said) to be worshipping in the beauty of holi

ness.'

To have possessed for fifty years this great advantage is a fit subject for thanksgiving. To be permitted to celebrate to-day a jubilee which (like the Royal Jubilee of six years ago) is not the end, but a new start-for many years, we trust, to come-of privilege and blessing, justifies, deserves, demands our acknowledgments in the presence of the great Giver of every good and perfect gift.

All God's greatest gifts are gifts of men-men equipped by Him for ministry to the minds and souls of His creatures. Who shall deny this title to the leadership of the sacred song of a congregation? Who shall call it less than a talent-yes, a talent entrusted by the Lord of the Churches to be enabled to give its tone-and that a high and a holy one-to a particular Church's worship?

It has been the peculiar charm of this Church's worship, that here art has known how to conceal art, and an exquisite skill has shown itself in a yet more exquisite refraining. Here the most magnificent of instruments has been made to lead without driving, and to swell without drowning, and to support without supplanting, the human voice (alone audible in Heaven) of congregational praise. Power, abjuring display, has been here

contented to influence. An atmosphere of holy calm has been breathed over our devotions, and the worshipper, conscious of an invisible Presence, has found himself confessing, as he passes out silently through the ancient portal—

It is good for me to have been there.

FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER EASTER,

May 7, 1893.

VIII.

CHRISTIAN AND UNCHRISTIAN USE OF
THE WORLD.

1 Corinthians vii. 31.

And they that use this world as not abusing it.

THE Chapter is in many ways remarkable. It presents to us the Apostle St. Paul in a very human character-as the kind friend, the sympathizing adviser, the Christian counsellor, of his people. It also draws a clear distinction between opinion and inspiration, even in an inspired man. To the rest speak I, not the Lord.' 'I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.' He who so speaks may the more readily be listened to when in other places he claims to speak by inspiration and with authority. He is not one who would be the imperious dictator,

or the manager of the conscience, or the lord of the faith, even of his own converts. He deals with them as a man with men, explaining his reasons, avowing his motives, with perfect frankness, saying again and again, 'I say this for your profit-because I would spare you trouble and anxiety-not to ensnare you in new scruples, but to help you in waiting upon the Lord without distraction.'

St. Paul was anticipating times of severe trial, foretold by our Lord Himself as impending over that generation, and with no express intimation that they might not be indeed the last times of all. The distinction between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world was not made in our Lord's own prophecy of things coming upon the earth. St. Paul lived in the expectation of the Advent; though it is a mere gloss upon his words, and an incorrect and irreverent gloss, which makes him pledge himself to the arrival of the great day while he should be among the living.

With a view to the distresses and agonies which should accompany the impending catastrophe, he tells his readers that they will be wise not to multiply upon themselves the embarrassments and entanglements of domestic anxiety. He utters no fantastic or fanatical notions about the superiority of celibacy to

wedlock. The man who saw in marriage the type of the spiritual union between Christ and the Church certainly cannot be supposed to be disparaging that holy ordinance in comparison with the life of a selfish isolation. He guards his words most carefully, and again and again declares himself to be giving advice only, and advice with reference to an exceptional and unprecedented emergency.

It is in the midst of these counsels, counsels not of perfection but rather of prudence, that the magnificent passage occurs from which the text is taken.

'But this I say, brethren '—what goes before is language of advice and therefore of opinion, but what follows is revelation and inspiration and therefore injunction 'the time is short: it remaineth that both they that have wives be as though they had none, and they that weep as though they wept not, and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they possessed not, and they that use this world as not abusing it, for the fashion of this world passeth away.'

Some small points there are in this paragraph capable of two constructions, involving therefore a choice of two renderings. But the general idea is scarcely affected by these variations, until we reach the words of the text itself-in