'I can bear anything better than suspense:' such are the expressions by which we frequently give vent to our consciousness of the agitating, wearying, enfeebling, irritating effects of that condition of human life to which we have thus far pointed.

Would to God, my brethren-well may it be said in all seriousness and in much sadness-that suspense had no other scope than that hitherto described; that its operation were confined to those outward circumstances of life, in which it may possibly have a salutary influence, teaching, if it can teach nothing else, a lesson of patience, and yielding afterwards, if not at the time, some peaceable fruit of righteousness in them that are exercised thereby.

'Neither be ye of doubtful mind;' or, according to the marginal reading, ‘live not in careful suspense:' such is our Lord's charge in the text. And He spoke it primarily addressing Himself, as He commonly did, to the poor-of anxiety about food and clothing; of that everrecurring question, 'What shall I eat, and what shall I drink, and wherewithal shall I be clothed?' which fills up so large a portion of the threescore years and ten of the labourer and the mechanic. If I were speaking now to an ordinary congregation, such as that which is elsewhere committed to my charge, I might dwell with advantage upon this first and most obvious aspect of the words before us; reproving earthly anxiety from the arguments which the context would furnish, its futility, its needlessness, its faithlessness, and its folly. But here a different use of the text forces itself upon our notice.

Suspense has a wide and powerful action upon the things of this life. We are in suspense oftentimes: now

about some desired prize, now about some apprehended danger; now for another, now for ourselves; now about the doubtful success of some honest toil, now about casualties and possibilities over which we have no control. But not thus only. There is such a thing as suspense in the world of thought also. Suspense largely enters into men's religious opinions. And shall I be thought harsh or uncharitable if I say-certainly it is not in that spirit, but in one of deep concern and lively sympathy, that I say it—that it is characteristic of these times, in no common degree, to be in suspense both about faith and duty? Does not He who alone knows what is in man behold perhaps, as He looks down upon this congregation, many a mind halting between two opinions even as to Himself, the Propitiation and the Redeemer-much more, as to everything short of this one? What word could more accurately describe the intellectual condition, at least, of very many, as to the revelations of the Bible, than that which He has Himself selected to describe a forbidden state of mind as to things earthly? Live not, He says, in suspense: and the word in the original is one word; the same which denotes a substance hovering in the air or fluctuating upon the waters, as opposed to that which has a sure support and standing-place on the firm and solid earth. There are many persons-in every age, it may be certainly in our own-whose whole life is passed in this balancing, floating, wavering state of mind as to the truth of God, as to the revelations of the Bible.

And there are some things about which suspense is at least harmless. In early life, more particularly, a promiscuous positiveness is as unchristian as it is unpleasing.

A man who is sure about everything may be suspected of having proved nothing. It is always easy to borrow opinions in the gross from other men; always easy to take what is called a party line, to adopt the views of a book, a paper, a teacher, or a school, and thenceforward to see with another's eyes and speak with another's tongue. This saves much trouble; enables an inferior mind to wear the plumes of a superior; precludes the necessity of much anxious thought, and (what is in itself no small comfort to the weak) secures to us companions if not followers. We see too much of this also in our days. It is the abuse of decision, as the other is the abuse of enquiry. It is the precipitancy of unscrupulousness, at best of weakness; sometimes it is the indication of a radical unsoundness of character, or the awkward disguise of a deep latent scepticism.

It is not amiss to be in suspense about some things even in religion: it is not well to be positive about everything even in matters of duty. Our Lord would have every man to be well persuaded in his own mind, not in another's. And well persuaded in his own mind a man cannot be without thought and without examination : I might almost say, without having once questioned, if not doubted. To take a thing for granted-more especially if it be one of those highest things of all, in which man lives—is not to exercise faith, but to indulge credulity.

All these things it is right to say, in order to prevent a serious misuse of the great principle laid down in the The text does not forbid enquiry, and the text does not encourage presumption. But this surely it says to us, It is ill for a man to live in suspense as to the

text.

essentials of the Gospel. We admit that there may be whole provinces and regions of thought into which it is not necessary for every man to enter. We admit that there may be verses and chapters of the Bible, statements of fact and statements of doctrine, which have been variously interpreted by various minds, and as to the true meaning of which a man may without injury to his soul live and die in suspense. But we strongly and earnestly protest against the carrying of this concession into the fundamental doctrines of the Gospel. There are truths which to reject is to refuse to eat the bread, to breathe the air, to see the light, which God has given for the life of man's soul. There are truths which to doubt is to dispense with, and which to dispense with is to deny. Of such a nature is, above all others for I will go at once to the root of the matter-the Scriptural doctrine of the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Is Jesus Christ the Son of God? Is He one with the Father? Did He come from God and return to God? Did He bear my sins-in such sense that for His sake all sin can be forgiven? Is He now alive? Does He hear prayer? Has He all power in heaven and in earth? Does God for His sake give His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him? Do the Gospels contain a true record of His life and of His death, and the Gospels and Epistles a faithful account of His teaching? Did Christ in a true and real sense bring to us a revelation? not a mere repetition, with more or less of added force and clearness, of the conclusions of reason or of the instincts of conscience; but something which He knew because He came down from heaven, something which was His as it is not ours, something which God sends and by

which God will judge? It is quite evident that the question of faith or suspense upon these topics is a question, literally, of vital moment. A man who believes these things will live in one way, and a man who is in suspense about them must live in another way. For I speak not to those who call nothing life but its outward acts: those who hear me all recognize a life which has its spring within, and feel that it is in its relations to God above that its workings towards man below find their motive and their value. And therefore I say here, without doubt of its acceptance, that a man who believes in Christ as the Son of God, as the Propitiation for sin, as the living Saviour, as the Revealer of God, as the Giver of the Spirit, not only ought to live, but must and will live, quite differently from the man who is in suspense about Him in all or in some of these particulars. It is not that the former has done with enquiry: it is not that he blindly accepts even what the best of men tell him as to the meaning of Christ's words it is not that he thinks himself debarred from the freest examination of the credentials of each item of doctrine, or of the text or the authorship or the circumstances of the passage or of the book itself in which that particular doctrine is supposed to be contained. But the difference between him and the other, in these respects, is, that the one does and the other does not enquire and examine as a believer; as one who only waits to be sure that his Lord has spoken, and spoken certainly this and not that, before he receives into his mind and into his soul that revelation which he has thus tried and certified.

Nor is it, I must beg you to observe, that even the