into the bonds of matrimony, and yet often how carelessly you do so. Ought you not to pause and ask, 'Am I worthy to be married, and to set a-going a new generation before I myself have become better?' Therefore this doctrine of original sin, looked upon with our modern light, by the light of science and experience, is a most valuable, searching, and true doctrine; profitable for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be thoroughly furnished for all good works.

These, my brethren, are the methods of the much-despised liberal theology, the theology which is said to be without positive doctrine, without moral discipline, without practical application, and without spiritual life.

Do you find in the Article on the Trinity, the light and heat which modern thought lends to it by a simple restatement? You do not.. Do you find in the dry bones of original sin, the breathing humanity which is set before you in a full modern statement of man's weakness and sublimity? You do not. Accept the modern method which I have adopted—accept the love of truth as your inspiring principle, as your faithful though stern guide—and then-you who have found the spirit may let go the letter, and you who love the letter may take back the letter, and find it changed, and transfigured with a new spirit after the power of an endless life.

Ninth Discourse.

ON PREDESTINATION,' AND 'THE CHURCH.'

DELIVERED NOVEMBER 26, 1871.

OU who are strong, or who think yourselves strong, ought to bear the infirmities of the weak; you must not be impatient with other people whose difficulties are not your difficulties. Some of you may have no idea when you speak of hating doctrinal sermons, of the extent to which many people's practical life depends on what we call doctrine. There are those who, if they are not sure what doctrine they do believe, cannot begin to live a good life, cannot, in other words, begin to build without a foundation, and therefore at a time when foundations are generally unsettled, we must try the restatement and resettlement of a great many questions, once thought beyond dispute.

Of course, those persons who have settled all such questions for themselves in the old way cannot understand the difficulties of a new age; and of course there must be in this assembly before me some who are naturally

enough impatient with anybody who attempts to restate or presumes to resettle a question which has once been stated or settled authoritatively. And yet every great reform or improvement in the Church or in the world has turned on this same restatement and resettlement of what was once held to be established truth. One political system has had to give way to another; one theory of political economy, finance, social order, art, science and mechanical invention, has been modified or superseded by another; and I am bound to add, looking at Heathenism and Judaism, Judaism and Roman Christianity, Roman Christianity and Protestant Christianity -I am bound to mark that established religious truth is no exception to the law of incessant change and modification; in a word, one form of religion has been superseded by another-one expression of religious truth by another. 'He taketh away the old that he may establish the new.'

83. It is easy to determine what men will not agree to, but it is not so easy to determine what men will agree to. It is quite certain, in the first place, that if a clergyman comes to an ordinarily well-educated man, to a man who has been taught to think and act for himself, and says to him, 'You must believe this or that doctrine because I, the clergyman, tell you to believe it, and I, the clergyman, tell you to believe it because it has been authoritatively so settled by the Church ;'-if the clergyman is sanguine and simple enough to come with such a message to an intelligent man, the intelligent

man will say, 'Is that all?' and will turn upon his heel with something very much like a sneer. I do not say the man is justified in cutting the conversation so short; he might with great benefit to the clergyman continue it, but he does not like the way in which it begins; that is to say, he will not take his creed, or his doctrines, merely upon Church authority. He will tell the clergyman, and will tell him truly, 'You know we have heard all about authority, but that has been set aside by your own Church. Have you not put up the Bible against the authority of the Church of Rome? and thus proclaimed—although you did not mean to proclaim it-the right of private judgment to substitute one authority for another. If the doctrine you ask me to accept has been handed down, and taught simply upon the authority of the priest, as the spokesman of the Church-pardon me-but you must see on your own principles as a Protestant clergyman, that I cannot accept a doctrine merely on the authority of the priest.'

With those of our clergy who regard the Reformation as a misfortune, and sigh for an organic reunion with Rome, such arguing would of course be out of place. Logically, their theory of doctrine is identical with that of Rome, and as the keenest intellects the party ever possessed have admitted this by joining the Roman Church, it is not for us further to establish the position. We merely repeat that Church authority for any doctrine is hardly now considered equivalent to a proof that a doctrine is true.

'If

84. But for Church authority Protestants have substituted Bible authority, and that is another and quite intelligible position. You love the Bible, and you say, the doctrine can be proved out of the Bible, I will believe it to be true.' And when the clergyman, laying aside his Church authority, takes up his Bible and says, 'Well, I will prove this to you out of the Bible;' perhaps fewer intelligent people turn away from him, they know experimentally the preciousness of the Bible, and although they have not got very clear ideas of how it ought and how it ought not to be used, yet such is their reverence for it, that they will listen to the Bible when they will not hear the Church; but even then, when it turns out that the clergyman is not going to give them spiritual food, but has merely got some view about Hell or Election, which he is going to prove with texts, many turn away disappointed; they have a kind of misgiving that it will not do that it is not to the point—that the Bible is less useful when used like that than in almost any other way.

And the instinct is a true one. We love the Bible, we believe that it does contain eternal truths, but when you speak of proving your doctrine with texts out of the Bible, we confess to a difficulty, for throughout the world every Christian sect appeals to the Bible, and in different hands the Bible can be made to prove all sorts of contrary doctrines. In short, the Bible is no longer the great instrument for the inculcation of the spiritual life, but the armoury out of which opposing sects choose weapons to fight each other with; therefore it is difficult