must not be forgotten, that day has not yet come. The trial is now at the private bar of conscience. Remember the design of that trial. If God can cast you there, then mercy triumphs. It seems to many a formidable process, which is to terminate in their destruction, if the charge of robbing God is sustained. No; it is a prosecution instigated at the suggestion of our Redeemer; to be tried at this tribunal, that we may there be brought to self-condemnation. If he succeed, and can bring us to cast ourselves on the mercy of God, we may be pardoned and saved. What is then your plea in view of the evidence your Judge-Advocate has brought? Is your plea, "Not guilty?" Wherein have we robbed God?" If you persevere in that, there is but one course left for him. He will transfer the cause to the King's Bench. Before that august tribunal you will be put upon your defence for your life. And "who may abide the day of his coming!" Shall it be a contest of force? Man is weak, and God is strong. Shall it be a contest of argument? God is wise, and man is a fool in his wisdom. Shall it be an appeal to right and the public conscience? God is just, and who can contend with him and prosper? Now, a door of hope is open. Then, only that of destruction will be seen by each guilty wretch that has dared to meet the issues of that trial on the merits of the case. Let each one then plead "Guilty." We cannot contest the principle with God. His ownership is a fact incontestable, a right inalienable, a jewel of his crown with which he will not part. The agreement of robbers to think their nefarious course a justifiable, a respectable, and honorable mode of promoting their own interests, does not make it such. None of us can offer an apology for our defaulting, even as plausible as that of these Jews. There is not the semblance of a reason why we should not personally and thoroughly consecrate ourselves to the service of God; why we should not daily be bringing him the tribute of obedience, of praise, of service; why we should not actively and efficiently be engaged in building up the kingdom of Christ in the world. To say that it did not belong to us to do it, is to vindicate the principle of covering a fraud by denying the obligation to do with an employer's property that for which he entrusted us with it. Let us rather plead "guilty." There is then a personal necessity for this day, as well as a public necessity; a need of it for men in the church, and men out of the church. It should be a season of earnest heart-searching inquiry into our condition and prospects as individuals; a time of personal humiliation, confession to God, and sincere repentance.

2. We see too, if there be such a general ground for this charge, that each one has a personal interest in the moral and religious condition of the community and the nation.

There are personal considerations, as well as more exalted and disinterested motives, for our considering the public guilt of robbing God as a personal burden to our consciences.

We have participated in the general guilt. Our example as unfaithful stewards, as purloiners of the King's revenue, has had its influence. We are a part of a community of robbers-not robbers of men, but infinitely worse!-of God. By our selfish appropriation of time, property and influence, others have been emboldened. We have encouraged the young to sacrifice the precious fragrance of their youthful affection at the shrines of fashion and of folly. It seems to us a horrid spectacle, to witness a heathen or a Catholic mother carrying her little child to mutter a Latin charm before a wooden statue. But has there been no such desecration among us? Has not our example taught them to give their best time and their best affections to the world, whose "friendship," God has declared to be "enmity with" him! Just so far as we have been carrying out the selfish principle of appropriating God's property to our own uses, we have been encouraging others to do the same. No one can tell what a restraining influence his example would have exerted, had he been faithful to God and to his own sacred trust. Our spirit has silently spread itself like leaven, affecting other minds, where we have not suspected it. We have withheld from the world a mighty restraining influence of prayer; which withholding has contributed to increase the general wickedness. We have been thoughtless, when we should have been mourning over the prevalent dishonesty. And this day the community in which we live, the nation of which we form a part, is just so much the more guilty for our having done wrong, and neglected our duty.

And moreover it meets us personally at another point. We shall share in the judgments which God may send upon the guilty community. The day of national retribution has not ceased with the Jewish polity. It is showing itself in the reeling and staggering of those communities into whose hands God is now putting the cup of his indignation. Our turn may soon come. There are more instruments of punishment reserved for the ungodly. Neither the deluge, nor the fiery storm on Sodom have exhausted them. Babylon and Tyre, Jerusalem and Laodicea, may not stand alone in their terrible history. Men seem to think that, because civilization and art are advanced to such high degrees of perfection and power, we are getting out of God's reach. He used to shoot with a bow and arrow. But we are now arrow-proof, and can laugh, like Leviathan, "at the shaking of a spear." Hear the language of a modern lecturer: "Pain is the unhappy lot of animal vitality. It has borne down the strongest intellect and sapped and withered the affections. The metaphysician finds in it the secret springs of one half of human action; the moralist proclaims it as the impending retribution of terrestrial sin; the strongest figure of the Bible condemns man to eternal flames; and yet this 'dreaded misery, the worst of evils,' now lies prostrate at the feet of science." Would you have conceived of it, that science has deprived God of the power of punishing sin! And what is the wonderful discovery? It is another

Babel. They were wonderful men that discovered masonry, and built a mighty tower, to keep the next deluge God might send, "prostrate at the feet of science," and the scientific builders. Now, it is chloroform. So that, in the language of the lecturer, "physical suffering is not the mundane retribution of transgression. The meaning of which is, we have gone so fast and so far, that those old instruments of God's justice cannot overtake us. I should not here have introduced the remarks of one man, if I had not regarded them as embodying the spirit of the age; as one of the symptoms of that pride which goeth before destruction, that haughtiness which precedes and procures a fall. God can punish in numberless ways-in our bodies, our families, our estates, our minds, our country. Oceans of chloroform cannot extinguish the pains of his dreadful judgments. And they who make such boasts, may have some fearful proofs of this in their own experience.

Zeal for God, and for our country too, urge us to look into this subject, and repent and confess for the church and the nation, as well as for ourselves. We need hardly turn our thoughts to the wrongs of the slave. We need scarcely think of the wandering, weeping, broken-hearted red man. We need not recall scenes enacted on Sunday morning in the closing of the session of our great national legislature. Our police records, the condition of our juvenile population, the robbery of holy time, a thousand signs infallibly indicate that we are provoking God at least to withdraw his blessings. But I think the most alarming of all symptoms is that which has been already mentioned--the diminished dread of God's anger. To save the world from moral ruin, he must break up that atheism. And if material suffering be needed, he will send it.

But why dwell on that? There is a still higher motive to repentance, personal and national. It is suggested in the context : "Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that there may be meat in my house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Can this nation rise to the height of believing that its glory is, to be faithful stewards of God's property? The doctrine of God's exclusive ownership is very unwelcome to selfishness. It would break up all worldliness, if fully believed. But it leaves a perfect and ample sphere for human ownership. It gives dignity and sacredness to that ownership. It takes away the danger and meanness of being rich; the temptation to an excessive desire of wealth. It constitutes the true value of time, talents, wealth, accomplishments, attainments and influence.

Could we contribute to produce this conviction in the public mind; to produce a change in men's estimate of themselves, their time, their possessions, their influence, their responsibility, what a blessed result would certainly follow. Until it does take place, God must have a controversy with men; it cannot be otherwise. Hear it, ye

stewards of the most high God, ye are robbing him, and justifying your fraud. You must change your opinions, feelings and practice. Then the blessing will come. Heaven's windows shall be opened. There is a glorious river of blessing on the other side; but it cannot get through. The curse has closed the flood-gates. Repentance and obedience will open them. That is the design of this day. Let it be the beginning of changes in us, and it will be the beginning of changes in God's dealings with us.

VIII.

CHRISTIAN UNION.

BY REV. STEPHEN H. TYNG, D.D.,

RECTOR OF ST. GEORGE'S (EPISCOPAL) CHURCH, NEW YORK.

"Whereas there is among you envying, strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?"-1 COR. iii. 3.

THERE are many very important principles of truth laid down in this divine testimony, which deserve our most serious consideration. The fundamental principle evidently is, that unity is a mark of true religion;-and that unity in true religion is the work of God, the mark of God's people, and the proper object of pursuit, for those who would honor him and build up his spiritual Church. On the other hand, divisions among the professed supporters of the Gospel are represented as carnal in their origin and influence, and conformed only to the will and habits of men, in the course to which they lead. It is unity in religion, of which the Apostle speaks, other subjects being wholly excluded from the consideration. And it is unity especially, in the religion of the Gospel, other shapes and forms of religion being equally shut out of view. This religious unity among men, is the end, to which the real operation of the Gospel tends. And wherever the Gospel rules alone, unmolested and unperverted by earthly influence, and the corrupting plans of men, the actual result of its operation, is this unity of which the Apostle speaks. Wherever there are seen and found, divisions in opposition to this Christian unity, and envying and strife attending upon these divisions, and arising out of them, they are, and they are to be considered, the evidence of the interference of another power, entirely diverse from that of the Gospel, and operating in direct opposition to it. If among any bodies of professed Christians, or within any such body separately considered, there be divisions, envying and strife, we are therefore authorized to say of them, "they are carnal, and walk as men."

The Saviour's purpose and prayer for his disciples was, that they might be one. One, in the strictest and most entire sense, in which intelligent and independent beings could be united;—" as thou Father in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." That his real disciples are therefore one, and must always be one,