strange name-the "king of terrors"? And in Christ, death becomes our minister again: "Ours," as St. Paul says, "with all other things." The Cross of Christ has restored to death something more blessed than its original peacefulness. A sleep now: not death at all. And will not a changed heart change all things around us, and make the worst consequence of our own misdoing minister to our eternal welfare? So that God's forgiveness, assured to us in the Cross of Christ, is a complete remedy for sin, acting on its natural consequences by transformation indirectly; on its moral results directly, removing them.

To say,

Lastly, let us learn from this the true aim and meaning of Miracles. Let us attend to the account our Master gives us of the reason why he performed this miracle. Read verses 9, IO. Thy sins be forgiven thee," was easy, for no visible result could test the saying. To say, "Take up thy bed and walk," was not apparently so easy, for failure would cover with confusion. He said the last, leaving the inference—If I can do the most difficult, then, of course, I can do the easier. Here we have the true character of a miracle: it is the outward manifestation of the power of God, in order that we may believe in the power of God in things that are invisible.

Now, contrast this with the popular view. Miracles are commonly reckoned as proofs of Christ's mission, accrediting His other truths, and making them, which would be otherwise incredible, evidently from God. I hesitate not to say that nowhere in the New Testament are they spoken of in this way. When the Pharisees asked for evidences-and signs-His reply was, “There shall no sign be given you.” So said St. Paul in his Epistle to the Corinthians—not signs, but "Christ crucified." He had no conception of our modern notion of miracles-things chiefly valuable because they can be collected into a portable volume of evidences to prove that God is Love: that we should love one another that He is the Father of all men. These need no proofs, they are like the sun shining by his own light.

Christ's glorious miracles were not to prove these, but that through the seen the unseen might be known; to show, as it were, by specimens, the Living Power which works in ordinary as well as extraordinary cases. For instance here, to show that the One who is seen to say with power, "Take up thy bed and walk," arresting the natural consequences of sin, is actually, though unseen, arresting its moral consequences. Or, again, that He who bade the waves Be still" in Galilee is holding now, at this moment, the winds in the hollow of His hand. That He who healed the sick and raised the dead, holds now and ever in His Hand the issues of life and death. For the Marvellous is to show the source of the Common. Miracles were no concession to that infidel spirit which taints our modern Christianity, and which cannot believe in God's presence, except it can see Him in the supernatural. Rather, they were to make us feel that all is marvellous, all wonderful, all pervaded with a Divine Presence, and that the simplest occurrences of life are miracles.

In conclusion. Let me address those who, like this sufferer, are in any degree conscious either of the natural or moral results of sin, working in them. It is apparently a proud and a vain thing for a minister of Christ, himself tainted with sin, feeling himself, perhaps more than any one else can feel, the misery of a palsied heart, for such an one to give advice to his brother men; but it must be done, for he is but the mouthpiece of truths greater than himself, truths which are facts, whether he can feel them all or not. Therefore, if there be one among us who in the central depths of his soul is conscious of a Voice pronouncing the past accursed, the present awful, and the future terribleI say to him, Lose no time in disputing, as these scribes did, some Church question, "whether the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive sins;" nor whether ecclesiastical etiquette permits you to approach God in this way or in that, way-a question as impertinent as it would have been for the palsied man to debate whether social propriety permitted him to approach the Saviour as he did, instead of

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through the door. My Christian brethren, if the crowd of difficulties which stand between your soul and God succeed in keeping you away, all is lost. Right into the Presence you must force your way, with no concealment, baring the soul, with all its ailments, before Him, asking, not the arrest of the consequences of sin, but the cleansing of the conscience from dead works to serve the living God;" so that if you must suffer you shall suffer as a forgiven man. This is the time! Wait not for another opportunity nor for different means. For the saying of our Lord is ever fulfilled, "The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force."

RECONCILIATION BY CHRIST

COLOSSIANS i. 21.-" And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled."

THERE are two, and only two kinds of goodness possible: the one is the goodness of those who have never erred: the other is the goodness of those who having erred, have been recovered from their error. The first is the goodness of those who have never offended; the second is the goodness of those who, having offended, have been reconciled. In the infinite possibilities of God's universe, it may be that there are some who have attained the first of these kinds of righteousness. It may be that amongst the heavenly hierarchies there are those who have kept their first estate, whose performances have been commensurate with their aspirations, who have never known the wretchedness, and misery, and degradation of a Fall. But whether it be so or not is a matter of no practical importance to us. It may be a question speculatively interesting, but it is practically

be ours.

useless, for it is plain that such righteousness never can The only religion possible to man is the religion of penitence. The righteousness of man cannot be the integrity of the virgin citadel which has never admitted the enemy; it can never be more than the integrity of the city which has been surprised and roused, and which, having expelled the invader with blood in the streets, has suffered great inward loss.

Appointed to these two kinds of righteousness there are two kinds of happiness. To the first is attached the blessing of entire ignorance of the stain, pollution, and misery of guilt-a blessed happiness; but it may be that it is not the greatest. To the happiness resulting from the other is added a greater strength of emotion; it may not have the calmness and peace of the first, but, perhaps, in point of intensity and fulness it is superior. It may be that the highest happiness can only be purchased through suffering and the language of the Bible almost seems to authorize us to say, that the happiness of penitence is deeper, and more blessed than the happiness of the righteousness that has never fallen, could be.

There are two kinds of friendship, that which has never had a shock, and that which after having been doubted is at last made sure. The happiness of this last is perhaps the greater. Such seems to be the truth implied in the parable of the Prodigal Son: in the robe, and the ring, and the fatted calf, and the music, and dancing, and the rapture of a father's embrace: and once more, in those words of our Redeemer, "There is more joy among the angels of heaven over one sinner that repenteth, than over ninety and nine just persons that need no repentance." All these seem to tell of the immeasurable blessedness of penitence. And this, then, is our subject, the subject of Reconciliation.

But the text divides itself into two branches: in the first place, Estrangement; in the second place, Reconciliation. Estrangement is thus described: "You that were sometime" (that is, once,) “alienated and enemies in your mind

by wicked works:" in which there are three things. The first is the cause of the estrangement-wicked works; the second is the twofold order; and thirdly, the degree of that estrangement; first of all, mere alienation, afterwards hostility, enmity.

And first of all, we consider the cause of the estrangement-"wicked works." Wicked works are voluntary deeds; they are not involuntary, but voluntary wrong. There is a vague way in which we sometimes speak of sin, in which it is possible for us to lose the idea of its guilt, and also to lose the idea of personal responsibility. We speak of sin sometimes as if it were a foreign disease introduced into the constitution; an imputed guilt arising from an action not our own, but of our ancestors. It is never so that the Bible speaks of sin. It speaks of it as wicked works, voluntary deeds, voluntary acts; that you, a responsible individual, have done acts which are wrong, of the mind, the hand, the tongue. The infant is by no means God's enemy; he may become God's enemy, but it can only be by voluntary action after conscience has been aroused. This our Master's words teach, when He tells us, "Suffer little children to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of Heaven." And such again, is the mystery of Christian baptism. It tells us that the infant is not the child of the Devil, but the child of God, the member of Christ, the heir of immortality. Sin, then, is a voluntary action. If you close your ear to the voice of God, if there be transgression of an inward law, if you sacrifice the heart and intellect to the senses, if you let ease or comfort be more dear to you than inward purity, if you leave duties undone, and give the body rule over the spirit,—then you sin; for these are voluntary acts, these are wicked works.

The result of this is twofold. The first step is simply the step of alienation. There is a difference between alienation and hostility in alienation we feel that God is our enemy; in hostility we look on ourselves as enemies to God. Alienation" you that were something alienated”—was a more forcible expression in the apostle's time than it can be