little time has deadened his first remorse, and put back his old heart into him again. Now, in all these contrasted characters there is one common basis; there is one common nature-moral, responsible,— a heart, a conscience, a will. They are individuals of the same race and family, so alike in kind as to be one; but so different in character, so diametrically opposed by the antagonist forces of moral energy, that no two other things can be more two than they are. They have no fellowship, no common language. They are each to the other unintelligible riddles.

And now let us take not two men of two characters, but the same man at two stages of his moral life.

If we could compare what the lurking power of our birth-sin would have made a man, who from holy baptism has been shielded and sanctified, with the actual energetic holiness to which the grace of God has wrought his inmost being, we should understand the deep mystery lying in the words, "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature." But as we can measure powers only in their effects, we must take the common case of a man in whom an after-repentance and change of heart abolishes his former self. Compare together the earlier and the latter state of the man who was once impure, and is now chaste; who was luxurious, and is now mortified in the flesh; who was grasping and

worldly, and now vests the right and disposal of all he has in Christ his Lord; who was once dead and impenitent, and is now broken in heart; though, by the line of identity which runs deeply through all his life, in boyhood, youth, and manhood, binding all his years, with all their burden of good and ill, in one single consciousness; and by the stern rule of moral responsibility, which rivets with an iron bond his former self about him to the last, though by these laws of our being he is one and the same man still, yet in all other things he is so two as light and darkness cannot be more distinct.

And that because two wills bent contrary ways are, in moral truth, not more two than one which has had two contrary determinations. It is not in the multitude of wills that men are so truly several and divided as in their contrary and conflicting bias. All the lights of heaven, and all the watersprings of the earth, all the angels of God, all spirits and souls of the righteous, are but one in the sameness of their common nature. They are all a perfect unity. It is moral contradiction-moral conflict -the clash of moral antagonists, that makes God and man to be two, and the race of man as divided as it is numerous; and so is it in every living soul changed by the grace of God. He was an evil creature, he is a holy one; that is, he was an old, he is new. Such were Manasseh and Magdalene ;

such the apostle Paul; such was even St. John, once ambitious and fiery, but afterwards meek and patient, taking the scourge with joy for his Master's sake. For he, too, had grown into a new creature. He had learned things unutterable, lying on his Master's bosom; he had there gazed with steadfast glance into the clear depths of the Redeemer's love, and by gazing grew into the likeness of his Lord. Such is the law of our regeneration; and so must we be ever changing from old to new. It is a change as searching and as absolute as can be in the limits of the same being. When the flesh is subdued to the spirit, and Satan bruised under our feet, this old world passes away as a shadow, and the new stands out as the visible reality from which the shadow fell: and the whole man grows into a saint. The lowliest and most unlettered man, to whom written books are mysteries the tiller of the ground-the toiling craftsman-the weary trader -the poor mother fostering her children for God -the little ones whose angels do always behold the face of their Father in heaven,-all these, by the Spirit of Christ working in them, are changed into a saintly newness, and serve with angels, and look into the mystery of God with cherubim, and adore with the seraphim of glory.

Now, if this is to be a new creature, we may well stand in awe of our great and holy calling to be

members of Christ.

What an awful change has

passed upon each one of us when we knew it not! How fearful is the relation into which we have been brought to the spiritual world! how nigh to the unseen presence of the Word made flesh, and to the person of the Holy Ghost! How appalling, then, is this view of our state as Christians! We are wont to look without reflection on the lives of men baptised like ourselves, and to think that such high mysteries cannot be literally understood; that they must needs be lowered by explanations, so as to accord with the mingled state of the visible church; because we plainly see that the state of baptised men is, for the most part, very far from the spiritual condition expressed in these mysterious words.

For instance, what are we to say of sinful Christians? how are they new creatures? how are they in Christ? and if not in Christ, what is their state? and what must be their end? Surely, a man may say, they cannot be new creatures. In them old things are not passed away; their old sins are loved as much as ever, their old lusts as much pampered, their old habits as much indulged. All their old ways are still about them,-neglect of prayer and of the holy Communion, quick tempers, biting words, evil thoughts, trifling with sin, impenitent recollections of past wickedness-all these hang about them, and they are unchanged; and yet, for all

ousness.

that, they are in Christ-well were it if they were not so--and this is their condemnation. They are members of His body; they have received that thing which by nature they could not have; they have resisted God and held His grace in unrighteSimon Magus was not sanctified, but he was baptised, and his baptism was his condemnation. The profaners of the holy Sacrament of the Lord's body and blood at Corinth ate and drank their own condemnation; holy things turned in their hands to poison. Well were it had it been common water, bread, and wine, but they were consecrated. We know not what sinning in holy things may do; nor what tampering in evil may challenge at God's hand. Saul sought to witchcraft, and the Lord raised up Samuel to foretell his death. Balaam tempted the Lord, and an angel withstood him in the way, and would have slain him while he knew it not. The sins of men baptised into Christ are worse than the sins of heathen. The handling of holy things without holiness is an awful mystery of condemnation. Yet all such men are branches in the vine, though dying or dead-twice dead, waiting for the sharp sickle and the burning-yet branches still; and in hell, it may be, the water of baptism shall scorch more fiercely than the fire that is not quenched, and the Cross which was drawn upon their fore