"He shall see of the travail of His Soul,

and shall be satisfied."

By the late

Rev. William Dow, a.m.,

LONDON, W.1.
H.J.Glaisher, 55 % 57, Wigmore Street,
1924.

SERMON.

"He shall see the travail of His Soul and shall be satisfied."

Isaiah 13 liii, II,

God seeth the end from the beginning. The things that shall be, lie before Him as plain and open as the things that now are; and all that shall happen between, whether in respect of the future, they be causes of it or hindrances, whether they be natural events or acts of the will of intelligent agents, whether they concur or jar with one another, they are knowd to Him, and before they come to pass He is able to declare them.

The means and the end, the course and the goal, the labour and the reward, the conflict and the victory, the suffering and the crown, are together present before Him.

And for this reason, wheresoever in the word of prophecy, the sufferings of our blessed Lord are described, the Holy Ghost looks forward to their fruit, and fails not to speak of their reward.

In predicting His humilation, Holy Scripture presents also that dignity, and glory, and might, and lordship, unto which He should be exhaled, and into the participation of which He should have authority to exall others also-others,-that is to say, such as should believe in Him.

Out from amidst the lowest notes of the prophecy of His affliction and struggle rise the sublimest anticipation of His triumph.

Hope,--sure and unshaken hope, breathes through the strain of sorrow and discouragement; the cry of uttermost desertion terminates in a psalm of praise. Psalm 22.

Hope breathes through it, such as cannot be disappointed, for it is the Hope of the Spirit; it is God's confidence concerning Him whom He hat chosen from among the people,--His servant whom He upholdeth.

And the predilection was uttered and recorded for Him that was to be so tried-for Him to remember in the day of His desertion and desolation, that the Word of God might be a light for His feet and a lamp for His path; and that He might not fail nor be discouraged till He had set judgement in the earth.

And through Him it was written for us, for through Him we have inherited that treasure of the 0ld Testament Scriptures, having been called to the fellowship of His sufferings, and having to be made conformable unto His death.

Or rather,are we not called unto the fellowship of himself, and therefore of His suffering and of His triumph, and under the former into the fellowship of His comfort.? That which was written for Him and for the help of His faith, has, by Him,been handed forward to us.

Through Him the prophecies of the 0ld Testament speak to us as they spake to Him that we may have light as He had -knowing the purposes of God, the manner of God, and the analogy of His ways.

With unveiled face we look into then. He hat given us eyes that we may see, With unveiled face we see in that glass the end---the glory of the Lord---not the sufferings only, but the glory also that should follow. That we, like Him, may not fail nor be discouraged, but may be patient unto the end, and wait for the salvation which He shall bring ,with Him in the day of His appearing.

We are with Him made intimate with that which God knoweth and hopeth for, that we also, under all circumstances, may hope and anticipate His triumph.

We have this day celebrated the travail of His soul.-(Preached on Good Friday)-

We have made it our meditation, and have sought to feel somewhat of its depth and of its vastness; as expressed in the simple narrative of the gospels,--immeasurably the most touching expression of those facts.

Acting's they were of the divine persons, laying the deep foundations of a full revelation of God, through the redemption and exhalation of man.

Centuries had passed over the earth, teeming as it were with generations at enmity with God, whose cry was a mingled invitation of every stroke of judgement.

The sword had slept in its scabbard, the sins unvisited, and the wrongs unavenged.

But when among them a man was found who was God's fellow, against Him the sword awoke, and God smote Him for He had laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Through men God smote Him, they not knowing what they did, though fulfilling the very words of their prophets. Had they known, they had not done it.

But they were but the instruments. They recede from our view. We look not upon an act of violence done by men.

Faith sees in it the divine love, the divine jealousy and holiness, and understands before what a mighty presence of God, both acting and suffering on the earth it was, that the earth shook and darkness covered it.

Who of us has not felt this day the utter inadequacy of all human words and meditations to reach or to express such facts as these, or to utter the feelings that they bring in upon our spirits, above all intellectual imagining or communication.

And having now so engaged our minds, it is consistent with the example of Holy Scripture, and with the completeness of the spiritual exercises of such a day, that we who are admitted into the light and counsels of God, and called to such a fellowship with His Son, should advance to the consideration of His hope,-that we may be enabled also already to hope and triumph with Him; for it written: "He shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied".

When it is said, He shall see of the travail of His soul, it means that He shall see the fruit, eject, and consequence of it.

And when it is said, He shall be satisfied, it means that the entire end which was proposed to Him, and which He set before Himself in it, shall be attained.

Satisfaction signifies the repose of him who sees at last that his labour hasnot been in vain, that the end proves worthy of the means and adequate to them, that an ample proportional fruit has been attained, that the purchase has been equal to the price.

Such is the way and the measure of that satisfaction which our Lord shall have in His work.

"Shall have", for even now His triumph is still future.
For it was not Himself alone that He considered in looking forward to His reward.
The joy that was set before Him, was not that personal advancement into which, in His humanity, He was exalted, when angels all principalities were made subject to Him as man; and when, because He had descended, He was set of God to be the replenisher of all things.

It was not merely His own resurrection, a return to be glorified with that glory which He had with the Father before the world was.
Eve these things were only a means to an end.

It was not merely that at His name every knee should bow, of things in heaven and in the earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confess that He was Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

He was thus exalted that He might give repentance and remission of sins;that He might become a Saviour.

The travail of His soul which He shall see is the many whom knowledge He shall justify-the many sons whom He shall bring unto glory.In them He shall see it, and more remotely through means of them.

The Holy Ghost saith; "It became Him for whom are all things and by whom are all things in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings".

If it became Him to bring many sons unto glory, it became Him to do it in this way. The two terms were not disproportionate to each other.

That which should be attained by so mighty a movement of the divine persons should have such a value and profitableness in it that the movement was becoming.

It became Him because of His love, it became His justice, it became His wisdom that thus it should be. There was in it no triumph of one attribute over another no prodigality which infinite wisdom could reprove, no facility which infinite holiness could challenge; there was a common rejoicing of all God's attributes in their common and harmonious exercise.

"It became Him". The Holy Ghost declares that it became Him.As far should sin reign unto death, for thereby grace should reign through righteousnes unto eternal life things, by Jesus Christ our Lord.

The bringing of many sons unto glory was the immediate object which the Son of God proposed to Himself under His sufferings.

"Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone, but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit". "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me ".

To receive a portion with the great and to divide a spoil with the strong was that which He proximately looked forward to. His Father gave Him that as His immediate reward, and as the material of His farther perfected satisfaction.

The spoiling of principalities and powers, the redemption of men from their iniquity, the reconciliation of men who were enemies of God, the purifying of a peculiar people into Himself who should have His zeal for good works,the making of us heirs according to the hope of everlasting life, the being ahle to present unto God a seed that should serve Him, and to say: "Behold I and the children whom God hat given Me are for signs and for wonders from the Lord of Hosts."These things were set before Him.

Some immediately attained in His very cross itself; some given Him of God on His ascension to heaven; some continuously and progressively wrought out the Holy Ghost in one individual and in another through the sacraments and ordinances of the Church; some, yet future, left for us to labour and suffer for in our measure as fellow-workers together with Him and others awaiting the perfecting of the saints, and the revelation of the Lord.

For, the worth of that which He laboured for, is by no means as yet seen.The value which God's love put upon man is seen; butt the value of the sons when they are brought into glory is yet unknown.

It may be, that eternity alone shall give scope for its disclosure.The redeemed creature, renewed in the image of Him which created him after His own likeness, perfectly serving Him, made a sharer of His wisdom, a living fountain of holiness and truth, a bearer and distributor of the treasures of God, shall only when He has exhausted the infinite well-spring of that goodness which he shall be the channel of communicating -have disclosed lso the worth of that for which the Son of God travailed, the worth of that with which He is satisfied.

The satisfaction of the Son of God is in His Church, and in the use which He shall be able to bring out of His Church.It shall be a continuous and eternal satisfaction.

When He shall first have prevailed to purify unto Himself His peculiar people and made them zealous for those works by which the will and the mind of God are revealed; then shall come the period in which they shall be put to use.

In their perfection He shall be satisfied. He shall declare His work to be very good. He shall have delight in beholding the perfect image of Himself reflected by them. He shall have delight in the possession of such a body, so complete, so harmonised, so instinct with divine life, endued with suchapabilities, fit for such uses, through means of which He shall be able to do things so mighty for the universal fulfilment and revelation of His Father's will.

He shall have delight in the possession,-and then shall come the use which He shall make of those who in He has perfected and filled with the life of God, and with the wisdom, and light, and holiness of God; whom He shall set as kings and priests, to carry forth the blessing, and the defence and support of His government, to bring up unto Him the worship of all creation, to make His kingdonl rule over all, and to cause every creature which He has made to yield that due measure of homage and recognition of God, which He the great High Priest shall present unto the Father.

By them shall the redemption be made good to all that creature which was made subject to vanity through the sin of man.

And-as in the natural, He has fixed a centre around which all should turn, by which all should be bound together, and from which all should be enlightened; so, to the Church shall every region of the moral and sensitive creature look, by the Church be held up, through the Church be enlightened with truth, and warmed with divine love, and bound together in the highest and most comprehensive of all unities--not the unity of a pantheistic absorption of Creator and creature into one, but, a unity within which shall live and move, and fulfil their individual callings and functions, creatures in all possible varieties, in exquisite order and arrangement none by another encumbered; some ruled by instinct, some ruling their own free will, some conscious of their own blessedness and knowing the source from which it flows, some emblems of happiness by their mere being; with different ranges of action and amounts of power; yet all harmonised, mutually accommodated, penetrated by one will, serving one large object; a perfect organisation, huge and manifold yet symmetrical, moving together in one common continuous serving and honouring of God through Jesus Christ.

Such are some of our feeble conceptions of that which shall satisfy Him.
"All things are yours, and yea are Christ's, and Christ is God's;", that sentence reveals to us the order under Christ in which we and all thingsshall find our position, and freedom, and use, and profitableness, and joy; by by which also God shall at last be fully revealed and glorified; as it it written, "Then comet the end, when He shall have delivered up the kingdom unto the Father, and when God shall be all in all."

But we must not lose ourselves in the unpractical meditation of these things, Let the thought of them fill us with the emotion of hope, stretching far beyond the immediate and transitory scene of our own circumstances and trials, yet supplying courage and zeal, steadfastness and endurance, and withal earnest desire for the advancetnent of our sanctification day by day, and for the completion and preparation of the Church for the use of her Lord.

Let then fill us with hope--a hope not imaginary or illusory, but fulfilling itself with divine certainty, for it is the hope which the Lord Jesus Christ entertains, and which shall be fulfilled unto Him'--such a hope as gives not anxiety to him that cherishes it, but rather steadfastness and rest, excluding imaginations, and speculations, and the wandering of the desire and every high thought that exalteth itself out of fleshy objects, and out of purposes inferior to the purpose of the Son of God;--a hope that is true, elevating, purifying, gladdening on every time of its renewed meditation or remembrance.

Shall we not labour to make sure our calling and election, to be the nearest parts to Christ in that divine organisation ?.

Shall not we have the godly ambition to attain that prize, and feel unable to content ourselves with anything short of it ?

Shall not we reckon the present suffering nothing to compare with this exceeding and eternal weight of glory ?.

We are called to share in that which satisfieth Him--in which He shall see a just, an ample recompense for all that sell sacrifice and--by us incomprehensible--suffering, which we have this day been endeavouring to enter into and to meditate.

And if for Him ample and just, how much more, how surpassingly ample a recompense for us; in consideration of which, what labour shall we refuse, what self-denial, what daily mortification of the flesh, what loss of all things?

Let us learn from Him what objects to propose to ourselves, and let us seek to place our satisfaction in nothing short of that with which He is satisfied.

We are daily tempted to rest content in something inferior to that--it may be in some object of interest which God has not proposed to us at all, or at least in something which will never be truly accomplished except as a consequence of the accomplishment of that which He has proposed to us;--objects of human philanthropy, in themselves excellent, desirable, worthy of attention and labour, but to be attained through the attainment of something larger than themselves; not in themselves yielding just contentment, nor satisfying the soul of a spiritual man.

As the children of God, and joined unto Jesus Christ, there is set before us, for our desires and activities to embrace, something far higher, wider, more effective, yet containing, and most surely and permanently bringing in their train and providing for, all these lesser beneficial results --a thing that can be proposed to us consistently with truth--such as can apply to the real conditions of human nature, to which the powers conferred are adequate, because they are able first to change those conditions of human nature by which all mere schemes of men are made abortive.

We see men around us, the best and the most highly gifted, whose zeal and diligence, whose self denial, and patience of labour, and endurance of obloquy are worthy of all praise, suited also to rebuke our coldness and selfishness, and our defectiveness in the practical and aggressive devices of mercy and love that ought to characterise our life.

We see them wasting immense energies and vast means, sinking at last under their labours, overburdened, unsatisfied, and leaving the world as they found it.

They have not known, or at least have not borne in mind that the depths out of which flow all the present miseries of man and of the creature are too profound to be reached by any remedies merely material, social, or political; and that the divine rest and contentment, without the possession of which all thing are at best only degrees of misery, are things which no distribution of wealth can supply, which no justice of laws, no wisdom of arrangement, can bring about.

Palliatives these are, and sedatives such as a physician may do well to administer to his patient labouring under a disease which the best skill suggests no means of remedying--worthy therefore of the heathen, and ina lesser degree of the Jew; but they, or the results attained by them, are not anything in which Christian men should see of the travail of their souls, or the fulfilment of their present calling.

They are not actions or results in which Chistian men should feel satisfied. Things they are, not to be lost sight of, or passed by, or slighted, or discountenanced, but rather to be cheered on and encouraged in others, and by us, with our more large and certain light, to be prudently devised and zealously executed according to our opportunity.

For the divine law of form and subordination is not meant to quench the movements of individual hearts, or the activity of evenly man's hatted, but rather to uphold and give scope for them, and to ensure for them abundant
fruitfulness.

Only we are not to be satisfied in anything that surpasses not the reach of natural philanthropy.

The object of our zeal is that the travail of His soul may be seen by Him-that the many sons may be brought unto glory--that the times of the restitution of all things may come, which "God hat spoken of by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began."
We are elevated from our natural, thoughts and objects, and from the cares that are urged upon us through the actual events and circumstances of the condition of the earth and its populations, into the meditation of the evil that lies at the root of it all, meditation of its effectual remedy, and of the application of the remedy.

Others labour, urged by the same external calls, invited, beguiled, by fallacious hopes; if un-discerning, puffed up with delusive triumphs; other wise, disappointed, too late undeceived, or at best rewarded with results that are exceptional, transitory, and unsatisfying.

Shall not we labour more than they all--more truly, more heartily, and with more unconquerable perseverance--for the larger thing that cannot fail, knowing, as we do, what health and cure it brings with it for all the labouring and heavy laden, whether under the greater or the lesser, the temporal or the spiritual evils of humanity ?.

In all that men can do, who act not as fellow-workers with God, and as members of His Christ, there mingles the discomfort of uncertainty, and the consciousness of an experiment.

We are comforted under every effort and amid all possible sacrifices, by the certainty that the travail of His soul sha1 nor be in vain.
And here it behoves us clearly to distinguish between that which has already been bestowed upon us, and that which we yet hope for.

We do Got labour or suffer that the creature may be redeemed and that God may be reconciled to man, for these were perfectly procured by the sacrifice of the Son of God, and they were accomplished and fulfilled unto Him.

But we labour that the redeemed creature may be brought up into the faith and liberty of its redemption, and into the rest and quietness of that reconciliation which God has proclaimed to all men.

We seek to lift men up into the attitude of saying-"If when we were enemies, we were reconciled unto God by the death of His Son; much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.".

Planting men on this firm ground, we seek to advance them into the knowledge and reception of all the things that are freely given to us of God.

And for ourselves, we do not labour that we may become the sons of God, for this we have already been graciously made, but that, as sons we may abide in God's family, and not lose the inheritance which belongs to us as His sons; that we may be sons of God in character, in visible likeness to Him; and that we may love Him, and not fall short of obtaining the kingdom prepared for them that love Him.

We possess already the beginning and groundwork and pledge of all that unutterable and inexhaustable satisfaction which God has set before us as the members of Christ.

In our present communion with Him, we have a lasting communion that stretches forth over all His acting's and experience as man, even to His full reward. He that hat begun a good work in us by making us His sons, wilt perfect it unto the end by making us sharers in His satisfaction.

And might not this present condition of sonship, in which we already stand, of itself content us under all sufferings and sacrifices to which we may be called ; for even therein has grace much more abounded.

That measure of the things procured for us by Jesus Christ, into the possession of which we have already entered, might well make all self-denial and mortification seen nothing.

St. Paul counted all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.

This personal benefit he felt to be more than enough to compensate for the loss of all things.

If so, shall we refuse any sacrifice when we consider this, that we shall be advanced to receive, not the compensation of any travail of our souls, but to share in that which shall be reckoned sufficient to countervail the travail of the soul of the Son of God; to share in that which shall satisfy Him, who sacrificed for it, not the flesh and its case, not the inclinations of men or this life alone-which we are called to do-not the approbation of men, but the light of His Father's love; who sacrificed for it that which surpasses all human appreciation, but which God does appreciate, and which God adequately compensates.

With such measure of recompense shall we be rewarded, with this far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

While therefore, we give daily thanks to God for that with which He has already enriched us, and while we wait continually with all devotion and faith, upon the commemoration which He has appointed of His expiatory sacrifice, let us also, standing upon that foundation of the one offering of the Son of God upon the Cross, and assuring ourselves by the seal of the Holy Ghost which God bath impressed upon us, continually lay hold upon the great things that are proposed to us, forgetting that which is behind and stretching forth to that which is before.

Those who are zealous for anything, although they may be comforted and encouraged, yet they are.

Not content with that which they have actually attained; they stretch out after all that has been promised; they regard it as the consummation; it gives value to all else; compared with it all else are but steps and degrees of approach; and as objects to which we draw near do gradually assume their true magnitude, and tell upon our senses and imagination by outcoming details, and by features of reality and of interest which we could not at a remoter distance take knowledge of --so every advancing fulfilment of God's purpose should bring us nearer to that final one, and make more intelligible His revelation of the future, and enable us to read with increasing distinctness the features of the glory that is about to be manifested at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

Consider, then, for what end you have received anything. Let us beware of so estinlating it as to rest in that which God has now given us.

Jesus descended, that He might begin His labour; but we have been exhaled by Him that we might begin ours.

We have been placed in a position of rest and deliverance. We are seated w ith Him in the heavenly places.

Through faith we feel at rest, and content, and joyful; the former anxieties are extinguished, and the labours for ourselves are past, the troubles of an accusing conscience are ended, uncertainty about the future is dissipated, we have become conscious of that relation to Christ by which we were made the children and the friends of God; and a new temptation has come in - even to enjoy the blessedness of our position, to take our ease in the security of our new circumstances, to introduce our old fleshly principle of selfishness into the new scene, in which we are no longer to know any man, or even ourselves, after the flesh, and to commence our Sabbath before it can be said that the new creation has been finished.

But we must not yield to this temptation. True, God no longer demands the labour of servants, but He does expect the services of friends.

It is no longer: "Do this and live", but it is: "Do this, for already yea live,"

It is no longer: "What shall I do to be saved ?", but it is: "What shall I do, for I have been saved ?".

It is no longer: "If thou wouldst enter into life, keep the commandments".but: "Yield to the life that is in you, and do all that it may utter itself".

It is the working out of our salvation-not with the fear and trembling of uncertainty, as bondsmen who know no superior but the taskmasker, without friend, or helper, or comforter,-but with the fear and trembling of those who would not forfeit unspeakable gifts, or estrange the best of friends, or grieve the faithfulest of comforters, or fall back again into darkness and distress, or come short of the promise that stands before them.

Our calling is to offer ourselves to God, not mentally alone, but really; not merely in our daily prayers and as an act of worship and formal devotion; not in word as they are dutifully to be used because so appointed in the services of the Church; but with the whole consent and habitual mood of our will and purpose of our hearts, as being Christ's property, and not our own, with our time, our powers, and all that we are, in all things to be in His hands.

Yet with all this-knowing these things as we do, it may be that the activities and labours of the others of whom we have spoken, are an admonition for us, and a reproachful testimony against our negligence.

Is our zeal like theirs or do we surrender ourselves to meditation and quietist; Their plans, and devices, and activities are their thought night and day, and out of the abundance of their heart their mouth speaketh.

They both do and suffer in fulfilment of what they feel to be their duty.Zeal for their Lord, in the measure in which His will is known to them, burns, not as a smouldering fire, but as a visible flame, stirring up and laying hold of others.

Jesus sat down over against the city.He looked upon it, and He mourned and wept over it. But He did more; He went down and gave Himself for the people over whom He had wept. We look upon the city of our God; we see the blindness and captivity of God's children; we see sorrow and destruction at their door.

Do we then sit still on our Mount of Olives, and think it enough to weep and to prophesy.?

Or perhaps we rejoice and compare ourselves with our brethren.But how shall we go down into Jerusalem and suffer for it ?.

Can any man, even moderately versant in the condition of the churches of Christendom ask such a question ?.

Rather, can any man living in this city, with its unreached, unsearched-out, unreclaimed wastes of humanity, think there is nothing for him to do ?.

Can any man who knows how little the calling and the gifts of God are known, even to the best of men and the leaders of the people, think that there is nothing for him to do ?. But the way ?.

That which men are much set upon, they will find a way to execute or to help, or at least to attempt.

Do any of us forget our meat and drink ?.

And if our meat and drink be to do the will of our heavenly Father, and to finish His work, shall we forget that ?.

Rather, shall not zeal for the will of God make a man indeed forget to eat his daily bread ?

Self-indulgence is the snare of this generation, and especially of this land-self-indulgence, sloth for all except temporal, necessary pursuits, whose reward and gain are palpable.

Personal ease, luxury, and comfort, first in the bodily region, and then transferred to the spiritual region-that is the character of our life in this day, Work, except for the day labourer, and the man who is fairly embodied in the organism of business, and who must move onwards with his load, because another with his load is ready to crush Him if he pause for breath-work.

I say, except for such as these, is some fashionable, or tasteful, or amusingwork.

Education of children is converted into a play. We must relieve even the dryness of learning by a thousand devices. And we would make the obedience of Christ a similarly pleasing, and sparing, and self-indulging thing. Let the gospel he preached to the poor, but let us not come in contact with their sordidness and rudeness.

Let vice be reclaimed, and let wretchedness be relieved; but let us be spared from looking upon profligacy and disease, with its loathsome sights and its cries of agony.

We cannot, will not give our back to the smiters, nor our check to them that pluck off their hair. We hide our face from shame and spitting. Let no rude nails pierce our hands or our feet. Enough that we lend an ear to your touching narratives and that in this way of sentiment the sword should go through our souls.

Yes, we sit, and we look from our mount, and frown under the shade of our green olive trees, and wonder at the course of the world, of our neighbours, and of our kindred, and that men should be so blind, and that the Church should take so little hold, with its clear truths, and with that treasure of deliverance and enlightment which it offers to men.

We wonder, and we grieve and sigh; but we go not down into the city, to hear and to suffer with it.

We are not willing to go down, and we devise not the way to do so.And shall God accept us so, and permit us to enter into that which shall satisfy Jesus ?.

We need to learn, each of us-some more, some less--to learn fittest the willingness, next the way of following Jesus in his sufferings.

Our priests and our deacons need to lead us down to tread the streets, and to frequent the market-places, and to penetrate the dwellings of that city--once named the city of the Lord---the city of righteousness and of peact---now Babylon, abstractly to do so, but as men who have been taught the right movement of their hearts and wills, and the right path of their feet, and the due employment of their hands.

"Blessed is that servant whom his Lord, when He comet, shall find so doing ".

We believe that He who dwelt among us, who shunned us not, but who touched and tasted all the extremes of our wretchedness, who bare our
griefs and carried our sorrows, and who died for us, is on the very eve of coming again to the earth.

Shall we be found, then, thinkers merely, and talkers, or, like Him, doers of the work ?.

If He find us meditating only, and observing men, judging men and wondering over them, shall He recognise us as followers of Him who went about doing good, and who did not draw back from the cup, the cross, or the grave ?.

It is well that you are premised to redeem from the time of worldly engrossnlent an hour each evening, in which, with all the Church, you may make supplications and prayers for all men; and that you rescue from the period allotted to repose another hour for the same occupation; and to know that not a day goes by without there being renewed before God, according to the last command of Jesus Christ, the remembrance of His expiatory sacrifice.

This is good and satisfactory, acceptable to God, and profitable for the
advancement of His purpose.

But there ought to be, in addition to these, the prompt and voluntary
expression of hearts filled with love and gratitude, with filial piety towards God, and with fraternal sympathies--the ready and the helpful hand for the weary and oppressed, for the perplexed and the despairing that are around you.

There should be brought up the suggestions of experience, and the devices of the liberal heart that longs to see the gospel made known to and embraced by all, and the Church so completed that Jesus may no longer tarry.

There should be the utterances of faith, and hope, and worship, of comfort, and of encouragement, bursting from the full heart in all your intercourse.

Men look to be edified by your daily natural discourse. They have a right to demand it of you. Not by solue theological, or, what is still more disgusting, ecclesiastical technicalities, but by the natural utterances of living and true men.

That seal of the Holy Ghost was given not for light only within yourselves, but for giving light; not for being blessed, but for blessing; not for increase of capacity, but for increase of action.

Through you should the men among whom you live be drawn to the light,made conscious of there being such a thing as light, have their own darkness revealed to them, and be led to seek unto Him who is the Enlightener.

Having such hearts-like to the Lord's own, filled with the light, and love, and holiness of God, ye should know, without outward persecutions or temperal losses, what it is to be in the fallen world as He was, and what it is to fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ for His body's sake.

In the assurance of all necessary support, of present strength, in the certain hope of victory, in steady prospect of those divine views, purposes, and objects which have been set before us as the people and Church of the living God, let us bear patiently the time of our sacrifice, forgetting ourselves for others as He did, resting on the foundation of His sacrifice, and laying hold of His unutterable reward.

Now unto the Father, &c.