tempers his glory, that we are not intimidated in our approaches, and so blends his love with the sympathies of our common humanity, that, while we are found in kindred affinity with the Son of God, and in natural sympathy with his sufferings, and admiration for the sublime moral beauty of his character, through this door which God has thus opened in our hearts, he himself enters; and, as thought expands and faith increases, the awakened sinner, like the convinced Thomas, exclaims of the man Christ Jesus, "My Lord and my God!" God was manifested in the flesh. And one of the blessed facts in the mystery of this manifestation is, that God literally speaks to us in the person of our own nature; weeps in our presence such tears as we weep; touches us with a hand of flesh, that he may lay upon our hearts the hand of the Spirit. As man, our Saviour is one of us. As God, he is one of the Holy Three. To read the holy Gospel is to read the biography of the Godhead. God's will is not only here revealed, but his character concreted in sinless humanity: and yet, that humanity suffering as a sinner, that believing sinners might escape the damnation of hell.

This blessed theme can never be tame. It imparts to pulpit truth all the naturalism of

heaven, the eternal freshness of Divinity. Every sermon, then, should be preached in the shadow of the cross. Like the incense, which burned perpetually before the Lord in the sanctuary, every sermon should be odorous with the doctrines of Jesus. Nor should we think the theme incapable of new modes of presentation, incapable of new and striking illustrations. Not only is the theme, like certain forms of life, incapable of losing its interest by familiarity, but it is capable of infinite development. It is a fountain of thoughts, as exhaustless as the Divine mind, capable of being expressed by an infinite variety of wordings. The whole Bible is as full of the Spirit of Christ, in every text, sentence, proper name, word, and syllable, as is the whole body of a living man full of life. The geologist might as well expect to dig through some rock or strata, and find some spot, some object, in the ingredients of the globe, unpervaded with the laws of gravitation, as might the Bible student expect to find some desert waste in its pages, unmarked by the footsteps of Him whose goings forth have been from everlasting, and whose last crowning act was to come into humanity, and down into the world, to seek and to save that which was lost.

Brethren of the pulpit, in the promotion of revivals, intensify your sermons by refusing more and more to know anything among men but Jesus Christ and him crucified. Men will welcome the doctrine, for man instinctively feels the need of help from a superior power, without and above him. All men want to be saved, and, therefore, want some one to save them. But, after all, the difficulty lies in getting men to receive the Saviour of the Gospel, in persuading men to believe that this is the only true Saviour, and the only true God. O Jesus! hast thou yet found faith on the earth? Increase in us, that believe the power of that grace, and overcome by thy Spirit the obstinacy of unbelief in others!

CHAPTER VII.

THE CLASS-MEETING.

WORKING THE SOCIAL AND SYMPATHETIC PRINCIPLE-MAN MORE
SOCIAL AS HE BECOMES MORE RELIGIOUS THE FOLLY OF
ANCHORITISM-THE CLASS-MEETING THE CLASS-MEETING AS

THE MEANS OF CONSECRATING THE SOCIAL PRINCIPLE
CLASS-MEETINGS SUPPLY A NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL WANT
THEIR PHILOSOPHY ILLUSTRATED
CLASS-ROOM THE RECLAIMING POWER OF
IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSATION.

THE CONVERSATION OF THE

CLASS-MEETINGS

In our last, we meagerly glanced at the prominence that should at all times be given by the pulpit to the ever-blessed doctrine of atonement. Amid the vast variety of pulpit themes, we maintained that Christ, like the guiding banner of a battling host, or like the symbolic serpent amid the smitten camp of Israel, should have a paramount prominence.

In further consideration of the obstacles to be overcome, in the prosecution of revivals, we pass now from the pulpit to the Church; and having, in former pages, spoken with some pertinence of the duty of personal religion, (the necessity of stated, incessant, wrestling, private

prayer,) we come now to offer a thought or two on the duty of working the sympathetic and social principle.

"It is not good for man to be alone." Man was never made to act with vigor in a condition of isolation. Man, individually, is not the com plement of humanity. To turn hermit, for any purpose, is to act the madman, and stultify and dwarf all progress. The biggest of all fools were those, in the dark ages, who turned hermits for the kingdom of heaven's sake. The sympathetic and social feelings are not mere accidents of human nature; they are cardinal and rational essentials. Man always becomes the more social as he becomes the more enlightened and refined; the more social as he becomes the more like his Maker. True religion is ever subordinating selfishness to the action of the social feelings. This is the Eden soil in which the missionary tree, the leaves of which are for the healing of the nations, grows so luxuriantly. Like the patriarch of old, from being blessed, the Christian is ever seeking how he may become a blessing. "I will bless thee: and thou shalt be a blessing."

But how, as Church members, may we best work this principle for purposes of mutual