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retain God in their knowledge, may not be brought down at last. It is at our peril that we heed not so great a mass of evidence on a point of such deep practical importance. What are we then to expect, but, that it will be with us as it was with those, of whom the apostle speaks, at the end of the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans, "Even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, (a mind void of judgment,) to do things which are not convenient. Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, uncleanness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, backbiters, haters of God; despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful. Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things, are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them."

Lastly, let each one of us remember that our forgetfulness of God presupposes our knowledge of Him. If we forget Him, it cannot be said that we have scarcely heard of Him, or seldom heard of Him. Alas, alas! how often have we not heard. And what is our forgetfulness of Him but the worst ingratitude?

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In the knowledge of Him, is salvation made known to us. way by His death, and he sealed our deed of entry by His blood. How then shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Oh! if the Jew could say, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget her cunning," shall not we take up the strain, and say, 'If I forget thee, O Lord Jesus, then, may my soul forget her own existence. Can I forget Thee, O my Saviour? Can I, if I have really heard of Thy matchless love for me, thy dying agonies for me, can I have the heart to forget Thee? O! such forgetfulness would degrade me far below the brutes that perish! Thou wilt never forget thy wretched servant. Thou hast said, "the mother may forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb; they may forget, yet, will I not forget thee.""

O God the Holy Spirit! Lord and Giver of life! quicken, we beseech Thee, the faculty of memory within us, quicken and restore it to that office to which Thou didst at first create and appoint it, even to a holy mindfulness of Thine unseen presence and Thy revealed will, for Jesus Christ's sake.

SERMON III.

THE MINISTRY OF THE GOSPEL.

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2 COR. IV. 1, 2, 3.

Therefore, seeing we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully, but, by manifestation of the truth, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God: but if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost."

THERE is no calling under heaven so lowly and yet so glorious as the christian ministry. "I am among you," said the Second Person in the eternal Godhead, to the apostles whom He had chosen to send forth with His gospel to all nations, "I am among you as he that serveth;" and with reference to their services, He said to his disciples, "Whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister, and whoso

ever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all." The minister of Him, therefore, who made Himself of no reputation, and lower than the lowest, has received his commission to be as a servant to the meanest and the vilest of his beloved flock; and if he really understands his great calling, his people will see that he is ever ready to go and sit down with unaffected humility in the lowest place. Yes, the minister of the Lord God is truly the servant of man; but his calling, though the lowest, is also the highest, the holiest, the most glorious. "The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, thou shalt take of the blood that is upon the altar, and of the anointing oil, and sprinkle it upon Aaron, and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon the garments of his sons, with him: and he shall be hallowed, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons' garments, with him." It is not with these figures of heavenly things that the ministers of the Lord Jesus are sanctified, not with the blood of the type-but with the blood of the great antitype, even of God manifest in the flesh; not with the anointing type, but with the holy antitype the anointing of the Holy Spirit Himself. The great apostle felt the deep importance, the tremendous responsibility of the christian ministry. "Take heed unto yourselves," he said to the elders of the Church

of Ephesus, "and to all the flock over the which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers, to feed the Church of God, which He hath purchased with His own blood." And thus in the second chapter of the epistle now before us, he says, "Now thanks be unto God which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish. To the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other, the savour of life unto life." Here the apostle pauses in the midst of his confidence and joy, pauses to remind himself of his own utter inability and weakness; and feeling that of himself, he could do nothing, he asks, in heartfelt humility; "And who is sufficient for these things?" He remembers that he can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth him, and then calmly and firmly he proceeds. "For we are not as many which corrupt the word of God but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, speak we in Christ." He goes on to compare the ministration of the letter with that of the spirit; the ministration of death, with that of life; the ministration of condemnation, with that of righteousness (or justification); the glorious ministration which is done away,

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