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" When we remember that all this endurance was for us, that all this bitterness was tasted for us-that it was for us, and such as we, that Jesus bled, and agonized, and died, then can we take comfort; and in the midst of pain, and trial, and temptation, and affliction, and agony, and death, we can rejoice, for Jesus has died for us.

But there is the other topic which the Apostle opens. It is not enough to tell you concerning the death of Jesus; we must tell you also, that he rose again for our justification. He went down into the grave, as it were, to fetch thence bright and glorious promises of immortality. Thus as on a rock was to be built the hope of the Church for ever. When Jesus was crucified it was as the representative of his people: when he went down into the grave, it was in their behalf and when he rose, bringing life and immortality to light, it may be said the Church itself was rising from its entombment.

Here, then, is the complete Gospel dealt out to you: God's dying for sin― God's rising to secure immortality. In a word, this is the Gospel; it is the concentration of all divine compassion; it is the message which the Lord sends to his creatures, a message of comfort to the miserable, the defiled, the ruined, the apostate.

Now the Gospel comes to us, and shews to us what we are by nature; it opens all the naked anatomy of the human heart; it traces back all the streams of human corruption to the fountain, in the tainted and sin-defiled nature. It points the arrow of conviction; it awakens the thunders of Mount Sinai; it gives more searching extent to the requirements of the law; it shews us its spiritual nature; it shews us the utter hopelessness that we shall ever be able fully to satisfy it. It tells us what the law demands, and the penalty that it inflicts. But it is not that we may be reduced to despair; it is not that we may put hope for ever away from us; but it is, that when we have been brought to see what God requires, and what man can render, we may be prepared for humble acceptance of mercy on his own prescribed terms: it is that when the

conscience has been awakened, and the torpid, dull, and lifeless heart has been awakened, that then the Gospel speaks to us in a seraphic voice of love-of tender, yearning, and saving love.

Now this is the message that God sends to us, which is to be borne ever more in mind. It is not enough that you come on the Sabbath days, and listen to the preacher's word; and attend during the short hour that we may speak to you; you must remember these things, otherwise I have preached, and you have heard, in vain. And we warn you of the counteracting influences which are ever at work in the chambers of the soul against the Gospel that we preach. We remind you that there are some hearers who do not understand; from whose hearts the Word is soon caught by the waiting enemy. We remind you, that the thorn and the brier are rising up to choke the seed: we remind you that the cares and the anxieties, and the absorbing and engrossing occupations of life, tend but too fatally to shut out the things of eternity, and to overbear the impressions that may have been temporarily made upon you. We would repeat again and again the word of exhortation; it is the minister's duty again and again to hold up the cross of Christ Jesus to his people; to deliver to them all which the Master hath given him in charge; to tell them of the Father's electing love, who chose unto himself a people from all eternity; and the grace of the Lord Jesus which caused him to suffer and to die for them; of the influence by which the barred and closed-up door of the understanding is to be opened, and by which, through the windows of the soul, enlightening influences are to be brought to the inner We must tell you of these things again and again; and O may we not tell them to you in vain!

man.

We would speak to the aged, to the hoary-headed among you, to those whose days are numbered, and who are going down with a few more steps to the place appointed for all living. The messages of mercy which shall be borne to you will not be many; the opportunities of salvation may be very very few indeed. Perhaps when another Sabbath shall see the people of the Lord assemble in his house of prayer, one and another of you shall be away, and the place that knoweth you now shall know you no more for ever. We would press these things, then, on your acceptance.

To the young we would, in all earnestness and all affectionateness, offer our parting warning; and we would say, trust not in your youth and your strength. It may be that the eye is bright and beaming, that there is health in the cheek and vigour in the limb, and hope bounding in the heart; but in a little while there shall come the stillness of death; in a little while you must be laid in the coffin, and borne to the tomb; in a little while, even if life be lengthened out to four-score years, but it may be ere many more suns have

set.

We warn you; we are ambassadors for Christ; as though God did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled unto God. But we cannot question-in truth it would be an unkindness as well as injustice, it would be an infraction of Christian charity, which " hopeth all things," if we were not ready to admit that there are those among you who have known this salvation, who lay it up amongst their heart's dearest treasures, who feel that the wealth of this earth is poor in comparison. If it be so, if you have found Christ an all-sufficient Saviour; if you have borne to

him the burden of your weakness and your sin, and have found that he is able to relieve you, O then we say, for Jesus' sake, do what you may to make that salvation known to others. You cannot be misers of spiritual riches; you cannot hoard them solitary and apart: there must be a companionship in these things; and just in the proportion in which you apply the Gospel of Christ to your own soul, you will desire to make the tidings known to others; you will be glad to engage in the missionary work; you will rejoice to do any thing, even the smallest, to freight the ship that shall cross the blue waters, and bear the news of mercy to the heathen who are perishing without it.

But it is not to far-off enterprize that we will always invite you; it is not always to missions to the heathen that we would urge you: we must take care that our charity, in its bound, does not leap over the objects that are at home. We must take care that those, our brothers and our sisters, living beneath the same skies, and tenanting homes close to your own, are not forgotten in our ministrations of mercy. And thus by an easy transition in the closing up of this matter, I would speak to you, and very earnestly speak to you, in behalf of an institution which I have undertaken to commend to your kindness and your patronage. It is one which at present is little known: it has existed but for a little while it is only struggling into energy and operation: and probably much of the future success of this institution, in as far as it depends on the efforts of those who are engaged on its behalf, will be influenced by that which you shall do this day, by contributing to its means. The society for which I would plead is called "The Society for the Relief of the Indigent Blind." It has existed now for twelve months. Its object is two-fold: to furnish readers who shall go to the homes of the poor blind, and read to them the pages of the Word of God, read to them portions of their Father's letter which they are unable to read for themselves; and also to furnish conductors who shall lead them to places of worship, where they may hear concerning Christ and his salvation; where they may hear concerning those things which it hath been our privilege to-day to speak upon-the Gospel. During the past year, that is to say, during the year of the existence of this society, sixty-nine blind persons have been placed on its books. There are at present fifty-eight blind persons who are under visitation; thirty are provided with daily readers, eight with conductors to the places of public worship; and to twenty-four families Bibles have been left. A portion of temporal relief has also been imparted to these suffering persons; not, however, to a very large extent, and only as subsidiary to our higher and more important objects.

Now I cannot conceive of an institution which shall have more claims to the liberality and the ungrudging support of a Christian people. It hath nothing at all to do with party spirit; it hath nothing at all to do with the tumultuousness of controversy. OI should be glad if it were proved to-day that a society for which we ask no partizanship should be a society which you liberally and willingly support. Glad, indeed, should I be if it were proved to the world that Christian persons do not need that angry feelings should be excited, and that there should be taken into alliance with their religious purposes something of earthly feeling ere they would open their purses, and vour forth their wealth to the service of the Lord. This society, growing ap silently in the midst of our great town, ministers to the relief of those

who seem to have an especial claim on our commiseration. The blind! O, who cannot but pity them! For as often as we look on the face of dear friends and relatives-often as we look abroad upon the fair aspect of outlined nature-often as our eye is gladdened, and our heart is cheered by these things -we would remember that there are those cut off from these enjoyments, who never beheld the face of friend, or the fair face of nature; those who, being in deep poverty, are yet prevented from putting forth ordinary efforts for the obtaining of their own subsistence, becoming inevitably dependants upon charity, the cold and casual charity of the passer-by, or the legal and compulsory contribution from another fund. We would hardly expect, that being thus supported, they would have much opportunity of Christian instruction: if the legal support that is dealt out to them shall suffice, scantily indeed, for the body's wants, yet it hath done nothing for the soul; it hath made no provision for the Word of God; it hath afforded them no means to bring them unto the hearing of the Word: therefore this lack of service we would supply. And we ask you to contribute, O not sparingly, not as though we were asking you for aliens; but willingly, as a privilege, remembering, that what you do to these poor outcast ones you are doing unto Jesus. We do not ask for a questionable object; we do not ask you for a thing about which there may be a divided opinion; but we ask you to give to the blind and to the spiritually destitute, the things that make for their eternal peace.

Yet one more point I would urge upon you. When you look on a blind man, and see him separated from the view of all that is lovely and all that is engaging in outward nature; when you see that even when these things are spread before him, and he might be surrounded with all that can delight our eye, but to him it ministers no comfort; in that blind man you have the emblem of what each one of you by nature was; you have the emblem of what every human creature is in a state of nature; blind, deep, black darkness; darkness unbroken by a single ray of intervening light: and while the blindness stays, in vain are all the treasures of the Gospel opened to you; in vain is all the brightness of the things of Christ presented to you; you see them not; they are hidden; there is a film over your spiritual eyes. But when grace comes; when the Lord Jesus Christ hath poured into your souls the day-spring from on high; when you have been brought, like poor Bartimeus, to call unto Jesus and to ask that the Son of David would have mercy upon you, and would give you sight; and when the prayer hath been answered, and you can see all the bright things and the blessed which there are in his Gospel; O then when we say to you, there hath been laid on you a mighty obligation to look around you and to see whether beside your pathway there is not another and another like Bartimeus, forsaken and destitute, unfriended and uncared for, to whom you may minister. We cannot give him bodily sight: we cannot wield the power of omnipotence. The eyes may remain closed, and the temporal mercy be withheld; but we bless God that something we may do, and that that which is in the range of our power to accomplish is a far worthier thing; is of far deeper eternal importance than the merely giving sight to the unseeing eyeball. We may be helpers and fellow workers with God; and we may carry the tidings of salvation to the dark soul: and if we do so in simplicity and humility and faith, and prayer, God will give us his blessing.

It is a pleasant thought, that the time is quickly coming when all infirmities shall pass for ever away; when the Lord's people, gathered alike from the lofty and the lowest-gathered in some of them from the beggar's hovel-from the uncared for and solitary homes of this great town, when we shall all be assembled in the kingdom of the Lamb, with no bodily infirmity, for the body will have been redeemed from the grave, and will be in all perfectness and completeness such as it was in its original constitution, and the spiritual enjoyment of the full light of the presence of Jesus. O may we meet there! May those for whom we are pleading with you be there too; not as now, to see through a glass darkly, but to see face to face; not to know, as now, in part but to know even as also we are known.