ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST.

Jerusalem's Visitation.

1 Cor. xii. I-II.

Luke xix. 41-48.

"CONCERNING spiritual gifts, brethren, I would not have you ignorant" or unknowing. And then-"If thou hadst known, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace." This is the real connexion between the Epistle and Gospel of to-day, however little those who put them together were aware of it. The gifts of the Spirit are the things which belong to the Church's peace. Their breaking forth anew should have told her that this is the time of her visitation. But concerning spiritual gifts she has been willingly ignorant : and so she has not known in this her day the things which belong to her peace, and the time of her visitation is passing by unheeded, and all we can hope is that we have not yet come to the fulfilment of that farther word—" but now are they hid from thine eyes."

The example of the Lord Jesus teaches us how we should regard these things. He first wept over the city; and then He came down to the Temple, and drove forth the buyers and sellers from its holy precincts. We must begin by weeping with Him. Weeping for anyone implies a great deal. We cannot do it unless we really love him, and love him so that every sin which springs from him and every sorrow which comes to him strikes

our own hearts with a personal pang. The parent feels this for the child, and the patriot for his country. Jesus Christ feels it for His Church and He longs for those who can be touched with the teeling of His affliction. Therefore does His Spirit utter those sighs and lamentings and unutterable groanings which we have heard from the lips of those whom He uses. Jesus loves with a love stronger than death the Church which He hath purchased with His blood. Her sins and failures, her strifes and divisions, her superstitions and will-worships and infidelities, are all felt by Him: He counts them His own shame and His own grief. Shall we not mourn with Him? We can only do this as we love with Him. And is this too great a thing for us? Shall the patriot do it for his earthly country, and shall not we for the city of our God, for the mountain of His holiness? Shall we not prefer Jerusalem above our chief joy; and in the depths of our most contrite sorrow pray, "do good in Thy good pleasure unto Zion?"

We stand as He stood, outside and above the strife of parties. Greek and Latin, Romanist and Protestant, High Church and Broad Church and Low Church should be no more to us than Pharisee and Herodian and Sadducee were to Him. Our one and only interest should be in the welfare of the Church of God. But let this interest be lively; suffer the Holy Spirit to fan it into a very flame of love; that so Jesus may come in us weeping over His city, ere the time when He suddenly comes to His temple as a refiner's fire and as fuller's soap, and to purify the sons of Levi. For this is the next thing He would do by us. First we must have His heart of love and His eyes of sorrowful compassion; and then the zeal of His house may eat us up, and we may seek to drive forth the

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changers. Separation of Church and State" may be part of this action: yet it is only the outward and visible sign of the real cleansing of the Temple. The Church may be free from the State, yet it may not be delivered from the world. The notions of barter and of legal fiction may still prevail in her theology: the pride of place, the claim of right, the greed of gain may still influence her organisation and working. This is the money-changing we must seek to expel, first in ourselves, and then in the whole Church of God. If we can do it,-if the Church can see in us the Spirit of Him who of old wept over the city and then cleansed its temple, may she not even yet know the time of her visitation? Already her enemies are casting a trench about her. Unbelief, under the guise of freedom of thought, is breaching her walls and sapping her towers: and open infidelity threatens ere long to rush in like a flood, and lay her even with the ground, and leave not in her one stone upon another.

O Zion, the city of our solemnities, our soul is grieved for thee, our hand yearneth to help thee. May the Lord Jesus deepen His sorrow in us, and so effect His cleansing by us for His Holy Name's sake! Amen.

"Stir up the gift that is in thee."

THE Apostle St. Paul, writing to his son Timothy, gives him this exhortation :' *

"I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands."

It is most probable that the gift to which the Apostle here referred was the gift of ministry, which Timothy had received through him at his ordination. But his exhortation would apply equally well to that gift of the Holy Ghost which Timothy, in common with all Christians, had received by the laying on of the Apostle's hands after his baptism. This gift we in like manner have received. It is well, therefore, that we should be put in remembrance that we have to stir it up.

The gift in question is one of those concerning which the same Apostle wrote to the Corinthians that he would not have them ignorant ;§ and of which he said to the Romans-" I long to see you, that I may impart unto you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established."|| The ignorance of the Corinthians he accounts for by reminding them that they had hitherto been serving dumb idols no wonder that they knew little about a God who spoke. And his first instruction is that there is one uniform test whether a man is speaking by the Holy Ghost or not, viz. whether he bears testimony to Jesus. No utterance which is against Him is of the Spirit of God;

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2 Tim. i. 6. † Comp. I Tim. iv. 14; i. 18. Acts viii. 12-17; xix. I—7. § I Cor. xii. I.

| Rom. i. II.

and no testimony to His Lordship will come from any other spirit than the Holy Ghost. Having thus premised the unity of the Spirit's voice, he goes on to speak of the variety as it were of tone and accent which it takes. It is so, he says, with the treasures wherewith the other Divine Persons have respectively endowed the Church. "There are differences of administrations" or ministries, "but the same Lord. And there are diversities of operations" -possibly referring herein to the sacraments," but it is the same God which worketh all in all." There may well be, therefore, "diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit." Of these diverse gifts he enumerates nine principal ones, as to the Galatians he specifies nine of the Spirit's fruits,* as types of the rest. "To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another the word of knowledge by the same Spirit; to another faith by the same Spirit; to another the gift of healing by the same Spirit; to another the working of miracles; to another prophecy; to another discerning of spirits; to another divers kinds of tongues; to another the interpretation of tongues. But all these he concludes" worketh that one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will."

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"To every man," the Apostle says; writing to a Church of his own planting, of which each member would have received the Holy Ghost by the laying on of his hands. Each one of us, therefore, on whom this act of God has passed may be sure that he has received some gift or other, unless indeed he has hindered the grace of God. It may not be manifest, even to the keenest discernment: but it is there. It may not be identifiable as one of those more prominent gifts mentioned by the Apostle. These

* Gal. v. 22, 23. † Comp. Heb. ii. 4 (marg.). I Cor. iii. 6.

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