SERMON VII. SERMON X. SERMON XI. YOUTH, AND ITS QUESTIONS TO-DAY. Matt. xxviii. 20.- Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the YOUTH, AND ITS HOPE OF PROGRESS. Matt. xxviii. 20.- Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the SERMON XXII. SERMON XXIII. Eccles. xii. 1.-' Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou SERMON XXIV. Psalm viii. 4, 5.-' Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory SERMON XXVII. THE GLORY AND WORK OF OLD AGE. Luke ii. 29, 30.-Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: for mine eyes have seen thy salvation' SERMON S. THE FITNESS OF CHRISTIANITY FOR MANKIND. 'Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.'Matt. xiii. 31, 32. WE are told, in one of the Arabian stories which charmed our childhood, of a fairy tent which a young prince brought, hidden in a walnut-shell, to his father. Placed in the council-chamber, it grew till it encanopied the king and his ministers. Taken into the court-yard, it filled the space till all the household stood beneath its shade. Brought into the midst of the great plain without the city, where all the army was encamped, it spread its mighty awning all abroad, till it gave shelter to a host. It had infinite flexibility, infinite expansiveness. We are told in our sacred books of a religion given to man, which, at its first setting forward, was less than the least of all seeds. It was the true fairy tent for the spirits of men. It grew till it embraced a few Jews of 10 B 6 every class: and men thought, 'Now it will do no more; it can never suit the practical sense of the Roman, nor shelter beneath its sway the subtile intellect of the Greek. To do one is improbable, to do both is impossible.' Curious to say, it did both. It made the Roman more practical; it made the Greek intellect alive again. When Rome fell, and during her long decay, some may have said: This boasted religion may suit civilisation, but it can never adapt itself to barbarism.' But it expanded in new directions to embrace the transalpine nations, and took new forms to suit them with an unequalled flexibility. Soon it covered Europe with its shadow, and in a continent where types of race are oddly and vitally varied, it found acceptance with all. It has gone abroad since then, and reached out its arms to the Oriental, the African, the American tribes, and the islands of the seas. And however small may have been its success at present, there is one thing in which it differs from every other religion-it has been found capable of being assimilated by all, from the wild negro of the west coast to the educated gentleman of India. I speak of the teaching of Christ, not of unyielding Christian systems; and nothing is more remarkable in that teaching than the way in which it throws off, like a serpent, one after another, the sloughs of system, and spreads undivided in the world, and operates unspent, by its own divine vitality. Now it is this extraordinary power of easy expansion, this power of adapting itself to the most diverse forms of thought, which is one strong proof of the eternal fitness of Christianity for mankind. This is our subject. |