the hundred and twenty disciples in their upper room, so come to us now and revive and quicken us. We are so apt to languish, we are so apt to waver, we are so apt to faint and grow weary, that we need Thy vivifying influence. Our lamp often gets dim: come and enlighten and refresh its feeble flickering wick with Thy gracious presence. We can muffle ourselves up against the refreshing breeze, we can close our doors and windows to its wholesome and invigorating influences; so, dear friends, can we shut our hearts and our ears and our consciences to the Spirit's voice when it speaks to us in warning and instruction, or reproof. We can put out or quench with water the light and the fire, so can we quench the Holy Spirit of God by our opposition, by our doing despite to the Holy Spirit of God, who will no more visit us. Oh, 'Stay, thou insulted Spirit, stay, though we have done Thee such despite; nor lead us sinners quite away, nor take Thine everlasting flight!' Forgive us, and come yet again and dwell with us. Reprove and smite us if Thou wilt, but leave us not; without Thee we are dead, we are lost, we can have no part in the life above. Thou and Thine indwelling with us are the earnest of our inheritance above.

Pentecost (or Whit Sunday).

At 3 P.M. the GOSPEL, St. John, xiv. 15.

'And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, and he shall abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.' -16th and 17th verses.

THE Comforter! The Holy Ghost! The Spirit of Truth! sent from the Father on the petition of the Son. But in another part of the Bible we also read, 'He that has seen me has seen the Father.' So our Lord Himself also sent the Comforter. He says, also, 'I will not leave you comfortless, I will come unto you.' And how? In the Holy Ghost. And now we have this witness of the Father and the Son, bearing witness with our spirits if we are really and truly the children of God. The Comforter! When sorrowful for an absent Lord, when feeling, 'Oh! if I had only Jesus to go to now in my troubles; if He were only on this earth!' Ah! dear friends, you have always the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, sent in Christ's name from the Father. What a beautiful name is the Comforter, for all of us sin and sorrow-laden ones on this earth! When our way is doubtful, and we are anxious and fearful, we have the Comforter. When we are oppressed with sin

and have no hope or prospect for the future, the Comforter steps in and leads us to our true hope, our only door of salvation, even Jesus Christ. 'For He shall take of mine,' says our Lord,' and show them unto you.' No man can say that Jesus is the Christ, but by the Holy Ghost. When we are solitary and alone, and have no one to commune with us, does not the Comforter come and hold sweet communion with us in our hearts, telling us these many wonderful and hidden things from the King? When we want advice, and have no one we can trust, no one we can go to, then is there still the Holy Spirit of God to ask counsel of, and where is there. a better counsellor than the Spirit of Wisdom? and where a better fountain than the Fountain of all knowledge? Solomon was the wisest man on earth, and his Proverbs and Book of Ecclesiastes contain the wisest maxims ever penned by an earthly sage. But, oh! how small is his supply of wisdom and knowledge compared to the Fountain whence knowledge springs. Some make out that the real existence of the Spirit of God is impossible, 'For where,' say they, 'is there a proof of His existence?' Ah! see the multitudes gathered into the Church, gathered, at least, into the fold of moral, respectable people, often from the lowest and vilest classes of society, by the simple preaching of the Gospel, by often ignorant and unlearned, though truly earnest men. Oh! is that not the work of the Holy Ghost? Ah! when He brings comfort and peace to the poor outcasts, to the drunken and debauched; when He makes the poor sufferers on their beds of agony look beyond, oh! is it not a God-like work, a work man could not compass?

What is it that sways the multitude on the words of a man? Is it not his giving them of himself of his spirit, as it were, in his earnestness, in his fellow-feeling, and in his reality! Ah! it is ourselves, men want our love, our sympathy, our help, our real fellow-feeling with them in their difficulties and their trials; and, oh! blessed be God, we have a true Sympathiser and true Friend, a real Fellow-feeler with us in our misery and sin of earth, even Jesus Christ at the right hand of God; and He gives us of His Spirit to comfort us, He speaks to us by His Spirit's voice, He strengthens us with might in the inner man by His Spirit's power. Oh! may we be sealed unto redemption by the Spirit; may we lead the life we now lead no longer in the flesh and to satisfy its lust, but the life of the Spirit and in the Spirit. Our bodies shall die and our flesh see corruption, but our souls shall never die, our spirits shall live for ever. While pent in our body we cannot see the spirits around us. We feel their influence. We cannot see the Holy Spirit of God, but we feel His sweet influence. In many of our trials, and troubles, and perplexities, has He not whispered comfort, and consolation, and true wisdom and advice suited to our need? Oh! whoever has walked after God in the true communion of the Spirit has over and over again realised His wonderful guiding, His wonderful restraining, His wonderful warning voice! The unclean birds of our passions and our lusts often make unheard, by their chattering, the sweet, still, small voice of the Heavenly Dove, of the Holy Spirit; but it speaks nevertheless. Take heed, lest it take its flight for ever away from an unclean and unholy existence, and

never speak more. We can drive it away, so let us beware; we can go on in sin, so let us watch and pray that we enter not into temptation; we can harden our hearts and be destroyed without remedy. God speaketh once, yea, twice, but if men heed Him not then, He departs. Pharaoh hardened his heart after many and repeated warnings, and was destroyed he and his army. It does not say in the Bible he was drowned, though it infers it. But he was routed, defeated; so let us beware of hardening our heart, lest we be routed and destroyed, lest God turn away from us in anger. Let us cut off our right hand or foot, our darling sin and pleasure, and enter into life, sooner than indulge in it and be destroyed for ever. Egypt with its flesh-pots, the lusts of the flesh; Pharaoh with his despotism, the pride of life; Lot's wife looking over Sodom in flames, the lust of the eyes; let us beware of these, lest we be destroyed even as they were. Obeying God's voice, even the voice of His Spirit, in following the advice of the Spirit of Wisdom, we shall never err, but have a right judgment in all things, and also rejoice in His holy comfort, that of Him who is called the Comforter of God's people.