own.

"The night is far spent, the day is at hand." So wrote the Apostle, in the expectation as it would seem of a closer approach of the latter days than was borne out by the actual event. Yet that very expectation seems to have been made the means, under God, of carrying him forward into the future; of placing him, as it were, in the midst of our own days, of our own trials, of our own questions. Read these chapters in this point of view, and you will see in them the divine authority with which he speaks proved by a most undoubted, because a most unexpected, sign. They are, it is true, full of his own personal experiences; but they are full of ours also. They are prophecies in the entire sense of the word,-prophecies of what we want to be told, of what no one else can tell us; prophecies fulfilled by reading to us the secrets of our own hearts, by unravelling to us the riddle of our own times. The night of the heathen persecutions is over; the night of the dark ages is faded away; the night of the storms of religious and civil discord is far spent; the day of civilisation, of enlightenment, of knowledge—so we fondly,

perhaps too fondly, hope-is near at hand. Yet in that day the best armour in which we can clothe ourselves is still the armour which the Apostle commends; —his words are still applicable; he is a child not of the past night, but of the present and of the coming day: his advice, his teaching, his exhortations will stand the test of all the light of all the enlightenment of the most enlightened, the most inquiring ages.

VI. And, finally,

day is at hand."

this teaching of the Apostle is the most important to all of us, because, in one word, it is the most practical. Not to the world at large only, but to each one amongst us, "the night is far spent, the Young and old, our time is passing away: we are every one of us drawing nearer to that day when we shall meet the Judge of all mankind. God knows that we have all need of mercy of His infinite mercy. Every one who knows his own heart, knows how welcome is any thought that softens the severity of that judgment, that brings home to us the sense of that mercy - how gladly we trust that the love which was manifested in

Christ Jesus is indeed boundless, and overflows even where it is least expected. "God be merciful to me a sinner" must be the prayer even of the best and purest of men. But not the less must we bear in mind that even our sense of God's mercy will be shaken unless it is accompanied by the sense of His eternal justice, of our eternal duty. This it is which is set before us by these practical chapters, these farewell entreaties, these solemn conclusions of the whole Apostolical doctrine. We may not limit the mercy of God but neither may we invent any other way of salvation than that which He has appointed for us. There is none other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ -the Holy, the Just, and the Good — Jesus, the Saviour, who came to "save us from our sins," Christ, the Redeemer, who came "to redeem us from all iniquity.' 11 2 There is no other means by which we can enter Heaven, save that "holiness, without which no man shall see God." 3 There is no other rule whereby we shall be judged, but "according

1 Matt. i. 21.

2 Tit. ii. 14.

3 Heb. xii. 14.

to the works done in the body, whether they be good or whether they be evil." 1

"God be merciful to us sinners." God give us grace to cast aside the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light!

1 2 Cor. v. 10.

SERMON XI.

THE DOCTRINE OF APOSTOLICAL TOLERATION.

(SECOND SUNDAY IN ADVENT, 1857.)

ROM. XV. 7.

Receive ye one another, as Christ also received us, to the glory of God.

I SPOKE last Sunday of the well-known story of the conversion of Augustine by the practical address of the Apostle, which I took as a sample of this whole portion of his teaching. The sequel to the story will introduce us to the first special instance of this practical teaching, which occurs in the services of this day. Augustine had opened the volume of S. Paul's Epistles, as you will remember, at the close of the thirteenth chapter. His eye