we are not working out our own salvation with fear and trembling, when we have such ministers of help by our side, for joy and sorrow, for life and death?

And finally, How shall any of us escape if we neglect so great salvation? Think how. How? How shall we escape? Suppose a man neglecting salvation, and yet " escaping." What would that man be able to say at the last day? He would be able to say to all God's angels: "You have laboured in vain; you have spent your strength for nought and in vain. Your work was not necessary. You never ministered to me, and yet I am escaped." Nay, would not such a man be able to take a still bolder position, and say even to the Lamb in the midst of the throne: "I neglected salvation-that salvation which cost thee tears, and blood, and heart-breaking on the cross-and yet I am escaped." Think whether that is likely to be. Be wise. Understand this. Consider the latter end. Instead of neglecting, receive salvation. Work it out. Be an heir of this great inheritance—an heir of God, a joint heir with Christ. And so you will even now 66 come to an innumerable company of angels," and their strong and loving ministrations will then be yours until that happy day when you shall see them face to face; and perhaps, who knows? be able in some way to minister to them in the kingdom, and for the higher glory of him who is Lord of all. To him be glory on earth and in heaven, for ever. Amen.

Sufficiency of Grace.

My grace is sufficient for thee.- -2 CORINTHIANS XII. 9.

HESE are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ to

THE

his servant Paul. They are spoken in answer to a prayer. Some great trouble had come to Paul-and not by chance, or in the natural course of things; the trouble had been sent, sent as a counterpoise to a great honour. The apostle had been in the third heavens, but when he found himself on earth again, there was a thorn in his flesh. He was the subject apparently of some painful bodily affliction, which possibly was in some way the direct physical result of his elevation into the third heavens. At any rate, the thorn rankled. He longed to be free from it. He prayed the Lord to take it away, as men did pray once," beseeching him" once, and again, and yet once more-like Christ himself in the garden and then the answer came, the answer of the text, "I cannot remove the thorn, but I will do more for you than if I did remove it, I will give you strength to suffer. I cannot call off the messenger of Satan, he must buffet you still for your very health and safety; but I will make you victorious in his assaults,

and superior to his wiles-my grace is sufficient for thee."

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee." The Greek tense here, by a beautiful delicacy of the language, which is not easily expressed in English, signifies, not only that the Lord said that at one particular time, but that he was going on to say it. "He has said he is saying it now!" The answer was ever sounding in the apostle's ears. The Lord was speaking to him, although not audibly, when he wrote. The Lord was speaking; his soul was listening. That one assurance was vocal for every day of his life, and over every step of his heavenward road, “My grace is sufficient for thee." So that, without any accommodation, and by the very principle of the text, it becomes ours. It becomes ours in proportion as we feel the need of it. The "grace” will come only along the channel of a felt need. That is implied in the whole context. The "strength" will perfect itself, not by finding other strengths within on which to link itself, but "in weakness." Rightly understood, therefore, and used, our weakness is our strength. Our need, when we deeply feel it, is the attracting agent which draws a full salvation in.

But spiritual needs are as various as human characters, and as the scenes of human life. Instead, therefore, of abiding among the generalities of the subject, I propose, with a view to more practical profit, now to

describe some of these necessities, shewing, if I can, when and how they arise; and at the same time how they may all be met and fully supplied by the Saviour's all-sufficient grace. The order of our thought will not be formal or systematic. May God make it true and kindly.

Sometimes there is a great conscious need just at the beginning of a Christian career. In very many instances now, the religious life begins quietly and imperceptibly. There are seeds of grace, long sown, which spring up man knoweth not how, "first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear." When the blade is first appearing, and scarcely yet green above the soil, in that tender trembling time the need is sometimes felt to be very great. A popular writer has given us a touching chapter "Concerning the Sorrows of Childhood." A still more affecting chapter might be written "On the Sorrows of Conversion," especially when it takes place in youth. And yet it may be doubted whether any among us is wise and gracious enough to write such a chapter well. No stranger can tell, hardly any friend, with how much anxious solicitude, amid how many changing lights and shades, the young heart sometimes makes its way to the first humble hope of some interest in the Saviour's love. There is a wellknown hymn beginning

""Tis a point I long to know;
Oft it causes anxious thought:
Do I love the Lord or no?

Am I his or am I not?"

which expresses exactly the condition of many a one beginning the Christian life. I am quite aware that that hymn has been the subject of merciless criticism, that some people of very firm views, and of very bold and confident disposition (disposition so confident as to make them, I think, more the objects of wonder than of envy), have treated it almost with ridicule, as if it described a state in which no one could be. But I am afraid the human heart is too subtle and delicate to be caught and squared with any theory; and I think, and thank God, that it is too great to be moulded and mastered as to its states and changes by any system, philosophical or theological. It will just take its own ways and have its own strange feelings with which another cannot intermeddle. Ah, what hoping and fearing there is around us, unknown! What risings and fallings! What gleamings and shadowings! What reachings forth to things which are before, what fallings back again to things behind! Is it thus with any of you? Do you feel like one who has embarked on a great but hopeless enterprise? As though you were in a lone vessel beating up against the gales, but at every tack coming only in view of the same headland? The