of glory" which it "worketh for us." The heavier our trials, the more fatal are they to our two great enemies, self-love and the love of the world. Under the same bitter process, these evil roots are killed, and the love of God and of the better world is quickened in us and made strong. The painfullest part of our discipline is what we could least do without. "Be still and know that I am God." When with silence and patience we endure our cross, we are then giving the holy world an opportunity to root and ground itself within us. The furnace improves the gold, the storm roots the oak, labor strengthens the body, suffering brings to the eternal soul her best and purest revenues. If quiet inward power, meek manfulness, and essential glory grow and thrive under conflict and sorrow, must we not "count it all joy" when seasons are given to us for the exercise of Divine Patience? Has not one child of Faith nobly said, for all the children of Faith: "We glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh Patience?"

Let us rule valiantly, but let us also endure valiantly. Let the dark, the bitter, the hostile neither anger nor fret us. The greater our woes, the more let us expect from them; for the ways of God are equal. He can either remove our burdens or give us strength to carry them. We cannot

have the same eternal result in our souls from days of ease, as from the patient endurance of trial. The still, divine, inmost strength, which God gives us to bear our cross, will survive our cross. few days our sorrows will be no more; fruit of them will abide with us for ever.

After a

but the

Let infirmities, reproaches, necessities, persecutions, distresses, therefore, awaken in us valor and constancy. Let us shew that we have a God. In agitating circumstances, let us be calm "in the power of His might." When the men of nature are alarmed, let us be the more collected and selfpossessed, for the glory of His Name. Under the

worst that can happen to us, let us pray that the calm strength and glory of the Master may be as conspicuous in us, as light when it breaks through dark clouds of the sky.

5.-To Patience add Godliness.-We come

now to a great word.

more.

liness includes all the foregoing and something There must be faith; there must be moral excellence; there must be Divine knowledge; the appetites and passions must be under enlightened rule; there must be the power of calm endurance; and besides all these there must be the spontaneous action of the soul towards God. Godliness, it is

the heart-beat of the new creature. Like the circulation of the blood in the body, which is a hidden thing, and yet fundamental to all its functions and motions; so is Godliness the hidden circulation of the Divine, in the human, spirit, but fundamental to every Christian Virtue. It is much more than obedience. Obedience is the fruit, of which Godliness is the ground. It is more than a covenant between God and man. By faith, the creature stands in a covenant-relation with God. Godliness is the harmony of the Divine and human will. What Friendship is between man and man that Godliness is between man and God. Friendship not only knows and reveres its object, but finds heart-rest in the presence of its object.

But

Godliness is the consciousness of the beautiful Atonement brought home to the soul, through which it rejoices in God, through the Lord Jesus · Christ. Godliness is sincerity towards God grounded in the devotion of the inmost affections. All the springs of Godliness are in God. It is Godlikeness; and therefore it is freedom with God. Between bosom friends cold ceremony is dispensed with. Whatever they are with others, with each other they are simple, they are natural, they are at home, they speak out of their hearts and they speak all their hearts. Their muscles play, and their

eyes

speak, in perfect unison with the deep that lieth under. And such is Godliness. The man who is conscious of the truthfulness of his relation to God disdains to assume any thing before Him. He knows nothing of bondage, or guile, in the presence of his God. What he is, he appears: what he feels, he speaks. As the wild-bird in the forest, as the lamb in the meadow, as the child with his father, so is he with his God. But as nature knows nothing about leaping by a single step from the crude buds of spring to the ripe fruits of autumn; neither can the soul by a sudden transition pass from young faith to mellow Godliness. It is a slow growth. But "to patient faith the prize is sure." Let us not grow weary in well-doing, and in due time we shall come to the sunny maturity of our life in God.

6.-To Godliness, add Brotherly-kindness.Must we then have Faith, and Virtue, and Knowledge, and Temperance, and Patience, and Godliness, before we can shew forth the heavenly grace of Brotherly-Love? Even so. And therefore there is so little brotherly-love in the Church. We can pray solemnly and do great works, we can teach and contend for the faith, we can give generously and shew great zeal for God, we can control our

C

passions and suffer patiently, sooner than we can love each other with pure hearts and fervently. If brotherly-love were the love of our fellow-members for our own sakes, we could find that; but love to them for the Lord's sake and their own sakes is not to be met with every day. It is something added even to Godliness; for it is easier for the soul to move freely towards God than towards His erring children. But God will not endorse our Godliness until it gives proof of itself in unfeigned love to the brethren. Every sincere and loving child of God must become a sincere and loving brother. To love our fellow Christians because they are like us, or because they agree with us, is but Self-love, not Brotherly-love. Very little brotherly-love is possible in a divided Church. We must be careful, therefore, that the divisions of Christendom have not a place in our heart. If our affections are subject to the limits of our creed, or of our own denomination, or of any human compact, it will happen that we shall exclude from our sympathy many true brethren of Christ, and on the other hand embrace "false brethren" because they belong to our party. Brotherly-love does not consist in loving those who follow with us and in disliking those who follow not with us. Brotherly-love is love to men because they are Christ's. If we desire