instruction conveyed by our preachers is most destructive of the higher spiritual life. Precisely the same kind of thing prevails as respects the colleges. We might describe the annual appointment of committees as experiments with the pendulum, so much oscillation is there in respect to their plans and schemes of education. At one time we are told that our colleges ought to give a more liberal and thorough education, so that we might have a race of scholars of our own; and then, because the scholars have not sprung up like mushrooms, and every M.A. and B.A. has not blossomed at once into something more than a Doctor of Divinity, the whole attempt is denounced as a failure, and we are recommended to give up culture and drink only at the well of English undefiled, to study "Murray's Grammar " and "Enfield's Speaker," to train fluent talkers to the masses, and let the churches have what idea they like of ministerial qualification and attainment. Beyond the distinguished literary men who do all the reviewing in our religious journals, we have no scholars, and the result is, that whilst the present race of ministers are taunted with reading only the theological literature coming from the publishing houses of Macmillan, Murray, and Parker, they are invited to give this up in exchange for the "Congregational Year Book" register of penny pamphlets and twopenny sermons. I for one do not see how the Congregational pulpit is to be maintained on that register, nor how it can be a living dower among men by clinging only to its legacy--a rich legacy, it is true, of old divinity.

I refer thus to the colleges, because there is a spirit amongst us, that is, a hot, feverish spirit, impatient to wait for the long results of time, captivated by what is superficial, and disdainful of methods and operations going nearer to the heart of things and producing effects wide, deep, and lasting through the ages. Acheap press that puts its finger upon everything, and asserts its right to interfere with and alter all existing arrangements, tends to foster this feverish spirit; it is the intoxicating draught that inflames and excites it still more. In turns, this spirit expresses itself through ministers, deacons, and other officers, college authorities and students, church members and churches, and in turns upon them. It is anything but the expression of a high and vigorous spiritual life, proportionate to and keeping pace with our culture and commercial activities, and which would not content itself with any aims short of the highest.

Others of these demands for reform are the result of a belief that existing arrangements and officers are altogether inadequate to cope with the necessities of the times. Let them be improved to the utmost, they will still be defective; they leave a void to be filled up by something new, and having some kind of adap

tation to the new circumstances of the time, locality, or social relations. He would be a very blind and perverse man who would deny the very considerable force of this argument.

Hence the plea for all kinds of evangelising agents, visiting societies, female agents, sensation preachers, elaborate Gothic churches, iron, wooden, and even itinerating chapels; for ceremonial mixtures, and new developments and blossomings in unwonted forms of old denominational peculiarities. The plea is good, but it may be pushed too far. It is pushed too far when it leads to the establishment of organizations and forms of religious activity whose tendency is to keep up class prejudices and class divisions.

There is often a reversal of what seems the natural order of things, as when it is judged desirable that uneducated and uninspired colliers, shoemakers, and others, should preach to the cultivated classes. In respect to the supposed necessity of having special orders and classes of men to go to different classes of the community on the plea of their greater adaptability, I am persuaded that there has often been an impeachment of capacity where it had no opportunity of being tried, and an assertion of superior suitableness where it had never been brought into comparison with other agencies. I am persuaded of this, too, that there has been altogether much more latent faith in human instrumentalities than in the Divine simplicity, intelligibility, and force of the truth of God as seen embodied in the thoroughly consecrated lives of its adherents.

There are yet others of these demands which are due to an intellectual craving for greater liberty of belief, expression, and action. This is a revolt more or less general against all creeds, subscriptions, tests, catechisms, trust-deeds, and the like. Christianity, on the one hand, is felt to be a very broad and expansive system; it is therefore felt to be desirable to remove whatever narrows and restricts it. On the other hand, experience teaches, with altogether too sad an emphasis, that one generation cannot bind the opinions and thoughts of another, but at the expense either of the stagnation of original and independent thought, or of an immoral outward assent to what is inwardly believed to be untrue. Further, the supposed principles of Protestantism are believed to point to the necessity of a reform which shall provide for their fullest development. It is impossible to believe that the spirit of Christianity, or even of Protestantism, is such as, when rightly apprehended, would only lead to a chaotic multiplication and jangling of sects, and a mad, bedlamite confusion and contradiction of opinions. The true liberty of Christian thought, utterance, and action, cannot be an unlicensed, unrestrained liberty, yet neither can it be a liberty which denies

the right to err, and, in obedience to conscience, to teach error. Let us concede the justness of the demand for greater religious freedom everywhere, and yet acknowledge the great practical difficulty of adjusting the law of Christian liberty to the existing circumstances of different sections of the Church.

Lastly, we must enumerate as one of the sources of these frequent outcries for reform, the impulse of a quickened spiritual life, either in individuals or communities. The stronger and healthier life demands a larger area in which to work: it seeks for larger and nobler ends, it asks for more fitting instruments. It outstrips existing institutions, and overruns the barriers of existing methods and plans. Wherever this is the case it cannot be doubted that it is the most legitimate source of demand, and likely to be most effective in its aim. As little can it be doubted, I think, that this which I have enumerated last is also least among the causes now urging us to make reforms in church officers, action, and alms.

When we have deducted everything that is due to imitation and rivalry, everything that is due to intellectual discontent, waywardness, and scepticism, everything that is due to mere love of change, to passion, to local or sectional causes, there is little left that is traceable, solely or mainly, to a higher spiritual life, having adequate conceptions of duty, and rightly informed as to the true method of Christian progress. Motives and influences more or less mixed and impure are discernible enough in nearly all these demands and efforts after reform.

The propriety of many of these demands will be very generally acknowledged; the only doubt about them is, whether the spirit prompting them, and the methods pursued to attain the end, are such as to warrant us either being enthusiastic in their support, or sanguine of their ultimate success. Looking abroad upon the great field of Christian life and activity, there are many drawbacks, the existence of which should make us pause. There are multiplied organizations with but comparatively small results. I should be very sorry to follow in the wake of the Times or the Saturday Review in their efforts to undervalue the results of Christian activity; these results I would value as highly as any man, yet still, upon an honest survey, I think we must say after all, they are small results. There is an increase of benevolent societies, with larger sums at their disposal, though not a penny larger than the marvellous increase of national wealth justifies our looking for; but there is a decay of individual benevolence. This is very noticeable in London, although there are bright special exceptions to and seeming contradictions of the general fact. There is apparently a great increase of outward respect to religion, but no deep inward life in proportion. Church and

chapel accommodation has been enlarged, but it is not proved that the percentage of occupation keeps pace with the percentage of provision. In some localities, certainly, whilst the ratio of provision to population has increased, that of attendance has decreased. With these facts before us, it is not surprising to know, that whilst Bible circulation is larger, Bible reading is smaller in amount. This fact is the explanation of some of the others. The fascinating light literature of the day, the multiplied forms and attractiveness of our general literature, the large increase of newspapers and magazines, which demand and swallow up the spare time of men, leave little opportunity, and, naturally, little relish, for scriptural study. The Bible to some extent has ceased to be an attractive book. The literary spirit of the day, and the literary tastes of congregations, have led, almost as a matter of course, to the substitution of topical preaching for the instructive forms of expository discourse. There is thus an inevitable perpetuation of what all thoughtful men feel to be a great and growing evil, and one that saps away the foundations of Christian life. No one, therefore, can reasonably wonder at the prevailing worldliness of the times the devotion to personal comfort, pleasure, and aggrandizement, visible on every hand, both out of and in the church. The men of the world are now so numerous, so cultivated, respectable, moral, and well-to-do, that it is almost impossible to resist their influence, and escape being carried away by the overpowering and on-rushing stream.

Because I see these things I am compelled to pause, and am brought to the belief that there has been too little heed given to the cultivation and increase of that thorough and high spiritual life which alone is the guarantee that the reforms called for are really necessary, and likely to be attained. I would not depreciate the praiseworthy efforts made to extend and amend the Church; I would not say that the Church has been guilty of gross neglect in the matter of personal piety. I only say, what the facts of Church life seem to corroborate, that the growth of personal religion has not been kept before the mind of the Church so prominently as it ought to have been.

By spiritual life I mean a living, growing apprehension of the truth, of Divine truth, a living illustration of that truth. I mean a personal appropriation of Christ, the Life, by the soul of each professing Christian man-a vigorous, healthy assimilation of Christ's word of truth as the proper sustenance of the soul. This life is the full activity of thought, affection, and will; that full activity of thought whose highest expression is faith-a faith that has got for ever beyond doubt, hesitancy, criticism, and the like; that full activity of affection whose highest expression is love to God-love as deep, as true, and as tender as

Not so.

the nature of man is capable of; that full activity of the will whose highest expression is the hearty surrender of the whole being by an act of perpetual consecration to the service of God. Some appear to think that all this may indeed be once done, and done for ever. There should be one act of surrender indeed, one expression of love, one yielding act of trust and confidence: but this should be life-long. The fresh experiences of life should but confirm the soul in what it had done, as they appear to be fresh proofs of its appropriateness, fresh arguments establishing its rightfulness. If this life shows any variation, it should only be that of growth, of progress. The ardour of service should be more devoted, the confidence of faith more steadfast and unequivocal, the surrender of the will more entire. Life is a very wonderful thing, all life is so; whatever kind of life we may consider, it is hidden, mysterious, wonderful. Spiritual life is not more or less hidden, mysterious, and wonderful than the rest. I plant a little sapling, and then go voyaging and travelling about the world for fifteen or twenty years, and come back to find that it has shot up into a tall and beautiful tree. Wonder and delight fill me as I look at the beautiful living thing. As I depart on my travels, I see a merry gamesome lad playing about with thoughts of nothing but fun and mischief, and when I return I find he has grown to be a stalwart man, stout of body and limb, vigorous in mind, large and generous of soul. Living and growing he has become what I see him, and I marvel and admire. When, then, the truth of God has been lodged in a human spirit, or has become embodied in a church, what should I look for, what ought I to expect? Should I, have I not a right to, expect to see in the man an enlarged, altered, nobler, ripened character? A more enlightened mind, a more generous disposition, a more fervid zeal, altogether a more intelligent and a more tender piety, are, I imagine, the signs of the indwelling spirit of life. These come not by outward appliances, or mechanical arrangements of external reform. They come not, indeed, without human cultivation on the one hand, and Divine influence on the other. If the germs of spiritual life be in a church, have I not a right to look in that church for a multiplication and enlargement of all those signs of life which belong to the individual, and all those which are peculiar to the Church as an organized social body, endowed with the spirit of life for aggressive and redemptive purposes? Are these signs of life visible in any marked manner in our own day? Can we say that the Church is even asking for them, and in any earnest way is seeking to attain them? Hardly so, I think. The vigour of any man's spiritual life depends upon the closeness of his connection with the Bible. Can we say that the Bible is a popular book?