to be read "without note or comment," without emphasis or emotion on the part of the teacher; either as if it were a charm or talisman, or else an official manifesto, like the Riot Act; or, perhaps, a sop to satisfy the unreasonable demands of the superstitious. My brethren, let us hope that the love and tenderness which every earnest teacher must feel for those he teaches will do something to neutralize the effect of such a scheme as this; that though there be not written over every school-door in our land the words, "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve," the truth may assert itself in ways we have no idea of; and that He who overrules our errors and our failures may lead us to see that apart from Him there is no health, or prosperity, or education for a people.

SERMON XIX.

THE LAW, A POWER OF DEATH.

(MAY 8, 1870.)

"And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death."-ROM. vii. 10.

IN that beautiful collect which we have just repeated, we have asked Almighty God to give us grace, when we read or hear His Holy Word, not merely to read and hear it, but to do more— to mark or note it, to learn it, and to digest it inwardly. It would be well for us, in this fastliving, rapid-reading, quickly-forgetting generation, if we remembered always the necessity of our nature implied in the words of this prayer, and bore in mind, when we read the Bible, or come to church in expectation that something novel may be said upon some well-worn text, that there is nothing to be gained from doctrine, old or new, unless it has been, in the language of our collect, inwardly digested, and

assimilated with our heart and spirit. This digestion, or assimilation, requires time for its operation; and it is just this time which, it seems to me, people are becoming less and less inclined to give. Religious knowledge is sharing the fate of other knowledge, in an age remarkable for the prosecution of inquiry in all directions by the able and the few, and the superficial examination of the results arrived at by the ignorant and the many.

The historian spends his life in re-investigating some past period in our annals; and we give an odd half-hour to the perusal of his facts or conclusions in the columns of a review.

The man of science achieves, by patience and a faithful obedience to facts, some new conquest over Nature, or insight into her laws; and straightway his results are circulated through the civilized world, and men think they are the wiser for them. And thus is diffused through the world that "general knowledge," which has been, as truly as happily, termed "particular ignorance." Nor, I repeat, has theology escaped the same treatment, with the same result. have come to require that what demands their attention should be made easy and short, as well

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as novel. They are willing to be taught, but are not prepared to take the trouble to learn. The teacher must do his part; but the disciple refuses any part save to listen and to criticize. The preacher of Christ's gospel has this formidable difficulty to contend against, as well as others more obvious and more often indicated. He must be brief, or he will tire; he must be novel, or he will fail to interest; he must make himself easily understood, or take the consequences. Most of us are fond of quoting words, supposed to be Scripture, which imply that God's truth is so plain and easy that "he who runs may read." The actual passage, of which these words are a garbled abridgment, is to be found in the prophet Habakkuk, the second chapter and the second verse: "And the Lord answered me and said, Write the vision and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it." Not that he who runs may read; but that he that readeth it may be able to run his course. A quite immense difference, and one earnestly calling for our serious attention.

These are very commonplace reflections, my brethren; and the advice which they suggest is equally trite. In religious knowledge, as in

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all other, dare to be ignorant of many things that you may have time and brain and heart for a few things. It is possible to have a large general interest in religious topics to read much about theology, and keep the attention alive for new light upon the subject-and yet not to have mastered those elementary facts of the soul, and God's message to it, which form the sole key to all theologies and systems, and without which all other evidence for the truth of God's revelation is utterly worthless. It is possible, as St. Paul reminds us, to be for ever learning, and yet never coming to a knowledge of the truth; and this because truth is not arrived at through the comparison of Christian teachers, or the weighing of new doubts and new solutions of doubt, but by testing God's Word in its relation to ourselves.

These thoughts were suggested to me as I reflected upon the chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans which we have heard this afternoon. This chapter is, to the eye which scans its surface, mystical in the extreme. It uses familiar words, but evidently in some esoteric sense, which to the speaker conveyed some idea, but which to one who has not gone through his experiences is incomprehensible.