God gives them to us that we may freely enjoy them. If He gives us intellect, He expects us to make use of it, in religion as in other matters, but this first, 'The Kingdom of Heaven.' This first, the senses regulated; this first, the intellect disciplined; this first, the spirit emancipated from thraldom, left free that it may rise into the glorious liberty of the children of God.'

44. To the Christian life as Christ taught it, a certain thoroughness, which can alone spring from enthusiasm, is absolutely indispensable. We want it in this church, we must have it here as well as at home; we don't want to be sitting here like so many torpid human beings, saying our lukewarm prayers and listening to Our miserable sermons, and muttering our miserable complaints; but we want to feel, while we are within these walls, that we get some real impulse for the holiness which we talk so much about, that we are receiving into ourselves principles which shall enable us to be working members of the divine polity; children, not only by right, and not only in name, but children indeed of the Father which is in heaven. This is the hungering and the thirsting spirit; this is Christianity.

Now, observe that Christian enthusiasm penetrates far beneath the actions of a man. A man may be a moral man, and yet, lacking enthusiasm, not a Christian. He may do the duties of the law in sincerity, but may not have the law of life in his heart. Again, he may be a keeper of the law, and yet a hypocrite; punctilious

outward performances, but a whited sepulchre ; un

clean inwardly, with no attempt to purify himself, with no spark of love, no inner hungering and thirsting after righteousness.

A man may abstain from violent, unjust, or lustful actions for many reasons; he will abhor such actions for only one reason-because he is filled with another impulse, because he is a member of the divine society, because he is seeking first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

It was not that Christ told you that you must regulate your impulses. But He told you that on occasion you must expel them. This seems contrary to everything I have preached for the last four years, but I will explain. Christ directs that when natural and innocent instincts are roused, with a view to their gratification at wrong times, they must be treated as though they did not exist. You must not turn away with sorrow or regret from the temptation; it must be to you as though it were not. The thing which you are tempted to do may be innocent and natural when it comes before you in a moral way, but when it comes before you in an illicit manner, it must not merely be put aside, but must be regarded as non-existent. The impulse, under these circumstances, must not be tolerated; it must be destroyed. Let me give you a homely illustration. If I see a fire in winter, and I come in cold, I am glad, and I proceed to warm myself without any scruple; but if I come in and find a fire on the floor, and my furniture in flames, I do not say that I will keep this fire burning, I will tolerate it, I will let it gently smoulder a little

longer on my grand piano, on my library table, in my book-shelves; but I say that it ought not to be there at all. I will sweep it out of the room, I will extinguish it; it shall be to me as though it had never been. The fire in my house must be limited to my grate, or must be put into my stove. It must not be found upon my stairs, it must not consume my property, it must not be permitted to burn my house down. So when you find that your affections are setting fire to that temple of your body which belongs to the Holy Ghost; when you are preparing to carry a moral devastation into God's world, and to spread ruin amongst your fellow-creatures, Jesus Christ confronts you with such difficult and thoroughgoing words as 'Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart;' and 'if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee;' and 'if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from thee.'

Then, again, decisively, 'you must not be angry with your brother without a cause.' It is not that you are to give way a little, but you must not be angry at all. Christ does not say that you are never to be angry; there are just causes of anger; Jesus Christ looked about Him and was 'angry.' But He says, 'without a cause ;' that is, where there is no just cause. You must not indulge your own petulance, jealousy, irritability, obstinacy, or violent temper. Such feelings must melt like snow before the breath of love. A powerful influence ever near must evaporate hatred, causing it to melt into thin air, be as though it was not. That is what is meant by

enthusiasm a new principle of life in the heart. If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. It is of no use to trifle and parley with bad passions. It is of no use to mitigate their force a little here and there, and be for ever tinkering up the moral sensibilities. When a strong man armed keeps his house, you want a stronger man to come in and take away the armour wherein he trusts. You want God to come and take possession of your hearts, and take away the unclean out of your house, and give you new and vigorous inspirations, in order that you may 'hunger and thirst after righteousness.' As Christ says, 'If a man love me he will do my works, and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.'

But Christ did not only teach the love of righteousness. He taught, in a very peculiar sense, the love of man. Our relations with our fellow-men are to be based upon this last ruling passion. The ingenious author of 'Ecce Homo' has called it the 'Enthusiasm of Humanity.' Jesus Christ not only taught us to aspire to God; He also taught us how to aspire to man. He said we were to love everybody! Impossible, you reply; and yet Christ's Kingdom was founded upon that principle. He taught that without it the love of God itself was impossible, and right action to man equally impossible. In what sense could this be true? of what nature is that love which may be given to everybody? Let us see. There are different kinds of love. A man may love his nation or country; we call that patriotic love. A man may love an individual; his affections are then drawn out by qualities in that

individual. Everybody here loves some one individual. Everyone understands the nature of special affection. But there is another love, it is a kind of love which may be bestowed even upon loathsome human beings-people whose manners set your teeth on edge-the uncultured, the unrefined, the disagreeable; to such persons we affirm that it is possible to apply a certain universal affection, even such a love as was the love of Christ. How can these things be? Well, it is possible—it is even essential to the true Christian life. Let us understand this more

clearly. The young look kindly and trustfully upon everyone; the kindly feeling may soon turn to suspicion, deception may soon dry up the fresh springs of love, but at the bottom of each heart there is a natural disposition to love; and this remains with most people in some kind of force to the end of life, and comes out in the strangest ways, sometimes in the hour of death. When you see the greatest criminal or the most disgraceful character on his way to the gallows, there is apt to rise a feeling of pity in your heart. 'Well,' you say, 'he too was once an innocent child; perhaps he fell by little and little, as I might have fallen, as I have fallen; perhaps he was found out, and driven from bad to worse, as I have not been found out; perhaps he was tempted above measure, as I have never been tempted; I cannot judge him, but I wish I could save him.' What speaks there? Nothing short of the enthusiasm of humanity-this impossible sentiment-this love of the man in all men; something has drawn your heart to the man because he was a man ; the voice of nature has betrayed you into loving him.