values highly, but things that he has every day he values not at all. The fresh water, the pure air, the bright sunshine, the starry sky, the green earth, the clear stream, are things so common, that we take no notice of them, or very little appreciate them. But these are the best things. The fact is, our greatest blessings lie upon the highway; we have only to pick them up. How thankful should we be! What is true of the outer world is true of the moral, the spiritual, and the inner. The greatest blessings that Christ has purchased, are freely offered and laid at every man's door; and it is guilt that eternity will not expiate or exhaust if we neglect so great salvation.

Pray, then, that the Holy Spirit may make the heart susceptible and receptive, and that the good seed sown may spring forth and grow up, in some an hundred, in some sixty, in some thirty-fold.

CHAPTER II.

PAUL'S SYMPATHY-SINGLENESS OF EYE-EXTREMES OF FEELING -CONVICTION OF SIN-PERSONALITY OF SATAN-TRIUMPHANT PROGRESS-GOSPEL A SAVOUR OF LIFE AND

AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE.

DEATH-THE

Now,

I STATED, in the course of my preliminary remarks on reading this Second Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians, that in the previous Epistle he had commanded them to rebuke a person guilty of a very great and enormous offence, by separating him from their society, and treating him as a heathen and a publican, until he repented of his sin, and abjured the course into which he had been so wickedly and so injuriously led. it is with reference to this person that Paul writes this portion of his Epistle, and states to the Corinthian Church, or the Corinthian Christians, that "If I make you sorry, by speaking sharply of your sins-if I make you sorry, who is he that maketh me glad, but the same which is made sorry by me?" that is, if I have made you sorry, it is not in order to gratify a personal spite, but it is for your improvement; and that I, as your minister, may thereby, from your reformation, derive the greater joy. Then he states that it was in no triumphant strain that he wrote to them, but out of anguish of heart and with many tears, and "that you might know the love which I have more abundantly unto you." Can any man fail to see in all this the

marks of one whose heart was absorbed in his mission, whose greatest joy was derived from the happiness of his people, whose deepest and most poignant grief was occasioned by their failing and coming short of the great mark and aim he had in view; or that the apostle Paul had any other object or aim than the highest good? He had no side purpose, no by end. He sought exclusively, from first to last, the good of his flock, the happiness of Christendom, and the progress of that blessed Gospel which he knew, by sweet personal experience, was the savour of life unto life unto all them that received it.

In the 7th verse he calls upon them not to be so severe to the person they had cast forth from their communion, but to forgive him, lest he should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow. There are two extremes in every heart; there is the extreme of presumption, which calculates that all will be sunshine, which leads you to sin; and there is the extreme of depression, which gathers round it gloom and blackness, and drives into the very depths of despair. The apostle says you must take care of this; because if presuming in sin be a very grievous condition, being plunged in despair is scarcely less so. And when Satan sees one cast down under a sense of his sins, he will try to cast him down deeper into the depths of despair. Whenever a sense of sin makes you so sorry, so grieved, and depressed, that it drives you from Christ, it is not that sense of sin which the Holy Spirit inspires. But when your sense of sin, and guilt, and misery impels you to Christ, that you may obtain from him the cleansing of his blood and the gift of his righteousness, then it is that conviction of sin which the Holy Spirit of God has

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wrought in a believing and a regenerated heart. And therefore, says the apostle, we are anxious in this matter, lest Satan should get an advantage over you; for by painful personal experience," he says, "we are not ignorant of his devices." Now, can anybody doubt here that Satan is a personal being? It is all very well for some to indulge the freaks of fancy, and to say, How can you suppose there is a being such as Christians describe him, whose pleasure and gratification is in the temptation and the ruin of mankind? First of all, such a being is distinctly asserted to be a personal existence in the Bible; he is described as an archangel fallen; as having all the wisdom of the angel, combined with all the malignity of the fiend; he is described not as omnipresent, for that he is not, but as "going about, seeking whom he may devour." He has access to the human heart; the worst crimes that deface the history of Christendom are his inspiration. Infidelity, and scepticism, and superstition, are the clouds that he spreads over the horizon of the individual mind; and he will rejoice and derive his momentary joy from your denying his very existence, if he can only reflect on this, that he is the author and the inspirer of that very denial. But the real question is, Is his existence as the tempter of mankind asserted in the Bible? It is, as plainly, as unequivocally as the existence of God. It is not, therefore, a question with any one that accepts the Bible as true, Is Satan a personality? He must accept of it as fact; for our first duty is to determine that this book is a gigantic truth, or a gigantic falsehood-it can be nothing between ; and if it be a gigantic truth, then whatever it reveals, whatever it contains, we are not to discuss the pro

bability of, but to accept as the inspiration and the revelation of God. We cannot be too cautious at the outset in ascertaining if this book be from God; but having satisfied our minds that it is from God, then whatever it asserts we are to accept without a moment's hesitation.

The apostle goes on to thank God that, notwithstanding all his trials, he was always made to triumph in Christ; and that the savour of the knowledge of Christ crucified was made manifest in every place. The figure employed by the apostle is drawn from a Roman triumphant procession. The victorious Roman general returned bringing spoils and captives, accompanied by those who congratulated him on his victory; the altars smoked with fragrant incense; and the whole of the city of Rome was in a state of excitement and joy, welcoming the conqueror home.

"This passage," says Stanley, "is the origin of the metaphor once so frequent in the religious language of Christendom, as a popular belief to have been reconverted into a fact-'the odour of sanctity' applied in large portions both of the Eastern and Western Church to the beneficent influence of a holy life followed by a holy death."

Now, says the apostle, even were this savour to fail, we really triumph: what seems to you retrogression is really progress; for in every place, whether we seem to succeed or not, we really make way-we are sowing seeds that will grow up into glorious harvests, and leaving upon human hearts impressions more lasting than the stars. And though we may not be privileged to reap as though he had said-and it may be our more painful and laborious duty to sow only, yet others