of market integrity, was scarcely less remarkable. He had more than once kicked a man out of his office, who had come to engage him in a case plainly tainted with fraud, and would never allow himself to gain a point, by the least deviation from truth. And yet he was a man of many vices, and a man withal, of such infernal temper, that his wife and children knew him only as a tyrant scarcely endurable. Getting exasperated almost to a pitch of insanity, by what he conceived to be a base attempt of his law partner to jew him, for he was a Jew, in a matter of business, he drew off in disgust and anger from his practice, determined to add nothing more to the profits of the concern, where before he had, in fact, brought all. As the contract still existed in law, the right of his proceeding might be questioned, but his almost overgrown sensibilities to points of honour would no longer suffer him even to look upon the face of such a man. Still he would not so far disrespect the contract as to open a separate and rival office, but hired himself out as a common labourer in unloading coal from one of the ships in the harbour. While at work there, smirched and grimed by coal-dust, there came to him in a few days, a client who wanted to engage him in a cause involving the title to a vast property. Inasmuch as he must live, apart from all profits, he finally consented to undertake it, on condition that he should receive only a small day-wages allowance. He won the cause. And then, five or six years after, when he had his family with him, and was known to be short of the means of living, his old client, whom he had made a rich man, sent him a present of twenty thousand dollars. He was rather offended than pleased-as if he would do so mean a thing as to cover up the fact of a fee under the semblance of a stipulation for day wages! Forthwith he returned the present, and when it was renewed as a present to his wife, he required her also to send it back. If his partner had seen fit to raise a legal claim for the money as a fee, he might easily have been quieted by half the sum; but rather than consent to enrich a knave by that amount, he preferred to rob his family of the same.

Now, this man, so keenly sensitive to the matter of honour in business, as to be well-nigh demonised by it was not even a virtuous man. He was, in fact, the most magnificently abominable man I ever knew. And he died as he lived. The steamer on which he was a passenger sprung a leak at sea, and when they called him to the pumps, protesting with an oath, that he would do no so mean thing as to pump for his life, he locked himself up in his state-room, and there stayed, like a tiger in his cage, till the ship went down.

Was he then a man of integrity? In one view he certainly

was, and that was his reputation. Still he was a man false to every right principle, both of God and man, but just one; an example in which any one may see how little the boasted integrity of commercial honour and truth may signify, when taken alone.

I could easily have given you a thousand nobler and more beautiful examples of integrity, in the spheres of business, and before the human standards of commercial obligation. I give you this, just because it is so nearly repulsive; showing, in that manner, how little true merit of character belongs to this kind of virtue, when it stands by itself. How far off is it, then, from being any true equivalent for that broad, universal, radically principled integrity that includes religion? Whoever is in the principle of right-doing, as a principle, will be ready to do all right, always, and everywhere-to God as to men, to men as to God. This it is, and this only, that makes a genuinely whole intent man, thus a man of integrity.

There is, then, a kind of integrity which goes vastly beyond the mere integrity of trade, and which is the only real integrity. The other is merely a name in which men of the market compliment themselves, when they observe their own standards; though consciously neglecting the higher standards of right as before God. This higher, and only real integrity, is the root of all true character, and must be the condition, somehow, of Christian character itself. Let us inquire

3. In what manner? Christ, we say, does not undertake to save men by their merit, or on terms of justice and reward, but to save them out of great ill desert rather, and by purely gratuitous favour. What place have we then, under such a scheme of religion, for insisting on the need of integrity at all? Does it not even appear to be superseded, or dispensed with?

I wish I could deny that some pretendedly orthodox Christians do not seem in fact to think so. It is the comfort of what they call their piety, that God is going to dispense with all merit in them, and this they take to mean about the same thing as dispensing with all the sound realities of character-all exactness of principle and conduct. They are sometimes quite sanctimonious in this kind of faith. Cunning, sharp, untruthful, extortious, they look up piously still, at the top of what they call their faith, and bless God that He is able to hide a multitude of sins-able to save great sinners of whom they are chief! Submitting themselves habitually to evil, they compliment themselves in abundant confessions of sin; counting it apparently a kind of merit that they live loosely enough to make salvation by merit impossible. Ten times a day they declare that they will know nothing but Christ and Him crucified; and

lest they should miss of such a faith, they do not spare to crucify Him abundantly themselves!

It cannot be that such persons are not in a great mistake. Any scheme of salvation that undertakes to save without integrity, has, to say the least, a very poor title to respect. And it ought to be evident beforehand that Christianity is no such scheme at all.

Yes, doubtless, it will be said, there must be such a thing as integrity that is, commercial integrity-in Christian men, else they would bring very great scandal on the cause. Is it then permitted that, if they will be just and true in trade and in society, they may safely consent to be out of integrity with God? Looking at the principle of things, for there is nothing else to look at here, it would seem that the Great God and Father of us all is certainly as much entitled to consideration from us as we are from each other, and how can there be any genuine principle at all in a disciple, who is not in that higher integrity which includes doing justice to God-being right with God?

There must then be some place for the claim of integrity in our gospel, even though it be a scheme of salvation by grace. Nor does the solution of the matter appear to be difficult. Integrity, we have seen, is wholeness of aim or intent; but mere intent of soul does not make and never could complete a chatacter. It is even conceivable that a soul steeped in the disorders of sin, might take up such a kind of intent, on its own part, and, acting by itself, be only baffled in continual defeats and failures to the end of life. There is no redeeming efficacy in right intent, taken by itself-it would never vanquish the inward state of evil at all. And yet it is just that by which all evil will be vanquished, under Christ and by grace, because it puts the soul in such a state as makes the grace-power of Christ, co-working with it, effectual. Conscious of wrong, for example, and groaning under the bitterness of it, I take it up as my intent to be and become wholly right. Then I find Christ near me oh, how near-yielding me His divine sympathy, and pouring His whole tenderness into my feeling. As regards the guilty past, He will justify me freely, and hold me to account no more. As regards the future, He will take me as a friend, raise my conceptions of what is good by His own beauty, ennoble my feeling by society with Him, draw me up out of my lowness and my weak corruptions, by His character great in suffering, and so enable me to conquer all my evils, as He conquered His. As certainly, then, as I come into right intent, I shall come into faith, and trust myself to Him, as a means of becoming what I have undertaken to become.

Here, then, is the place of integrity. It is even pre-supposed

in all true faith, and enters, in that manner, into all true gospel character. It does not exclude the grace of Christ, or supersede salvation by grace, but on the human side moves toward grace, and is inwardly conjoined with it, in all the characters it forms. The sinning man, who comes into integrity of aim, is put thereby at the very gate of faith, where all God's helps are waiting for him. Now that he is so tenderly and nobly honest, there is no grace of God, or help of His merciful Spirit, that will not flow into him as naturally as light into a window. By this grace, in which he will now trust, his whole being, feeling, aspiration, hope, are invested, and the light of God, the brightness of salvation, everlasting life, is in him-he is born of God.

His integrity, therefore, his new and better aim, is not any ground of merit, or title of desert, which dispenses with faith, but his way of coming into faith-thus into the helps, inspirations, joys and triumphs that Christ will inwardly minister-in one word, into the righteousness of God. And accordingly the Scriptures formally condition all such helps on the integrity of the soul that wants them. "Ye shall seek me and find me, if ye search for me with all your heart"--that is, with a whole and single aim. "If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me." "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." The Scriptures, we may thus perceive, have no difficulty in finding how integrity is needed in a way of salvation by grace, and there is, in fact, no such difficulty, save as we make it ourselves.

Having discovered, in this manner, what, and how great a thing integrity is, and the necessity of it on strictly Christian grounds, let us note, in conclusion, some of the practical relations. of the subject. And

(1.) Consider what it is that gives such peace and loftiness of bearing to the life of a truly righteous man. What an atmosphere of serenity does it create for him, that he is living in a conscience void of offence! And when great storms of trouble drive their clouds about him, when he is assailed by enemies and detractors, persecuted for his opinions, broken down by adversities, thrown out of confidence and respect even, as will sometimes happen, by false constructions of his conduct and malignant conspiracies against his character, still his soul abides in peace, because he justifies himself and has the witness that he pleases God. These clouds that seem to be about him do still not shut him in. He sits above with his God, and they all sail under. Such a man is strong, my brethren-how very strong! There is no power below the stars that can shake him. The steaming vapours of a diseased body cannot rise high enough to cloud his He is able still and always to make his great appeal and

sun.

say-"Judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness, and according to the integrity that is in me." Who can understand like him the meaning of that word, " And the work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness, and assurance for ever? Here too

Per

(2.) Is the ground of all failures, and all highest successes in religion, or the Christian life. Only to be an honest man, in this highest and genuinely Christian sense, signifies a great deal more than most of us ever conceive. We make room for laxity here that we may let in grace, and do not hold ourselves to that real integrity that is wanted, to receive, or obtain, or be in, that grace. Oh, how loosely, irresponsibly, carnally, do many Christians live-covetous, sensual, without self-government, eager to be on high terms with the world, praying, as it were in the smoke of their vanities and passions, making their sacrifices in a way of compounding with their obligations! Little do they conceive, meantime, how honest a man must be to pray, how heartily, simply, totally he must mean what he prays for. haps he prays much, prays in private, prays in public, and has it for a continual wonder that he gets on so poorly, and that God, for some mysterious reason, does not answer his prayers. Sometimes he will even be a little heart-broken by his failures, and will moisten his face with tears of complaint. He has made great struggles, it may be, at times, to freshen the fire that was burning in him, and yet, for some reason, he is all the while losing ground. His faith becomes a hand, as it were, without fingers, laying hold of nothing. The more he pumps at the well of his joys, the drier he grows. It is as if there were some dread fatality against him, and he wonders where it is. Commonly it is here that he wants rectitude. He is trying to be piously exercised in his feeling, when he is slack in his integrity. He has been so much afraid of being self-righteous, it may be, that he is not righteous at all. When he is loose at the conscience, how can he be clear in his feeling?

Perhaps he has conceived a higher standing in religion, a state of attainment where his soul shall be in liberty, and has tried for whole months, possibly for years, to reach it, and yet he finds it not. He begins to imagine, not unlikely, that no such thing is for him-God's sovereignty is against him, and he must be content to stay in that lower plane that God has appointed him. "God never means," he will say, "that I should be much of a Christian-that is given to others that have a higher calling." Now, strange as it may seem, here again is the root of his difficulty-that his projected attainments are clear ahead of his integrity. Some traitor is hid in his soul's chambers that is kept there, and carefully fed. What is wanting is the integer of a