reserved for those who had taken from the poor the key of knowledge. "He delivered the poor from him that was too strong for him, yea the poor and the needy from him that spoiled him." He came with glad tidings of special interest and aptitude for the victims of supercilious scorn and hard neglect. He preached the gospel to them.—A character is thus made known to us the most perfectly generous and noble, a glory full of grace and truth. Is not this character in strictest harmony with this religion, and is not the harmony between them a resistless proof of the reality of the one and the truth of the other? Could such a character be pourtrayed by a false religion? Could such a religion be associated with a fictitious character?

5. Its Divine Efficiency is proved to be complete.

That which deals in bold and boastful pretensions, if unfounded, will soon be disproved. But the gospel proposed no common task. It was that of meliorating the soul, while it neglected not the outward condition, of the poor. It is in this condition of social life that we must expect to find the grossest errors of ignorance and the most frequent excesses of crime. Number will not wholly account for this: it is the effect of a constant pressure of need, a constant fretting of privation. To them does not extend the conventional morality of other classes. It cannot astonish us that there are found among them the outlaw, the desperate, the reckless. To speak of their vices, considering their general quietude and resignation, their industry and forbearance, may seem invidious. To proclaim their vices, considering the heartless wantonings and infidel darings of the rich and great, must seem unjust. But truth ought not to be disguised. What has checked those vices, so natural to their state, so common to their circumstances? What has planted among them the virtues which command the admiration of all who read their short and simple annals? virtues which surprise us like choice and gentle flowers in the fissure of a rock? We know that the Gospel has done it. The poor have been transformed by it. They have chosen it as their heritage. They have taken it up as their cause. Their sorrows as well as temptations have yielded to its power. Their mourning has been turned into joy. It has lifted the latch

of the cabin, and brought with it such a train of blessings, that though famine sat there leaning over the wasted offal of its store and the dying ember of its hearth, it has turned it into a house of rejoicing and into the gate of heaven. Here is a record of moral triumph of which Christianity may fitly boast. It is the power of God unto salvation in an experiment the most complete, upon a scale the most ample!

6. The Truth of Christianity borrows new Evidence from its Operation on the Poor, when we remember the Nature of the Principles which it has inculcated.

Had it exaggerated the claims of this class, had it urged those who belonged to it to protest and arm against all others, had it spoken of their condition as in itself more meritorious than that of wealth, had it taught moderation and contentment by arguing that poverty was an atonement for sin, had it for a moment given countenance to the error most current among our needy brethren that present suffering claims and deserves a reward and compensation in an after life, then its course would indeed have proved easy and its success secure. But such comments were most foreign to its spirit. It did not directly touch the civil state of the poor. Its appeal was greater. It taught them to respect themselves as immortal. It assured them of the doctrines and the facts of pardon, of acceptance, of regeneration. It made no allowance for their sin. It intimated no alleviation of their retribution. All its power over evil, all its relief of sorrow, was strictly spiritual. Not a worldly motive or inducement ever was adduced. Yet in Christian principles was there that strength and weight which could bend the most stubborn forms of habit, and tame the most terrible forces of feeling. It rectified those convulsive movements which society so commonly dreads. It ventilated the earthquake and saved its shock. It subdued the volcano and prevented its eruption. It stilled the tumult of the people. And this it effected by no superstitious spell, by no interdict on popular thought and enquiry, by no degradation of the industrious orders, but by enlightened views and holy perceptions which raised man not less as man, than they were adapted to raise man into Christian !

7. In this Progress of the Gospel we must seek an adequate Cause.

We speak not now of the persecutions which Christianity was early called to endure. It found a foe in every man, a warfare in every nation, a tyrant on every throne. The fact is too notable to require proof. It is as notable that Christianity successfully withstood, and gloriously survived, it. Its triumphs are monumental. By what armies were they won? What engines of power were set in motion for its help? What schools of philosophy lent it experience and fame? "To the poor was the gospel preached." First proclaimed to shepherds, and then declared by fishermen, it run an unstayed career. It leaned on no human resource nor aid. But there must have been a higher power in concurrence with it. This was the hand of the Lord! He gave testimony! He worked with it! He worked with it! And this is demonstration. A religion so opposed, so victorious,-with nothing in its nature to gratify the ambition, the sensuality, the indolence, of our nature, with nothing in its circumstances to favour, to facilitate, to defend, its own power in the world,-cannot be the counsel or work of man. Its success finds but one cause to explain it It was of God!

:

And that it was preached to the

poor, seals the divinity of this attestation.

And now, in conclusion,-while we congratulate the poor,it is almost impossible to exclude from our bosoms a deep pity for those with whom it is rarely associated and by whom its overture would be disdainfully repelled. Upon affluence itself the Scripture pours no contempt. "Every man to whom God hath given riches and wealth, and hath given him power to eat thereof, and to take his portion, and to rejoice in his labour; this is the gift of God." Yet is there humiliation even in these splendid donatives. We cannot but speak, too often, of the miserable great. They seem to be decked out for the sacrifice. "He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase." "In all points as he came, so shall he go." "His glory shall not descend after him." Yet their salvation is possible. Let them make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness. Let them lay up a good foundation for the

time to come.

our.

Let them come as the naked sinner to the Savi

Let them seek the fruit of the Spirit, love, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Be ye clothed with humility. And your riches shall be the tests of your conversion, and the means of your usefulness, and the precursors of your reward!

Behold, ye poor, one simple reason of that social distribution of which haply you have complained. You have but gathered the scattered fruits which fall from the plentiful horn of the possessors of the earth. You seem created to serve them. Here is mystery. It may be that here is wrong. "Behold we count them happy that endure." You are placed aright for one great facility! For you is secured one surpassing provision! He that mocketh you reproacheth his Maker! That Maker has lavished upon you an inheritance the value of which mines of gold and rocks of diamond cannot express! With a propriety, to others far more contingent and remote, you may boast that the gospel is yours. Prove it well in all its hope, its peace, its consolation. And these things shall He say, who is the First and the Last, even to the poorest of his disciples, "I know thy tribulation and povery, but thou art rich!"

SERMON V.

THE MYSTERY OF THE INCARNATE GOD.

1 TIM. iii. 15, 16.

"THE PILLAR AND GROUND OF THE TRUTH. AND WITHOUT CONTROVERSY GREAT IS THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS."

—AND in reciting this sublime paragraph we perhaps rehearse the very clauses of the earliest Christian Creed, simple but full in its avowals, sententiously brief and exquisitely compact, a good confession of evangelic history and truth maintained amidst persecution and apostacy, a form of sound words which infants were taught to lisp, the bold protestation of martyrs from the cross and stake. Or, remembering the parallelisms and measured periods of its construction, it may have been an early Christian Hymn, one of those which the first believers were wont to raise to Christ as God; a canticle which gladdened their hearts, soothed their troubles, and raised their hopes; a strain which they sung in their prisons and celebrated on their scaffolds, when they would not accept deliverance by the denial of their Lord. It is still as fitted to be our Testimony, being a summary and epitome of "the faith which has been given in entireness to the saints." It shall still be our Song,-in this house of our pilgrimage,—our song in this night of faith and patience,—a new song,—we will sing it with joyful lips, we will sing it aloud upon our dying beds,— Let all things that have breath thus praise the Lord!

And if the criticism which we now propose be just, how strongly does inspiration attest the transcendent importance of these facts. We believe that the words,-"the pillar and ground of the truth,"-refer, not to the "church of the living God," but to "the great mystery of godliness." Did these expressions