not propitiated by our unmeaning sacrifices. The sacrifices. He asked for were such as He showed us in His Son: the sacrifice of our own pleasure and will when they were opposed to eternal right, when they did injury to our fellow-men; the sacrifice of life for the sake of truth and love; not the sacrifice to Him of His own gifts whereby He makes Himself known-the gifts of reason, and conscience, and human love. Nay, it is to these that He appeals. Why of your own selves judge ye not what is right?' said His Son. If a man love not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?' said His apostle. The God whom Christ revealed chose special men out of the world, not that they alone should be saved, but that they might be messengers to do His saving work on all; and he chose them not capriciously, but because they were more loving and true than the rest, and therefore better fitted for His work. The God whom Christ revealed was revealed as one who punished guilt, who would not spare retribution, but the punishment was to be remedial, and the retribution to be used as a means of salvation; as one who did not replace our effort by irresistible and imperial grace, but whose grace enabled us to work out, as under a free government, our own salvation, and demanded the effort of the soul, that we might become each a distinct person with a distinct character. And because allowing of this individuality and encouraging it, it follows that the obedience He asked was not a blind but a reasonable one, and that, if the life was like His Son's, intellectual error was not subject to damnation.

I need not dwell on all the points; but when this revelation was made, man was freed from fear and hatred of God, man could become at one with God, man was reconciled to God. And the gospel truth is this, that once a man really sees and

believes in God in Christ, he cannot rebel, he cannot hate, he cannot fear, he cannot be unreconciled to Him.

There is nothing left to hate or fear. Hate one whom we believe to be our Father in all the profound meaning of the word! Fear one who gives His very life for us! It is impossible. Once we believe it we are saved; saved, first, from our own ignorant and ghastly idea of God, which sets all our life wrong; saved, secondly, from our sin, because the true idea of God creates infallibly a life in accordance with it.

And now, in conclusion, and taking the principles we have just expounded as our key, has the idea which men have of God's anger no truth beneath its error?

Yes! this truth: that as long as a man does not know God in Christ, does not understand that God is love, and love Him as a father, he will think that punishment is anger, and this belief will make him angry with God. For love, exhibited in the process of his education, must often take the form of chastisement, and seem wrath to him because he does not comprehend its tenderness.

Suppose a man with a sore disease, and at the same time mad. The surgeon approaches with his knife to amputate the diseased limb and cuts deep and relentlessly. The sufferer sees no reason for the infliction of the pain, does not believe in the surgeon's kindness whose whole work seems to him mere capricious cruelty. It is so with the sinner who does not know God as a loving Father. His work to him is often anger.

But grant that he gains his reason, becomes conscious of his disease, desires to be free from it, and knows the surgeon's heart; his flesh quivers, his pain is bitter, but he understands the meaning of the suffering, and, though not one deep incision

is spared, he claims the surgeon as his friend, he recognises his work as the work of love, and, if some madman were to say, 'See how cruel; see how the man who said he wished your good is working you evil,' the sufferer would smile the smile of trust and pity. You mistake,' he would reply; 'I trust my friend's tenderness. I know his heart; it is I who pity you, if you cannot see his love.' It is so with the man who believes in the love of God his Father.

• The

So it was with David! No help for me in God! God angry with me! God forsaking me! No! he breaks out. Lord is my Shield, my Glory, and the Uplifter of my head.' I know I am being punished for my sin; I know I have done wrong to God and man; but I am not so lost as to imagine that punishment means that I have no help in God, and not that it means that He is with me, yes, more closely than in the days of my prosperity. Deserted by God. No! 'I cried unto God with my voice, and He heard from His holy hill.'

This is entirely splendid. This is faith overcoming the world. This is the trust which brings all the powers of the unseen to a man's side. This is the spirit which gives elasticity to life, and makes triumph out of misfortune. This is the spirit which transmutes punishment into strength, and sin into goodness. This is the spirit which, by believing in the eternal love of God and disbelieving in His anger, realises God as a Father and himself as a son, bound together by immortal bonds, which are knit closer by trial as well as by joy. This is the belief which makes a life and a character as noble as that of this old Hebrew king, who in these early times anticipated in experience the profoundest Christian feeling and knew by heart the God of the Christians before their Christ had come.

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IV

ORIGINAL SIN.

All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

ORIGINAL SIN is another of the questions which is brought before us by the recent judgment, and on which it is fitting that one who professes to be a liberal clergyman should explain himself.

Let me read to you the ninth Article:

'Of Original or Birth Sin.

'Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam, (as the Pelagians do vainly talk ;) but it is the fault and corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world, it deserveth God's wrath and damnation. And this infection of nature doth remain, yea in them that are regenerated; whereby the lust of the flesh, called in the Greek, ppóvnua aapkòs, which some do expound the wisdom, some sensuality, some the affection, some the desire, of the flesh, is not subject to the law of God. And although there is no condemnation for them that believe and are baptized, yet the Apostle doth confess, that concupiscence and lust hath of itself the nature of sin.'

First, observe, it is called birth sin, that is, it is something which comes into the world with us, and is naturally inherited by all men. Plainly, then, it has nothing to do with that which we usually call sin, i. e. a wilful act against a known moral law. And that there is such a difference the Articles themselves allow, making a distinction between 'not only original guilt, but also the actual sins of men.' It does not therefore deserve God's wrath and damnation' in the same way as actual sin. It is well to keep that in mind, for within that idea the whole Article must be explained.

Again, the Article does not call it direct sin, but a fault, a corruption, an infection of our nature whereby we are of our own nature inclined to evil, and very far gone from original righteousness. Nor does the Article, on account of it, assert that our nature is wholly evil. The words used suppose another element in us which may be developed towards good, that which the Article calls the spirit. We are inclined to evil, 'so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit.' Hence the writers had the notion of two things in man unequally influenced by this infection of our nature; the flesh easily yielding to it, the spirit so far touched by it as to become powerless of itself to do good, but always in natural opposition to it, so that when enabled by God it takes up war against the flesh directly.

From this inequality of influence on the two parts of our being we see again that original sin does not imply a wholly evil nature in the child, but a fault in his nature of which sin is the result.

The tenth Article still further expands the meaning of original sin. It says that our condition is such that by our own natural strength we cannot turn to God, that we have no