which involve the abandonment of the Gospel discussed, so to speak, with a light heart, this simple truth and promise must surely have been left out of sight. If there be, as the Gospel says, a perfectly Holy and Almighty being, the man Jesus, in all His gentleness, all His wisdom, all His power, perpetually at our side, desiring to hear us, to guide us. to control us, to save us, what man or woman can contemplate the surrender of such an infinite blessing without an intense pang? Who would willingly forego the perpetual presence of a perfect friend? Above all things who would forego it, for time and for eternity, if that friend be a perfect Saviour? It would surely check many a crude speculation, and many a rash neglect of the claims of our faith, if men bore in mind more clearly this simple and cardinal element in it. It is not simply a truth more or less which is abandoned by unbelief, but a Person-a living and a present Saviour.

In a word, the message of the Gospel, and its essential blessing, is not merely the revelation of a truth; it is the creation of a fact-the most blessed fact in life that every human being has a Saviour at his side, and that in proportion as he trusts that Saviour's help and follows His guidance, he will be delivered from all his evil. The methods, indeed, of that deliverance are various, and the Saviour works by natural as well as by super

natural means. wrought by sudden miracles in Apostolic times, and since then by conversions scarcely less miraculous. At other times, and in other cases, it has been worked out by a gradual, and perhaps painful education-it may be by a severe and bitter discipline. There is sternness, as well as gentleness, in the character of a true Saviour; and as His treatment of His own people shows, He is capable of wrath as well as of mercy. As applied in daily life, that salvation involves the use of all means for moral and spiritual purification. As with our physical, so with our moral diseases, the Saviour has proved to us by His miracles that they can all be overcome, and that He possesses the power to deliver us from any evil whatever; but it would seem as though He were educating us, in both cases, to the utmost possible development of our natural resources. While, however, we are thus struggling to do our utmost with all the means at our disposal, with all the resources of religious and useful learning, with the wisdom of statesmen and with all the applications of art and science, the gracious truth is proclaimed to us that He is with us, to bless every agency that we can employ, and to complete our work and His own by the mighty operation of His spirit. We are justified by His death; and we are saved by His life. To as many as believe in

The salvation of souls has been

Him, He gives the power to become the sons of God, and they are assured that they will hereafter be like Him, seeing Him as He is, and reflecting His glory.

So simple, yet so far-reaching in its application, is the heavenly summary of the Gospel message. It is the life and soul of all Christian doctrine; and in proportion as it is borne in mind, does every truth of our faith become illuminated with a gracious light, at once human and Divine. Take, for instance, the doctrine of the Atonement, with which this text has sometimes, perhaps, been too exclusively connected, but which is deeply involved in it. Its central principle is the simple fact that Christ, by His personal act, and by the shedding of His blood, has made reconciliation between us and God. In St. John's comprehensive expression, 'He Himself is the propitiation for our sins.' He, in His love, and in His life and death, appeals alike to the love of God and to the heart of man. It is the personal Saviour, in His personal sacrifice, who constitutes this propitiation. Or consider again the truth of His Divinity. Its supreme practical importance is sufficiently discerned from the fact that it is the necessary condition of our belief in the simple assurance of the text in all its fulness. For it is because our Lord is God, as well as man, that He is able to be everywhere present to every soul, at

all times, that we can believe that He is ever with us, perpetually speaking by His Spirit to our hearts. None but one who is God as well as man can be a Saviour in that comprehensive sense in which our Lord constantly proclaims Himself, and in which it is our blessing to believe on Him. None else can be with us through life and death; to none other can we commend our souls at our last hours. The loftiest heights of Christian truth are thus involved in this text, when given its ample meaning.

Not less involved in it are the heights and depths of all human experience, if they are to issue in blessing and not in despair. The hour will come to all of us when our flesh and heart will fail us, when the eye will be dim and the mind be unable to retain any but the simplest thought; but in that hour to the Christian, the one word Saviour, the name of Jesus, will suffice to assure us that the eternal God is with us, and that underneath us are the everlasting arms. And as this short and simple Gospel is the one adequate comfort in death, not less in life does it transform our whole moral position. Its effect is to render possible moral aims and moral efforts, which would otherwise be impracticable and desperate. Consider a man as standing alone amidst his fellows, and left to no other influence than theirs, and it cannot but be recognized that there are limits to the possibilities of his moral achievements. On

natural grounds, he cannot rise above himself and the influences with which he is surrounded. There are consequences of his past sins which he cannot shake off, and it might even seem harsh to ask too much of him. But once recognize that there is a Divine Saviour at his side, and all is changed. No aim is then too lofty, and no hope too bold. It is not too much, then, to address to him even the command, ‘Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.' The Sermon on the Mount, in which that expression occurs, affords a most striking illustration of this truth. Had it been addressed to men in their natural condition, there would be something terrible in its unsparing severity, in the relentlessness with which it exposes the fatal vice of even passing thoughts and looks and words, and in the narrowness and straitness of the path which it marks out. But it is not addressed to men in their natural condition. It is addressed by a Saviour to those whom He is ready to save, and it is clenched, and enforced, and rendered tolerable to our weakness by that Saviour's evangelical promise, Ask, and it shall be given you. If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask Him?' With a Saviour at our side, but only under this condition, that Sermon

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