he who has power to kill the body is welcome to that victory, since Christ has obtained for us the salvation of the soul.

There is a profound and beautiful apologue in one of our earliest English authors-more profound, perhaps, than the teller of the story knew -of a time when the plague was raging in a certain town, and three revellers, one of whose comrades had been struck down by the destroying angel, set forth, "flown with insolence and wine," to find Death, and wreak their vengeance upon him. They have not gone far, when they meet with an old man enfeebled with age, himself waiting hopefully for the deliverer, whom they have come to meet and slay. The rioters demand of him where Death is, and he tells them that if they will go into a certain wood, they will find the Destroyer resting beneath a tree. They follow his direction; but beneath the tree they find, not Death, but a heap of gold, which some terrified man, who had fled from the plague-stricken town, had left there in concealment. The revellers straightway forget the object of their search, in the excitement of their new discovery. They at once seize upon the prize; and in the greed and jealousy it develops they compass one another's death,

each falling into the trap he has laid for the other.

The narrator of this story appends no moral to it, save the commonplace warning against covetousness; but surely there lies in it a deeper truth than this. The seekers after Death found not the destroyer of men's bodies; but they found their real enemy, the destroyer of their souls. They went to search for Death; and they found Death indeed, for they found Sin. They did not find him who can destroy the body, but him who long before he kills the body may have destroyed the soul.

Here, for to-day, I must pause. I may return to the subject shortly; but, in conclusion, let me remind you that the Apostle Paul answers his own question. He asks, “Death, where is thy sting?" and he replies, "The sting of death is sin." Here, my brethren, is the explanation of that fear of death, whether shared by Greek or Roman or Jew. Not, as I have said, that they consciously foresaw the consequences of sin, but that they felt in themselves the disorder which sin creates, and knew themselves to be in part responsible for it. To go alone, without companion, without distraction from self, into the unknown future; to have to bear alone the responsibility of exist

ence this, whether consciously felt or only dimly conceived of, was and is the sting of death to all men. For this universal curse there is one remedy-in Him who took the imperfect nature of His brethren that He might fill them with His perfect spirit.

SERMON IX.

THE FEAR OF DEATH.

(Nov. 14, 1869.)

"Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as He is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not

made perfect in love."-I JOHN iv. 17, 18.

You will remember that we were considering last Sunday afternoon that "bondage" to the fear of death from which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews declared that Christ had come to set men free. I said that, though the writer was addressing Jews, he was calling attention to a fact which had a universal application. Romans and Greeks had experience of this bondage, as well as the seed of Abraham. The thoughtful men among them knew and confessed it. They acknowledged that unless the philosopher could be set free from this fear, he was not master of his fate, but a slave. And

I said that this fear of death was a different thing, and was seen to be a different thing, from that instinct of self-preservation which men Ishare with all other animals. Nature has implanted in every creature having life a love of life and a shrinking from death. The butterfly evading the truant schoolboy, and the stag turning to bay upon its pursuers, are exhibiting this instinct; but such innate fear of death cannot be called a bondage. Bondage is a state of existence requiring in those who feel its power gifts which only man, God's latest work, possesses, and that because he was made in God's image. To feel bondage as bondage, we must first be capable of memory and hope, and of aspirations beyond ourselves. It was the imprisoned servant of an earthly king who declared in lines. with which we are all familiar, that it is not stone walls which make a prison; and that where the soul and the affections are free, the birds which warble in the air how no such liberty. But before the time of Christianity, and in lands where the God of Israel was not worshipped, a bondage to the fear of death was possible; because, though God had not revealed Himself as He did to the Jews, as He has done to us, He was nevertheless the Lord of men's spirits.