Analysis of Homily the Seventy-fourth.

"And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus."-Col. iii. 17.

SUBJECT:-Secular Work a Means of Spiritual Training.

A FACT which must be deeply significant to all who aim at the Christian life, is that by far the greater part of man's life is appointed by God to be spent in worldly toil. It becomes a vital question, then, whether this worldly toil is to be regarded as in itself adverse to his spiritual life, or whether it contribute to its growth. Secular work is not necessarily a spiritual training. Men may, and do, make it a training for the intensest selfishness and the most direful impiety; but it ought to be made the means of our spiritual education, and can be made so on certain conditions.

I. WHAT ARE THE CONDITIONS TO MAKE WORK HELP IN THE FORMATION OF RELIGIOUS CHARACTER?

one.

1. A conviction that the object of man's life is a spiritual Man must be able to view the main purpose of his life as one and not twofold-as having a grand unity which binds together the apparently conflicting wants of it. If there be a sphere of life in which his own will, and not God's, is to be supreme-if his worldly concerns may be pursued as an end altogether independently of God's will, and of his spiritual culture-then the work of the six days of the week must be destructive of the work of the other one day, and the great aim of life is degraded into a struggle for wealth, pleasure, and honour. If this be the correct view of life, then, why did God give man a spiritual nature, and endow him with a conscience, a will, or powers of affection, capable of embracing the Infinite?

2. A conviction that the claim of Christianity upon our life is universal. The aim of Christianity is not to make man do certain specified things, at certain specified times, and in certain places, and then to have done with him; but rather to produce a certain inward condition of his whole being. Its first claim, therefore, is on the thought and feeling of his nature-the

dominion of every thought and every feeling-and then on the outward act of his life, as the natural embodiment of his heart and will. It thus claims to cover and control the whole province of his nature and existence; so that, whether he be a scholar, a merchant, or a mechanic, he is to carry a soul rectified and governed by the will of Christ into his occupation; and whether he pray or work-whether he be in the church or the shop he is to be under the control of the same principles and affections.

3. A conviction that labour is not necessarily an evil. The multitude is prone to believe that bodily toil is essentially adverse to spiritual culture; that God has doomed us to it as a punishment for sin, and not as a discipline for holiness; that, therefore, it is a sign of the devil's government over us. It is this thought that unmans the religion of thousands-makes them fly to solitude as the only sphere congenial to the spirit of piety. We have looked on work only as a necessity for our physical wants: Christianity recognises it as a necessity also for our spiritual nature. Work may debase and brutalize, but it may be made the instrument of an energetic and a healthy godliness.

II. IN WHAT WAY CAN WORK HELP IN THE FORMATION of RELIGIOUS CHARACTER?

1. The habit of exertion is useful for this end? Mechanical or mental work is an exertion of the mind to overcome some resistance-to conquer some difficulty-to solve some problem. Now, in the business of life, this necessity for effort is constant-required every day and every hour; and we receive from it discipline for patience, perseverance, and victory, by which we thus pass through. Our spiritual education—that is, the discipline of the will, the acquisition of righteous and benevolent principles-demands the highest, most strenuous, and protracted exertion of the human faculties ; and the habit of work-earnest, honest work-becomes, therefore, a grand training for the highest work which man has to do. But

2. Work, especially commerce, affords direct training for

the moral principles. Many who profess Christianity assert that religion and business cannot be followed by the same man, because the temptations of business are stronger than ordinary human character can withstand. But the fact of these temptations ought to have suggested these two very different conclusions:-1st. That God intended them to prove and develop our fidelity to Him-that is, that they are a school for the education of our own character; and, 2ndly, that he who cannot endure and conquer them, has little to boast of as a Christian man. The language of such men implies this infidel-faith: that honesty and truth, in a world governed by God's laws, will be beaten in the encounter with fraud and selfishness; a belief which may God avert from prevailing among the Christian men of this land! There is no need to illustrate how constantly and eminently business affords the opportunities of acquiring and deepening within us the principles of truth, justice, and benevolence.

3. Business may become a training for the acquisition of the highest motive of life. That highest motive is stated in the passage at the head of this sketch-that whatsoever we do is to be done "in the name of the Lord Jesus"-i. e., his will is to be the ground and reason of our practical life. In the severest toil we endure, we are not to deem ourselves the drudges and slaves of an iron necessity, but the intelligent and free servants of Jesus Christ. We have supposed it impossible to associate the ordinary kinds of manual and mental labour, with the conviction that it is service done to God, if it be rightly done. And yet this is the practical problem that Christianity gives us to solve to aim at the feeling that we are doing God's will in the common details of our ordinary vocation, as well as in acts more directly religious. Work is not necessarily worship, but it may be made so by the spirit in which we do it. With this high reference in all our toil to God's will, life, in none of its aspects, would be mean and secular, but a lofty and divine training for perfect virtue and holiness.

CHARLES SHORT, M.A.

The Genius of the Gospel.

[ABLE expositions of the gospel, describing the manners, customs, and localities alluded to by the inspired writers; also interpreting their words, and harmonizing their formal discrepancies, are happily not wanting amongst us. But the eduction of its widest truths and highest suggestions is still a felt desideratum. To some attempt at the work we devote these pages. We gratefully avail ourselves of all exegetical helps within our reach; but to occupy our limited space with any lengthened archæological, geographic, or philological remark, would be to miss our aim, which is not to make bare the mechanical process of scriptural study, but to reveal its spiritual results.]

NINTH SECTION.-Matt. v. 13-16.

The Valuable Influence of Embodied Christianity.

THERE are three great facts contained in this passage which claim our most earnest and profound attention:

I. THAT MAN'S SOCIAL HISTORY IS PRE-EMINENTLY THAT OF INFLUENCE. Christ here refers to a physical fact-the influence of one kind of matter upon another-in order to express the power that man puts forth upon man. Science gives us to understand that the principle of influence pervades every part of the material universe; that the fluttering of an insect's wing sends its vibrations to the remotest orb in the great field of space. Be this as it may, man influences man. "No man liveth unto himself." Each influences, and is ininfluenced. No one is either above or beneath the modifying touch of this subtle, all-penetrating, and ever-flowing element of power. By it man multiplies his moral self-gives immortality and universality to the ideas that spring from his intellect, and the principles that shape his life. The words that drop from his lips fall as pebbles into the centre of a placid lake, creating a series of undulating and ever-widening circles over the whole expanse. Thus the spirit of past generations throb in us; and down through posterity it shall flow, and be the moral life-blood of the men that are to be.

There are two things which account, in some measure, for this wonderful fact in our history:-First. The bond of physical relationship. We have descended from one stock; we are branches of one primal root. The blood of Adam circulates through the veins of all. We are all of one nature -members of one organic whole. This relationship gives to the parent an almost absolute power over the mind and character of the child: the one feels that he has a right to wield the power, and the other that it is his duty and happiness to yield. I can conceive of beings existing together where there is no such a physical bond; who are not produced through any secondary instrumentalities; who have no parent but one, and that is God; between whom and the ETERNAL, in the order of relationship, there stands no one;-such beings would, to a great extent, stand distinct from, and independent of, each other. Such is not man. He derives his existence from a line of ancestry which lengthens with every age; a link in the long chain is he, and the motion of all past links moves him. The other thing which serves to account for this fact in our history is, secondly, the bond of universal inter-dependence. The principle of mutual dependence is one of the most absolute to which we are subject. No man is independent of another; and, as a rule, those who pride themselves in their imaginary independence are the most dependent. The diversities which exist in the intellectual powers, mental attainments, the secular positions, the ages, and general capabilities of men, give universal sweep and resistless energy to this principle of inter-dependence. Man is dependent upon man for his education, his support, his protection, his comfort, and his religion. Who does not see that this law necessitates influence? There may be beings living together who are entirely independent of each other. There may be such a perfect equality between their being and circumstances, that one has no power either to help or injure another. They may derive their blessings direct from the Fountain, and not through the channel of mutual operation. In such a case, we see not how they could influence each