per of our devotion. As in the course of our services we read the Psalms, we often find, following on some touching passage of sorrow or penitence, or mingling even with the voice of love, the burning words of indignation, and the cry for revenge upon enemies. Then, though our lips proceed, our thoughts pause. We repeat the words, in a strong historical and personal sympathy with the man after God's own heart, and yet we feel that such language, and such thoughts and feelings, are not those of the Gospel, or ours. We lay them before God in the congregation, and pray Him to put His meaning upon them. A meaning they have in His providential purpose, though that meaning may not be David's, or our own. To Him, the living God, all men live; not Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob only, but Moses, and David, and the Prophets; nay, every good wish and work, every noble aspiration, every true though imperfect prayer. And so we accept the utterances of the Old Testament writers, often not knowing precisely their force or import, (how can

we know it when we know not who wrote them, or when, or why?) but leaving them to God, and waiting for His interpretation. Thus, from the height of the Gospel, we look down upon the law, and, through the law, to the immensities beyond it. These vast and uncertain distances of space and time may dazzle and confuse us; but, if we are not faint-hearted, we shall not fear, for, as we gaze, we lean on the eternal Arm. Far below us move and preach those ministers, through whom the Old Jewish world believed. We cannot catch their voices distinctly; but they are ours. In Christ, all things are ours; life and death, things present and things to come; the unborn future, and the dead law, and the living Gospel; Paul, and Apollos, and Cephas, and not these alone; but Moses and David and Isaiah, and the authors of Joshua, and Judges, and Ruth, and other books; compilers, arrangers, transcribers; all are ours, and we are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

SERMON V.

CHRIST, THE CENTRE OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH.

Preached in Christ Church Cathedral, 16 Dec. 1860.

1 JOHN III. 24.

Hereby we know that he abideth in us, by the Spirit which he hath given us.

OUR reflections on the nature and purposes of Holy Scripture have, as they have proceeded, changed their form without any real change of their substance. We began by considering its Inspiration. An endeavour was made to show, that when the devout and humble Christian speaks of the Bible as inspired, his primary, though not therefore his only meaning is this—that through it the Holy Spirit of God speaks to his spirit. If

We

it be asked of what that Holy Spirit speaks, the answer is ready, Of Christ. The sacred volume, from beginning to end, finds it fulfilment in Him who is both the author and finisher of our faith. Is a further question made, through whom the Holy Spirit speaks? The general purpose of our answer is clear, though its details are not so definite. By the lips and the pens of the sacred writers God has spoken in time past; but He has spoken at sundry times and in divers manners. can perceive the unity of His plan much more easily than we can understand the diversity of His operations. And that which is most easy is also most important. Discussions as to the authorship of disputed books, the state of the text of Holy Scripture, the mental condition of its writers, and the like, are questions of quite the second order. Most Christians can never entertain them at all; and generation upon generation of Christians cannot decide them. On points of this kind, one age begins a discussion; and another finishes it, if indeed it finish it. Meanwhile, every faithful heart demands, within the

limits of its own few years of trial, the answer to another question-To whom does the Holy Spirit speak through the Bible? It is because we know the answer to this question, that we read the Bible in the congregation and in the closet. Through Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit speaks to us-to us, separately and collectively, to the individual and to the Church. And thus the Inspiration of Holy Scripture cannot be viewed practically apart from the work of the Spirit in the heart of the believer. That which Holy Scripture gives, we receive. Though not itself the light, or the source of light, yet round it as round a centre, dark and cold perhaps without the informing Spirit, is gathered much of the glory of Him, who lighteth every man that cometh into the world. The grace of the Holy Spirit does not depend upon it for existence; rather its own existence, as an illumining and lifegiving power, depends entirely upon the grace of the Holy Spirit. Its virtue we know by what it is allowed to do for us. We derive our conception of its inherent light and warmth from the light and warmth