the rejoicing followed the commemoration of the deliverance. The Jews call the day of Pentecost "the concluding festival;" i. e., the festival that concludes the Paschal celebration; and the intervening days are regarded by the superstitious with peculiar dread. The association is not difficult to trace. The national life of Israel was the sequel of their deliverance from Egypt. It was not enough for them to be set free from the yoke of their masters; to be led into the desert was not the road God had in view when, with terrible signs, he brought them out of their bondage. In the wilderness, the careless and ungodly among them, appalled by the dreary barren tract around, lusted after the flesh-pots of Egypt, and craved to return; and the godly were sustained by the hope of the promised land where they should dwell in peace. God did not deign to keep them in the wilderness; He had prepared a country for them, a " goodly land and large," a "land flowing with milk and honey,” a land of "corn-fields," whose hills were covered with "vines and olives," and crowned with "cedars of Lebanon;" a land needing greater labour and more careful cultivation than Egypt, but yielding better fruits; a land where they should cut,-not the rank leek and onion, the "herb of the field,"-but corn and wine and oil that should give them a tougher sinew and a more healthy vigour. The feast of Pentecost was their memorial that God had fulfilled His promise. They carried the fruits of their own land before Him, the land which He had given them; they remembered year by year that He blessed their toil, that He made the land bring forth abundantly, and was nourishing the men He had redeemed.

The Passover was the symbol of redemption; the feast of Pentecost commemorated the life into which they had been redeemed. Spiritual life is the sequel of Christian redemption; the gift of the Holy Ghost, God's purposed supplement of Calvary. Spiritual history begins with the Cross, but it does not end here. A man's conversion is the signal period in his experience, his deliverance from the gloom, the curse, the bondage of his sins,-but God's purpose is not accomplished till the man abounds in all the energies of a holy life. It sometimes happens that the first gladness and gratitude of a forgiven soul are followed by a strange restlessness and dissatisfaction. For a while, the sense of a freedom from guilt, from the old distracting consciousness and care, is all-sufficient; the man can breathe who scarce dared breathe before; to be rid of the terrible burden of the past, to behold the exceeding grace of God, to know that the awful sacrifice was paid for his redemption, is to him sufficient joy. But, gradually, as life resumes its former current, and the solemn agitations of fear, passing into joyful trust,

abate, there is a sense of something yet wanting. There is a strangeness in his efforts after the Christian activities that are to prove his thankfulness: the formalities of a new profession are not enough for him, and the man may be moody and fitful. His friends look on in wonder, and with some anxiety; cheerfulness seems to have fled from the face of the convicted one; his desires are vague, he behaves as one who knows not what he would be at, and perhaps the scoffs at the oddness of his doings, at his want of Christian geniality, may not be pointless. A little while, and another change is gradually wrought upon him. Formal restrictions are seen passing into the beauty of a wellordered spirit. Faith is a rest to his soul, and hopes are blooming in his path, and love is putting itself forth in kindly consideration, and the man settles down into a beautiful meekness, and truth adorns his speech as with sweetest flowers, and tastes and habits form themselves at the bidding of gracious impulses; and a fulness of joy is his, infinitely peaceful to himself, and very attractive to all about him. His Paschal time, of haste and scarce-quelled anxiety, of girded loins and unleavened bread and bitter herbs, has been succeeded by the peaceful Pentecost. God's gift of life has been received by him; the passion-ransomed soul is rejoiced in the freedom and fulness of spiritual life.

It is not till this divine life is formed within us by God's Spirit-strong as the forces of summer that clothe the earth with summer beauty-that we can fully commemorate the death of Christ which is our redemption. The loss is illustrated by the gain; the anguish and the love of Christ are only known by him who is partaker of the life of Christ. Not till then do we consent to the doctrine of the Cross; at first we submit to it, then we accept and glory in it. Not till then do we see the love that utters itself in the law; the awful constraints, the "necessities" of righteousness are dear with unutterable sanctity to him who "walks in the Spirit." We keep our Paschal feast in "sincerity and truth,"-our hearts consenting to the sad realities of condemnation, and accepting redemption through Christ's blood, with infinite gratitude and infinite delight in Him,-when our Passover is followed by the Pentecostal gift; life imparted and sustained by the very Spirit of our God.

The Holy Ghost was needed by the men who were to be preachers of the Cross. He not only unfolded to them its meaning; He dwelt in them an energy tender, earnest, and strong, like that of the redeeming Christ himself. How without the Spirit and the life of Christ within them could they have proclaimed as a message of salvation, and God's good news of forgiveness, the fact which was the utter condemnation of the

men who heard them? If Peter did not take his sword, no longer aiming at the ear, but in frantic efforts seeking the heart of his Master's murderers, it was because a better mind was in him. If James and John did not wish to call down fire from heaven on the city that crucified their Lord, it was because they had received another spirit than their own. It is very touching to think of these men remaining among the people they knew to be so guilty, urging them to repent, and promising them forgiveness; to think of these going out with joy and hopefulness, the fulness of the life ir them. pouring itself out in strength upon the cripple, and healing to the sick-the very men who, but a little while ago, had been contentious, and hot, and angry. It was the life within them, divinely given, and divinely nourished, which made their demeanour so like the Lord's demeanour, and their influence attractive and holy like His. Nay, whence their heart, their power to labour in Christ's name at all? The Spirit of Christ revealed to them the mind of Christ, and was in them an overflowing joy and confidence. The hopeful, genial Christian life was the inspiration of their courage, the source of their patience, their energy to suffer and to bear. It welled up in the dungeon where, with scarred backs and unwashed wounds, and feet fast in the stocks, Paul and Silas prayed at midnight, and sung praises to God. It made them rejoice that they were "counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ's name;" it bound them to one another in an all-controlling brotherhood; it sent them out "everywhere preaching the word;" and it won multitudes to penitence and to the obedience of the truth. They had life in them, and nothing could suppress their faith, their gladness, or their labours. They had life in them; and by all the genial force of life, men were constrained by their influence, and drawn into their communion. If Christian teaching is ineffective, it is because it lacks the force of Christian life! And by life is meant not conduct, not habits, not efforts; but the inward life which gives tone to our conduct, and temper to our association with men, and character to all ends. Our doctrine may be scrupulously orthodox, yet very repellent; our teaching carefully accurate, yet very cold. Our efforts may be unencumbered, and our plans most wisely organized; yet, without the love, the earnestness that only life can give, they will be all in vain. Is the meaning of this day of Pentecost sufficiently understood, that there was given a Holy Spirit to abide with us, who has never left the world? There is something for us besides to pray for the divine life; it is to live it. Christians sometimes ask that "the Spirit may be poured out." He has been poured out, and they who but recognize Him, and submit themselves to Him, find Him with

them and in them still. The Spirit of Christ, which is the Christian inward life, will give force to all teaching, and holy energy to all effort. This will subdue, this will win men. The hard and humbling lessons of the Cross-and we must not make them one jot less hard and humbling-will melt the heart; when life compels their utterance and lends them earnestness. The tenderness of the Eternal Father, the sacrifice of the beloved Son will constrain, when there are in us, not mere arguments, but one Spirit, and one life. Full of divine charity, full of faith and hope and joy, we shall also be full of power. The life of the Spirit will be seen in the fruits of the Spirit; love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance-the power that produces these in us will add many souls as "first-fruits" to God and the Lamb.

II. Pentecost was a memorial of God's constant presence and power. The feast was ordained to remind the Jews who gave them their corn and wine and oil. They were not permitted to eat of the year's harvest till the first sheep had been waved before the Lord and the two loaves offered to Him, lest they should think that the earth brought forth fruit of itself; lest they should be undevout, and gluttonous, and drunken in their feasts. This was the consecration of the "first-fruits" which would hallow the "whole lump" of which they were daily partaking. It was to remind them that the same Lord who had delivered them out of Egypt, was watching over them still, year by year putting life and fruitfulness for them in wheat and wine and olive. The Jews, like Englishmen, were prone to practical atheism; they, like Englishmen, only recognized God in signal events of their history, unmindful of the care that was daily mindful of them, and the bounty which daily made them glad. All piety decays when we forget that the "Father" is "ever working;" to connect God only with certain events in experience and history, is to lead a life that, on the whole, will be godless. It is to deprive ourselves of the consolations that will cheer, and the sanctities that will hallow our daily toils, our eating and drinking, and our pleasures.

God would have Israel live in Canaan as men who had been redeemed. Christians, too, may learn to associate Christ not only with times of conversion, with sacraments and public worship, with special seasons in experience, special revivals of religious feeling, and special periods of consecration in life and effort, but to be ever living in Christian gratitude and Christian sanctity. "Do this in remembrance of me were Christ's words at the last supper. "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the

Father by him," is the injunction of the Apostle Paul; and then immediately follow counsels to wives and husbands, children and parents, servants and masters, how they are to live. Body and soul, as well as spirit, have been redeemed by the blood of Christ. Food and raiment, house-room and friends, have been given us by the same Father who gave us His Son. The power that quickened the world from the Cross is ruling over it still; the love that shines in the Cross gives summer flowers and autumn fruits. By the same energetic presence, the same personal activity that awakens men into spiritual life, is the earth made to bring forth and bud. Bread and wine are holy things, to be received with thanksgiving; the strength derived from them, the very feeling with which they are taken, cause them to be holy, "as becometh saints."

Men who see nothing more than forces of nature in the power that clothes the hill-sides yearly, and makes the valleys fruitful; nothing more than an "order of things" in the benign and beautiful laws which regulate all growth, see, too, in the Christian life nothing more than human nature under new developments. It is the influence of certain ideas, they say, that affects men to new modes of thought and feeling: amendment, refor mation, improvement, are the words they use instead of restoration, renewal, sanctification. Of course the truth as it is in Jesus is adapted to God's purpose in its revelation. God deals with us as reasonable beings; He speaks to us as to "wise men." The special message of the Gospel produces its fitting effect upon us. Of course the spirit of man obeys the laws of its constitution; Christian life is not a vague and wayward set of impulses, obeying no eternal law. We are not true to the nature God has given us till the new life of Jesus unfolds within us. But, just as under the order of the universe, it is the Father who is ever working out His kind purpose towards all His creatures, so is it His power that imparts the very life to which alone the truth is perceptible, and it is He who is ever giving us the Spirit whereby we live. The day of Pentecost is the witness of a divine person abiding near us, and working in us all the comforts and influences of a Christian life. It tells us how He came down from heaven, who wrought in men a mighty change, putting within them a new life, so that they felt differently because they were different, and thought differently because of the change in their feeling. The new ideas followed the new life, not the new life the new ideas. Changes of thought are much more the creatures than the authors of changes of being. It is a most blessed truth this of the Holy Ghost coming down to abide with men and in them; coming near them, influencing them, drawing them to truth, to Jesus, and to God. If it takes away our self-com