eousness of the olden Jew. When we keep God's law today, come whence it may, we are so far good Jews, neither more nor less; and this is Morality, the keeping of the laws of God in special acts as they occur; this is obedience to the Moral Law, written in God's word and on the conscience, and forms what is rightly termed the good moral character. The moral man is honorable, honest, and generally virtuous, because God commands him to be so; and this is a good thing; this, a high attainment; this, a thing greatly to be honored; this it is to be a good Jew; and a good Jew, IN HIS TIME, was the best thing under heaven; and even now, a good Jew is a good man; still a Jew he is, neither more nor less.

Now there is one special attribute concerned in this Judaic obedience to God's law, the attribute of Self; the Apostle calls it, "Mine own righteousness, which is of the Law." I hear and I obey. There is no one else concerned in my obedience. I do it all by myself; and when I have done it, it is my own. It is not the action of another in me, but it is the action of my own mind; it is independent virtue, won by myself, and worn as my own.

Now I would remark, first, that this is often very hard work. Let a man sincerely try, all by himself, to obey the commands of God as contained in his word, and he will find it a difficult task, so difficult that he will soon give it up in despair. Or, let him sincerely try to obey all the dictates of a sensitive conscience, by himself, and he will soon find this a burden not easy to be borne; for there is a formidable difficulty in the case, namely, a constant warfare between the nature of the command and the principle that is to obey; there is a rooted hostility between the master and the servant; and you know such a relation is by no means a pleasant God commands us to live and die for others, but Self prefers living and dying to itself. God commands us to love our enemies, but Self does no such thing; try as it will,.it does not, it cannot, and yet God's command is right,

one.

and must be obeyed. God commands us to live a life of self-denial, which, of course, to Self is a constant misery and martyrdom; and when a man comes into this estate, that his conscience is always telling him he ought to do what he often fails to do, and sometimes feels he cannot do, why, such a man cannot be a happy man. Nothing, in fact, is more wretched than the unceasing rebukes of a hightoned and sensitive conscience; yet such a condition is inevitable to the man who strives truly to keep the commands of God by himself; "having a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge," he is in constant warfare with that God whom he labors to serve. And this, all have seen, is just as much the condition of the man who strives to keep the Christian precepts by himself, as it is with the man who strives to obey the dictates of his conscience, or the ten commandments, by himself; nay, the condition of the first is tenfold worse than that of the other, inasmuch as the Christian precepts militate tenfold more against that very principle of Self by which he is striving to obey them. The man who, calling himself a Christian, and admiring the sublimity and loveliness of Christ's Sermon on the Mount, strives by his unaided efforts to embody that sermon in his own character, is tenfold more a Jew, tenfold more under the penalties and terrors of the Law, than if he stood hopelessly gazing on that flaming Sinai which he could not approach, or stopped his ears to that awful voice which he longed but could not bear to hear. For what Moses only condemned, that Christ crucified and slew, even that very Self which would strive to keep his law. A self-righteous Christian is a contradiction in terms, and a much more hopeless being than a self-righteous Jew.

Besides, the fact is, that no one has ever fully kept the commands of God, try as faithfully as he may, and therefore the attempt is a constant self-condemnation. Further, and lastly, no one can keep the commands of God by himself, for God is Love, and Self is of course his enemy; how

then can Satan cast out Satan? The whole system, therefore, of self-righteousness or morality, whether Judaic or conscientious, whether in the time of Moses or at this hour, is a falsity; there is no such thing, there can be, from its nature, no such thing. Even the olden Jew, with the law of God thundering in his ear, could not attain unto it; and there was therefore provided for him that offer of mercy to the penitent, which brought him on his knees; prostrated his self-righteousness in the dust; taught him, as it was intended to teach him, that by himself he could never keep this law; and showed him how much nearer to God came the cry of the publican than the boast of the moral Pharisee.

But is, then, holiness impossible to us? Does God mock us with his laws? God forbid! God's law is holy and just and true, meant to be kept, and we must keep it too. Righteousness is not only a good, but an indispensable thing, without which we shall never see heaven. The Unitarian is right in holding it up, in the midst of hypocrisy and sin, as the one thing needful; but, oh! the true question with him and with all of us is how to get it. By self? Never. By high will? Never. By conscience? Never. By principle? Never. In a word, by morality? Never. The voices of tens of thousands of once struggling, disappointed, heavy-laden, penitent souls, cry to us from their heaven. Not of self-righteousness? Never. How, then? How did they win that home of the righteous? Listen to their hosanna, "Worthy is the Lamb that is slain!" Through the faith of Christ, then, is this righteousness to be alone attained. "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one who believeth." How believeth? Does a simple faith in the existence of Christ make a man righteous? Certainly not. This is not believing in Christ. To believe in Christ is, according to that fine old Saxon word, to "lieve," to live in him. It is one of the peculiar attributes of the spirit within us, that it can go in quest of higher and purer spirits than itself; that it can meet them, unite with them,

and live in them and they in it. Unrestricted by the physical limitations of our earthly friends, their affection needs no outward demonstration to make itself known to us; they need not the grasp of the hand, the glance of the eye, the affectionate embrace, to tell us that they love us; but they penetrate immediately to our souls, and thrill us inwardly with their grace. Our spirit also loses itself in theirs, and where this mutual reaction is persistent, we “abide" in them and they in us. Especially is it our unutterable privilege thus to commune with the King and Prince of holy spirits, the Father, and the Son. "Truly our fellowship," says John, "is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ." "If a man love me," says the Saviour, "my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our abode with him." "I in them and Thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one." Thus not only do these holy beings act upon us from without, to draw us after them by a distant imitation, but they still more powerfully inspire us from within, to evolve their own holiness in our willing and cooperative lives. This is the great doctrine of the Holy Ghost, the first to be received and enjoyed by the primal Church, the last to be accepted by us of these latter days, its rejection the cause of our weakness, its efflux upon the recipient future Church the prophecy of its revival and the seal of its victory. This precious influence, then, is offered to all believers, that is, to all those who seek it with earnest prayer and open soul. Nothing shuts it off from each one of us but unbelief, that fatal bar to God, which necessitates his final condemnation as the chief of sins. This indwelling of the spirit of Christ in that of the believer makes him one with Christ, a sharer of his attributes, a partaker of his divine nature. His Saviour's holiness becomes his own, not merely by imputation, but by actual possession. His Saviour's merits are not accepted instead of his own, but become his own by this spiritual alliance and this appropriation of faith. His Saviour is not accepted instead of him, but he is ac

cepted in his Saviour. They are one. Especially does the Christ flood his open soul with his unfathomable love, and in those spiritual holidays which are sometimes vouchsafed to him, the floodgates of heaven are opened, and a joy pours in upon him, almost more than he can bear. "My joy shall remain in you, and your joy shall be full." It must be at once evident, therefore, that this spiritual oneness with Christ himself, this participation of his interior nature by faith, is as much more copious a source of righteousness than the morality we have described, as the fountain than the stream which flows from it. The motive of the very highest morality, we have seen, is the word or command of God; but faith brings God himself to our help, even the God that is in Christ. In morality, Self is the actor, struggling, impotent, vanquished Self; but faith brings all the powers of heaven to our rescue, links us to the Father and the Son, and marches to the battle with the prophetic paan, "Thanks be to God, who giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." Indeed, when we shall really believe, when we shall rise up from our present prostration of doubt, and with upward eye and open hand grasp the Christ, I cannot tell to what heights he will not lead us. We need not appeal to the stimulus of imagination; the coldest reason will prophesy that, when human nature is thus linked with the divine, it will become great indeed. When this celestial marriage is achieved, then we may talk about "the dignity of human nature" without reproof; but alone, unmarried to the Lord, her dignity is Satan's choicest jest. When man once leans on Christ, then, and not till then, will he begin to walk; he will march through widening vistas of miraculous and ever-increasing glories, nor halt till that new earth dawns on him whose floor no mortal foot may tread, — those new heavens in which his Immortal Guide shall emerge on his vision; and no longer blindly feeling his hand by faith, he shall see him as he is, and be satisfied. O Faith! thou art holier than Morality.