away from that which is pure and true and good. Thou dost behold if, by any enticement, we take hold of that which is unjust or wicked. Thou dost behold what efforts we make in turning back the course of past wrong. Thou dost witness whether we watch and strive; whether, as good soldiers, we fight manfully the battles of the Lord. And if thou beholdest, it is to blame and to condemr-and yet to pity and to spare. Thou wouldest not that any should perish. And all thy thoughts, even in punishment, are for recovery, that men may live; that the worst may become better; that they may not die. O Lord! it is of thy compassion, it is because thou sparest with infinite love and mercy, that we are alive, and that there are such beautiful prospects open to us. We know thy goodness, and are witnesses of it all the way through life. We have had occasion to bear witness to thy great goodness to us, not deserving it; but deserving, contrariwise, thy sharp strokes, and thine indignation which consumes. We have been the recipients of bounty instead. Thou hast healed rather than destroyed. Thou hast restored us to a better mind. Thou hast succored us in times of temptation, and accepted our repentance when we had fallen; and thou art drawing us with great grace and kindness. Oh! that all thy mercies might lead us rather to repentance than to hardness of heart and to presumption in further evil.

We beseech of thee that thou wilt strengthen in us all things that are good, and weaken the power of evil. Grant unto us not alone that life which we have in ourselves-lend us of thy life. Give to us the blessedness of thine own soul, to lift us higher than we could fly; to strengthen in us all things that are virtuous. Reveal thyself to us from day to day, that we may walk as seeing Him who is invisible. May we never be weary in well-doing. May we not be weary in rebuking the evil which is round about us, or in laboring for its extirpation or limitation. May we seek to promote that which is good, and to overcome that which is evil with good. Deliver us from all malign passions. Deliver us from all hatred that is not a holy hatred. And we beseech of thee that thou wilt teach us how to love as thou dost, and how to hate as thou dost.

Bless, we beseech of thee, the land in which we dwell. Accept our grateful thanksgiving for all thy mercies to us in years gone by. We remember the hours of darkness and of trouble of soul; we remember the hours of anguish and of fear for the things that should come; and behold thou hast overruled by thy good providence all things for the establishment of justice, for the furtherance of liberty, and for the promotion of intelligence. And we pray that that good work which thou hast instituted, and which is inspired and directed by thee, may go forward.

Pity the poor and the ignorant. Deliver them from those that would consume them. Grant that they who malignantly would destroy those that are weak may themselves be caught in their own nets, and perish in the pit which they have digged.

Grant, we pray thee, that all over the world the strong may be strong in righteousness, and that those who lift themselves up for iniquity may be beaten down small as the dust.

Advance thy banner, O God of justice and of truth! Give hope to those that are desolate. To the striving and down-trodden people everywhere manifest thyself. And may great light arise to those who sit in darkness. Overturn everywhere, and overturn, until he whose right it is shall come and reign. Fulfill thy gracious promises. Gather in Jew and Gentile. May the whole earth in a blessed day ripen at last.

And thy name shall receive the honor and the glory forever and forever. Amen.

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON.

OUR FATHER, we beseech of thee, let thy blessing follow the word spoken. If we are lights in the world, may our light shine. If we are the salt of the earth, let not the salt lose its savor. If we are thy soldiers and are put upon watch as sentinels, let us not leave the enemy to creep in upon our own friends to their destruction. May we be good soldiers, fearless, faithful unto the

very end, doing battle for the right.

Give us, we beseech of thee, clearer views of thine own self. Every day, in prayer, take us

into thine upper ocean, and cleanse us there. Wash us in those waters which shall return us to earth clean indeed. May we live in such communion with thee that nothing can dwell with us that is offensive to thee. Purify thy churches. Give tone, and courage, and perspicuity, and perspicacity to thy ministering servants. May they be the voice of God in this community. Brace up the loins of those that are members of our churches. May they come out of their sentimentality and look fearlessly upon the duties that are incumbent upon them in these days.

We beseech of thee that thou wilt make men more fearless, more true, purer, nobler, more patriotic. Give to us better rulers. Give to us better representatives. Pardon our judges, and take them out of the way!

We beseech of thee that thy name may be glorified among the poor, and among the needy, and among the weak that are overborne in the struggle for life. Grant that power may not be tyrannical. Grant that great capacities may not be given to avarice and corruption.

Lord God, we beseech of thee to look upon our nation with mercy, and save us from our own infamous passions, and from the evil courses upon which we are bent. O Lord! give car, that all men may see that our salvation is of thee.

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. Amen.

"BUT ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel."-HEB. xii. 22-24.

THERE is a sublime contrast in this whole chapter between the position or privilege of a worshiper under the Mosaic dispensation, and that of a worshiper in the new kingdom of Christ. We should remember the great tenacity with which the Jews held fast to their historic faith; how, over and above pride and worldliness, there was what I might almost call a relentless tenacity in their religious convictions ; and how the apostles found everywhere occasion to argue with their countrymen to detach them from their childhood faith, and bring them on to the ground of a true Christian faith.

It was in the very course of such a labor as this to persuade the Jew that he really gave up nothing. Therefore it was said, "Christ is the fulfilling of the law." You do not abandon the Jewish law, the Mosaic economy, when you accept Christ. You fulfill it more perfectly than when you leave Christ out, and attempt to follow Moses.

Still further than that, the apostle argues: You lose nothing. Under the old dispensation you were constrained; you were under bondage. We ask you not to abandon that in any such sense as to be recreant to its real spirit, but to accept it in the larger presentation which it has in the Lord Jesus Christ; so that you shall have a thousand times more. You lose nothing; you gain every thing.

And in this passage, so dramatic, so striking to the imagination of every one, he says, "Ye are not come," as Christians, " unto the mount that might be touched;" "ye are come unto Mount Zion." Ye are not come unto the mount" that burned with fire;" nor are ye come

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"unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest." Ye are come unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem."

The dearest place, to the imagination of the Jew, that there was on earth, was old Jerusalem, hoary and grand. And yet ye are come to a higher Jerusalem than that, says the apostle. "Ye are not come to the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more. Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect." Ye are not come to that sight which was so terrible that even Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and quake;" but ye are come "to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” Do not fear, therefore, to accept Christ; for it gives you all that you had before, and a thousand times more. It advances you out of the twilight, and out of the storm-clad horizon of your past faith, into the glorious illumination of a more spiritual worship, where all forms of fear and ghastly motives of terror cease, and where companionship, and divine guidance, and infinite blessings, await you.

This construction (and it is the true one without a question) will require us to understand then, not as it is usually, and, I fear, carelessly understood, that Christians are coming to the "New Jerusa lem," to the "general assembly," to the "church of the first-born," to the "spirits of just men made perfect." It is the enunciation of the fact that men are in congress and in conjunction with all these influences as soon as they come under the cope and canopy of the new dispensation. Not, Ye are coming to these things; but, ye are come. It is in the present. It is a part of the privilege which belongs to the earthly ministration of your faith. Ye have come. The very fact that you spiritually are leaning on Christ Jesus gives you advent and access. Every true disciple affiliated with Christ belongs to this great household.

It is true, to be sure, that we do not complete on earth this union to that full and perfect junction which lies only in the future; but the critical idea that on which the very argument of the apostle turnedthe argument of comfort with us, too-is this: that, by virtue of our union with Christ, now, already, we have come, according to the mea sure of our faith, into the grandeur of this company. It is ours now. Let us see, then, some of the particulars of it.

What is the privilege of a Christian? What is the condition in which he is living, if he only knew his own interest? For a man may be an heir, though he does not know it. He gets no good of the

knowing, but the property is coming to him just as really as if he did know it. Men pity him, and say, "How much happier would he be if he knew it!" And so it is with Christians. They are heirs-heirs of a wonderful inheritance, which is already so far dispensed, portions of which are ministered in advance in such a way that, if they but knew it, they would be transcendently happy.

"Ye are come "-the apostle says in the first place-" unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem" -God's home. This conveyed to the Jew an image of the place more vividly than, perhaps, any other figure in the world. To us it ought to convey a very vivid image, if we say that God takes us to his own home. We are surrounded by it. We touch it, or are touched by it. We are brought into such intimate relations, if we be true Christians, with Christ, or with God, that, whether we know it or not, the kingdom of God is within us or around us. If we are yet under the dominion of sense to such an extent that we can not appreciate it, nevertheless, the spiritual fact remains that faith, working by love, and bringing our souls into a willing union with Christ, brings us, also, into the very midst of the great host and household of the living God.

That is not all. We are brought "to an innumerable company of angels "—now invisible, nevertheless real; for the declaration is not that when we die we shall go where angels live, but that when we come into the new dispensation, by the true spirit of faith, we then come to the "general assembly;" to the "church of the first-born ;" to an "innumerable company of angels." You have come to them. Where? It does not matter whether you see them-they see you. It does not matter whether you recognize them, so far as your comfort and use of them is concerned. The mere fact, itself, stands. I did not see, early in the morning, the flight of those birds that filled all the bushes, and all the orchard trees; but they were there, though I did not see their coming, and I heard their songs afterward. It does not matter whether you have ministered to you yet those perceptions by which you perceive angelic existence. The fact that we want to bear in mind is, that we are environed by them; that we move in their midst. How, where, what the philosophy is, whether it be spiritual philosophy, no man can tell, and they least that think they know most about it. The fact which we prize and lay hold of is this: that angelic ministration is a part, not of the heavenly state, but of the universal condition of men; and that, as soon as we become Christ's, we come not only to the home of the living God, but to the "innumerable company of angels."

We come also (and as we draw near to this, our knowledge begins to kindle sympathy) "to the general assembly and church of the first