expend His dying breath in a prayer for His murderers, who shall say that He is not able and willing to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by Him? Who, with this fact before them, shall dare to circumscribe or limit the Redeemer's power or disposition to save? Who while thus, as it were, gazing down into the bottomless abyss of his compassion, shall cast a churlish barrier in a sinner's way, or pretend that the puny plummet of his trumpery theology has fathomed or taken soundings of the depth of the richness of the fulness of Christ?

And what sinner, after this, shall say he is not welcome? O where are the clouds of despondency and doubt before the sunlight of Christ's dying love? Are they not driven away and chased from off the sky before the brightness of His rising? are they not dispelled upon the breath of His expiring prayer and His reiterated intercession? Away, ye gloomy heralds of despair, who bid me cast aside my hope, and say that Jesus did not die for me, and does not love me-you are in any way; I want to see His cross, and see my sins all crucified upon it; you shall not scare me from His side. Who told you He did not die for me? what angel has shown you the sacred list from which my name has been erased? Go tell your falsehoods to the devil, not to me-for you cannot bar the door which Christ has opened, and you shall not frighten me away while the Spirit and the bride are saying, "Come, and take the water of life freely."

"How sweet are the flow'rets in April and May!
But often the frost makes them wither away;

Like flowers you may fade:--are you ready to die?
While yet there is room, to a Saviour fly!

Do you ask me for pleasure? then lean on His breast
For there the sin-laden and weary find rest.

In the valley of death you will triumphing cry—
"If this be called dying, 'tis pleasant to die!""

And now, my fellow-sinner, what effect has the Redeemer's prayer on you? You "know not what you do" in rejecting this friend. I will tell you what you do. You stifle the accents which would invite you to eternal joy. You deafen your ears to the voice which calls you to the skies. You thrust aside the

hand that offers you a crown of glory that fadeth not away. You trample under foot the blood of the covenant. You crucify afresh the Lord of Glory, and put Him to an open shame. You madly rush upon your own destruction, and deliberately make choice of death, while everlasting life is freely offered to you. You harness yourself for a presumptuous battle with Omnipotence itself, which must result in your being hurled down to the blackness of darkness for ever. You prepare yourself, deliberately and voluntarily, a prey for the worm that dieth not and the fire that is not quenched. It must surely have been a fearful doom which could demand the life of the Son of God as a ransom. Yet that doom you are inviting, and towards it you are coolly walking. We are struggling in a stormy sea, and our crazy vessel is strewed in shivered spars upon the waves. But Christ has launched a timber that shall bear us up, and now, my drowning brother, he tows it to your side. Will you not lash yourself to it? It is your only hope of succour--you cannot thrust it aside. Are you mad? Seethe waves are sweeping over you, and your strength is quickly failing! Look at the beacon light, how genially it shines-and yet you are drifting from it! The horizon, towards which you are being borne, is blackening more and more, and the light grows dimmer and dimmer. There is the cross again—a strong, substantial pillar of support; Jesus, the pilot, will lash you fast upon it with the cords of His exhaustless love. In His name I bid you come. Come or your sins will weigh you down. Come-ere that gathering storm breaks over you and the thunder drowns the voice of invitation. Come-ere the darkness thickens and veils the beacon light which stands upon the haven. Now or never. There is a voice now calling you from the heavenly shores, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;" but to-morrow, for aught you know, those overtures may change, and that same voice may cry, "Because I have called, and ye have refused; I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh."

"CHRIST IS ALL, AND IN ALL.”

N taking these words, thus, as the basis of discourse, we

are conscious of being guilty of wresting them in some degree out of the connection in which they stand. Still we are not doing this to an unfair or an unwarrantable extent. We are not interfering in any degree with the apostle's meaning in employing the words. He uses them as descriptive of the state of mind and heart of those who have truly embraced the glorious Gospel. He sets up Christ as forming the object towards which all their hopes, their aims, their aspirations tend; and as the bright focus in which are concentrated the objects and wishes of their lives. He describes them as comparatively indifferent concerning those external matters to which the merely nominal Christian attaches so much importance-not limiting their brotherly intercourse and friendship by the frontier of a principality, the shores of a kingdom, or the shibboleth of a sect; but deriving their one strong bond of affinity and union from Him who had loved them and washed them from their sins in His blood. The family of the followers of Christ Jesus the Lord, is a happy and united family; a family banded together in the interest of a common Master; trusting in the efficacy of a common intercession, and panting after a common immortality; a family where party cries cause no disunion and jarring strifes bring no alarm; a family where different tongues are never known, nor varying complexions recognized; a family "where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all."

In descanting then, a little, from these latter words, it is worthy of remark, that the only reason why the family of Christ's followers is so free from disunion is, that Christ is their leader; and it is only in proportion as they consistently follow

Him that this exemption from dissension, and this brotherly affinity is secured. The deceitfulness of the human heart has caused us to invent and to adopt very false ideas of following Christ. Among professing Christians it has become far too synonymous with following a certain sect, and wearing the uniform of a peculiar body. Different denominations are a necessary consequence of the limitation of human knowledge, but a denominational spirit is the necessary consequence of a defective Christianity. A man reads his Bible to seek to ascertain what is the mind of Christ, what practices He approves, and what spirit He enjoins. He comes, after due deliberation and prayer, to the conclusion that, by adopting such and such observances, he shall be most closely following in the footsteps of his Master, and he accordingly unites himself with a certain sect of Christians who adhere to this peculiar practice. There may be wide difference of opinion as to the propriety of the ordinance itself, as to its Scripturalness or its Divine ordination; but its adherents follow it in the hope thereby of obeying or of imitating Christ, and those who disapprove it leave it unobserved in the hope thereby of obeying or of imitating Christ. Now where is the essential difference between these two? Supposing both to be candid and conscientious, Christ is to both of them all in all. Both ignorant, fallible men, they take the same book for their guide, the same example as their pattern: they apply to the same source for direction, and eventually, acting up to the light that is in them, they come to a different conclusion upon an external form or ordinance. Now, are these men any the less followers of Christ? Ought they to be in any wise divided from each other in heart, in sympathy, in action? Is not Christ to both of them all and in all? And ought they not therefore mutually to admit each other to the full privileges of the church which each represents? The churches! They represent the same church-the church of Christ. But the sects-ought they not mutually to welcome each other not only to the table of their common Lord, but to the mutual and brotherly deliberations of the church? Neither can surrender his convictions upon the minutest matter of form, nor ought he to be expected to do so; for as soon as he believes that in this form he is following the

example or injunction of Christ, it ceases to be a form and becomes an act of faith.

But while it thus appears possible to study the Scriptures of truth conscientiously and prayerfully, and come to different and opposite conclusions on matters of external worship, it is indeed absolutely impossible to ponder the sacred Word of Life, to read of the history and example of Jesus Christ, and differ as to the spirit and habit of mind in which we should uniformly seek to follow Him. Universal assent must proclaim this to be a spirit of love-love to Him-love towards one another; charity, toleration, forbearance, gentleness, sympathy, large-heartednessthese are the elements essential to the spirit of that community to whom Christ is all and in all; and whenever they fail to manifest themselves in a corresponding spirit of mutual kindliness one towards another, of personal fellow-feeling and brotherly. love, of amiable and reciprocal deference and good-will to man, there is a sign amounting to something like proof that there are other and inferior elements disputing the ascendancy with Christ, and that it cannot be said that He is all in all. But wherever love and sympathy exist in highest perfection, wherever kindliness of heart and life are prominently shown, you may be pretty sure that Christ is loved and reverenced. When a Christian community is instant in season and out of season in its deeds of practical benevolence, its silent visitations to the poor and outcast, its earnest attention to the welfare of the young; when such as these seem to be its congenial avocations rather than dogmatising and quarrelling at its deliberations, or fomenting personal animosity among its members; when all are too much bent on trying to do good to be able to find time to scandalise or find fault with their neighbours (a consummation which will never be realised till the millenium), then it may well be said that there is the mind of Christ. When men can differ without dislike, can hold opposite views without quarrelling, and can extend the manly honest hand of reconciliation, and not fear even to shed the tear of deep regret after any discord or dissension-there is some ground to believe that the mind of Christ is there.

But, without lingering in the consideration of mere individual