has not oppressed the poor suppliant whose prayer he rejected; he did not reduce her to poverty; he has not taken the bread from her babes; he has only let her alone. Is theft, then, the only crime in God's sight? Is there no record on high for this negative action of his? Compared with his cold-blooded, hard-hearted inhumanity, it would have been innocent in him to have stolen a purse of gold! It will be more toler. able in the day of judgment for the swindler and the highwayman, than for this just and honourable man of marble! The grand principle is, that God holds us responsible for the good we might do, as well as for the deeds we actually perform. And a member of a christian church who is just pursuing the even tenour of his way, practising fair dealing in all his businsss relations with the world, and staining the ermine of his profession with no positive misdemeanors, may-just by his want of spirituality, his neglect of spiritual duties, by what he does not do-be all the while making out a terrible accusation against himself in the sight of God, and heaping up a terrible retribution. Was it enough for the fig tree in the parable, that all the demonstrations which met the eye were fair and full of promise—an upright trunk, with branching boughs, and a wreath of green leaves-but only no fruit? It is quite conceivable, then, and perfectly capable of illustration, that this negative action, that is, the not acting at all, may be of all crimes the most heinous and horrible. Look at a case or two. Here is a man walking at the dead of night through our streets, belated, to his home, and he sees a dwelling-house on fire. The flames are leaping from room to room, and mounting the stairway, and rioting in their mastery; no sound is heard from the sleepers the whole household are wrapt in the slumbers of midnight. No watchman, pacing his distant round, discerns the light. No other soul of the whole population seems awake or conscious of this peril but himself. There is not a moment to be lost. Even now he is wellnigh too late. But he passes coolly by, and goes silent on his way. What has he done? Done! NOTHING. If manhood, and matron, and babe be consumed there together, and the dawn behold the ruin complete-none living to tell how or in what agony of suffering and despair the dead met their fate-it is not his work. He is no incendiary, he did not kindle the fire. He did not burn the house and its inmates. He did nothing. Would your hearts accept such a defence from his lips? Would an indignant community pronounce him acquitted of blame on such a plea? He did burn those fellow-creatures, -in the sight of Heaven, in the judgment of your own unperverted consciences, he did commit the awful murder, for he might have saved them. His excuse is just his crime that he did nothing, when he ought to have roused every sleeper far and near with his alarming shout, and steeled his heart and sinews to deeds of desperate courage and strength. But look again. A company of reapers are seated quietly beneath the shade, taking their noontide repast. Their attention is attracted by the sight of a solitary figure, crossing the field with slow and irregular steps. He carries a staff before him, and now and then trips and stumbles on the unseen surface. They perceive that he is blind. He is out of the path, too, and has no guide. A little way off, in the direction he is following, is a precipice, looking down a hundred feet. The blind man moves on toward the brow, piloted with his staff,-nearer and nearer he draws, all unconscious of what is before him. They who watch him are silent and unmoved,—no voice is lifted up, no hand is stretched out. They see him pacing steadily to the awful verge. His staff, meeting no obstacle, slips from his hand into the abyss. He takes a step forward, and stoops to recover it, still no warning, no interposition from the 31 reapers. His foot overhangs vacancy, his bending form leans from the brink, a wild cry, and he is gone. What have they done? Nothing. They did not put out his eyes; they did not lead him to the precipice; they did not push him down; they have done nothing; they only neglected to do; and yet his blood is on their skirts; it cries like Abel's to heaven against them. They knew he was blind, they could have saved him, and did nothing! Let us not think these illustrations are extravagant, or wide of the mark. Let us give them application to a single point. The impenitent around us are, as it were, asleep in burning dwellings going blindfold down to ruin. Their peril deepens with every hour of delay. They push on unconscious of danger. Soon it will be too late to interpose. The summer of hope and mercy is waning. Death, judgment, and eternity are on the wing; are near; their awful shadows fall upon the path so securely trodden. The hapless travelers stand gaily on the verge of per dition. Do we see, do we know, have we faith in eternal realities? While we sit idle and voiceless, they reel over the tremendous brink, and are lost, lost for ever; and up from the abyss comes their despairing cry, "Lost, lost for ever." Who has done this? Not we; their sins were their own, their course their own; we wrought no violence upon them, we put no constraint upon their liberty,—we did not drag them down to woe. Ah! but we knew they were out of the way, we knew of the precipice, we knew they were nearing it,—we knew they were blind, blinded by the delusions of sin, and we left them to their fate. Stand still now, and hear the word of God written for our offence, and behold the divine judgment against us: "When I say unto the wicked, Thou shalt surely die, and thou giveet him not warning, nor speakest to warn the wicked from his wicked way, to save his life, the same wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at THINE hand." Behold the fearful guilt of being at ease in Zion! Behold the responsi bility that attaches to the NEGLECT OF DUTY! 1 Came hurrying swiftly by ; How her glorious face was veiled in shade, How she hid her beauteous brow 'Neath the influence of those gloomy forms: I have seen it, and marked it. Hast thou? I have seen the face of affection sad 'Neath the cloud of an angry word; And a sob from the voice that was cheerful once, I have seen the shade of sorrow pass O'er a tender mother's brow, At the sound of her child's unduteous words: I have seen it, and marked it! Hast thou? God looks from his throne of holy light At us dwellers here on earth: He sees the heart of affection crushed, He knows how oft the unduteous ones And he glances on to the judgment day;sl mea He sees it, and marks it. Dost thou? APOSTOLIC SERMONS. BY THE REV. §. G. GREEN, B.A. -Ă What is a sermon? Nothing would at first sight appear easier than to say. Precedent, propriety, custom, have all combined to enstamp a certain character upon pulpit discourses. Every one knows what to expect when he goes to hear a minister preach. There must be a text, assuredly: if this should by any eccentric divine be omitted, the discourse is "an address," "a lecture," "an essay," anything but "a sermon,"-" proper enough for a week-day and a platform, but quite out of place in a pulpit on a Sunday." Then it is judged best to have divisions: "firstly, secondly, thirdly," and "to conclude, by way of practical improvement." Something is expected "for the saint and for the sinner," and high authorities have again and again declared that no sermon can be considered complete that does not somewhere and somehow contain a statement of the way of salvation by Jesus Christ. It is Indispensable again that worship should be an accompaniment. To omit the prayer and praise, or even to make these exercises only subordinate parts of the service, would be stigmatized as paying honour to man rather than to God. Now in all this we have the growth of ages, and the arrangement, therefore, may fairly be regarded as on the whole well adapted to the spiritual, wants of those who have thus deliberately adopted it as a "means of grace" to themselves. But when we find it practically regarded as the great method of evangelization, we are constrained to compare it with apostolic plans, and to ask whether it does not devi ate from them somewhat more than altered circumstances render justifiable and neces 1 น. 6 0 come in, the plan would be unexceptionable. But as multitudes of them will not come in, surely something more must be done. In a word, our "preaching" must seek a wider scope and other fields than our teaching and worship have already occupied or can possibly reach. We must not be content with mourning over the neglect of public worship which we see all around us, nor must we exhaust our energies in attempting the so often hopeless task of bringing the godless thousands into our sanctuaries, that they may unite in our praise and prayer as a condition of their listening to our proclamation of the everlasting Gospel. They will not do it. Nay, how could it be expected? Without a single christian sympathy or religious emotion, what part have they in the worship of the church, or in the praises of Zion? And they themselves would be the first to feel the incongruity. Hence the lamentably few of the careless and irreligious, whom Town Missionaries, for instance, report as having persuaded to attend the house of God, and the still fewer who have continued regular in attendance after being once induced to come. It is plain, then, that they will not come to us to be evangelized on our own terms. But it is equally plain that we may go to them. Recent experiments in many localities have proved that they may be gathered; only we must meet them on their own ground, and speak to them in their own are words, and says the venerable Dr. Godwin, "the working men will not come, at least in the first instance, to our places of worship, should we not go to their Lecture. rooms, or Institutes, or Temperance-halls, or wherever we can meet them ?"* These surely, of truth and soberness, must be owing to our over-attachment to ecclesiastical forms that the experiment has not long since been made. Indeed, we have been credibly assured that the first proposal to engage in such effort, some years ago, was successfully op posed by the christians of the town where it originated, chiefly on the ground that it would be exceedingly wrong to give religi ous addresses without the accompaniments of praise and prayer. Preface to Lectures on Atheism, 1853.qorq 6 is If we turn to the Acts of the Apostles, we shall find that an find time anfongst both Jaws and heathens the preaching of the Gospel was in a free, apart from conducted without formalities, unencumbered style, and the instruction and worship of the church. We do not find Paul writing, from Ephesus" or Philippi, concerning the great neglect, on the part of "t "the masses," of the ordinances of the house of prayer. No; in christian assemblies he looked for christians, and to preach the Gospel to the world he went elsewhere. If there were no Institutes and Temperance-halls in the old cities where he t traveled, there was in one the synagogue, in another the marketplace and the Areopagus, and thither, accordingly, he bent his way. We do not find, again, that in opening his discourse he requested his Jewish auditors first to sing a hymn to the praise and glory of the Messiah, nor said to the Gentile throng, "Let us pray." He met each on their own terms, spoke to them in their own way, and, becoming to the Jew as a Jew, to the Gentile as a Gentile, PREACHED CHRIST to both. 15751 Two of these sermons of his are recorded, if not word for word, at least in sufficient fulness to illustrate his manner of preaching. Each discourse forms, moreover, a specimen of a distinct class; and they are, therefore, as little alike as could well be in the utterances of one earnest mind. The -former was delivered to an assembly of Jews in Antioch of Pisidia (Acts xiii.); the latter on the Areopagus to the philosophers of Athens (chapter xvii.) All who would reach the heart of the people, would do well to make these sermons the subject of serious study. There is but one feature we can at present notice in them both, the apostle's thorough identification of himself with his audience. He becomes at the outset one with them in their best feelings and holiest aspirations; meeting them thus upon their own level, that he may raise them with sympathy and power to his own. In the synagogue he begins with that which would at once kindle every Jewish heart. To ears that never tired of the tale, he rehearsed the story of olden honour and greatness. He brought to remembrance the name and fame of David, the man after God's own heart, and the prophetic ancestor of the Messiah for whom they longed; and then, when all was prepared for the す announcement, he declared in a sentence, whose very we very construction bespeaks the highest wisdom of adaptation: "Of seed f this man's ring to his promise, Hath God, according Raised unto Israel a Saviour,đì Up to the utterance of that last word, how every eye elatiassembly must have beam ed, what that must have filled every heart! The audience were borne along and when the climax came, it was no longer a word to rouse their bitterest hatred, but a Name for the moment at least to overwhelm them with astonishment and admiration. The apostle saw his advantage and followed it up with quotations, rapid and inspiring, from their own prophetic scriptures, so that he still commanded attention, while he went on to discourse of topics which under other circumstances would have excited only scorn and rage,even the Messiahship and resurrection ofthat Jesus, the forgiveness of sins through his death, and the doctrine of justification by faith. True, the majority of his hearers "judged themselves," after all, "unworthy of everlasting life," but who shall say that the opportunity thus gained and thus improved, was not to some a means of ent lightenment and salvation? " At Athens the apostle took altogether 'different ground. Standing in the midst of altars and temples, where every suggestion of genius and every resource of art had been pressed into the service of the popular faith, he commenced with a comcome pliment, such as he could truly pay: “Ye such as he men of Athens, I perceive in all things that you are much given to religious exercises." We have, indeed, in our version the words "too superstitious," as though the apostle began not with a commendation but a reproach. We need not, however, remind any thoughtful reader of Scripture, especially if he has access to the that original, or to a good commentary, these words are a mistranslation, and that the sense is as we have given it. Messrs. Conybeare and Howson, in their admirable "Life and Epistles of St. Paul," render, "All things which I behold bear witness to your carefulness in religion." The preacher having thus by courteousness ness gained the ear of the assembly, proceeded, by an argument of exquisite simplicity and bes beauty, to place the Gospel before them as no strange and uncongenial thing, but that for which their own hearts were unconsciously yearning. For again and again in that proud city, by men delivered, they knew not how, from some heavy sorrow, or longing for some good which they felt that none of the deities whom they invoked could bestow, there had been erected altars with the inscription, "To an unknown God."* Thus were they ignorantly worshiping one who nevertheless existed, and looked with fatherly compassion upon them. And Christ was the desire of all nations, though full often the magnetism that drew them operated in the dark. Like flowers which turn at midnight towards the East, though rayless darkness still surrounds them, and chill vapour bows their petals down, so these heathen in their ignorance and sadness had east many a dim, yearning look to that quarter of the heavens where the apostle now points out the uprising Sun of Righteousness with healing in his wings. Thus to the Jew was Christ the end of prophecy, to the Gentile the fulfilment of unconscious aspiration. What is he to the Englishman now? Are there not amongst us yearnings as deep, anticipations as vague though lofty, as ever stirred the heart of Hebrew or of Greek? What mean the thousandfold reiteration of the phrasesTruth, Freedom, Enlightenment, Progress ? What such popular staves as.—— "There's a good time coming"? Often, often, are these uttered by unhallowed or godless lips, but for all that there is a meaning in them which only the christian can descry. The true messenger of God to our age will read in them confessions like those which the bewildered Athenians inscribed upon their altars, and will go forth with the declaration, "What ye ignorantly seek, that announce I unto you." Thus in all the truth of the expression will the Gospel be preached. With or without formalities, in or out of the churches, the appeal and the power will be the same. To all the greatness which the age can boast, to all the defects and sorrows which it mourns, will the Gospel prove appropriate; and our own times will furnish illustrations more glorious than ever, how infinite in adaptation, how omnipotent to bless, is "the simplicity that is in Christ." Tales and Sketches. THE ODD GIVER. "I was on my way to your house," said Mr. Newton to Mr. French, as they met, one pleasant morning. "I shall be on my way there myself in a moment," replied Mr. French. "I have a little business with Mr. Wilson-it will not detain me a moment. Step in with me, and we will walk along together." They were now opposite Mr. Wilson's counting-house. As they entered he looked up for a moment, motioned them to be seated, and kept on writing. They had not to wait long, for the document was soon finished, carefully folded, and put in a tin box. He then lifted his spectacles and erested them on his forehead, and turning to his visitors, said, "Excuse me for having kept you waiting, gentlemen." Mr. French knew that no time was to be lost in entering bupon the business for which he came. “I called," said he, "to see if you wished to subscribe anything towards helping Hazen to rebuild his house." "It was burnt down a day or two ago, was it not?" 66 Yes, and he lost everything he had.", "Why, was not his house insured?" "I think it is doubtful whether he ever heard of such a thing as an insurance.company. You know he is a very quiet man, and has made what he has, or rather what he had, by working by the day." "I don't know anything about him. Do you know him well?" "Yes, I have known him for many years." "Is he industrious and honest ?" "Yes." "Does he keep the Sabbath?” "Yes, very strictly. He is a member of the Methodist Society." "Have his brethren done anything for him?" "Yes, something; but they are all poor." T” That several such altars existed appears tolerably plain from ancient allusions. |