will reap what we have sown; and sower and reaper will rejoice at the judgment-seat of God together.

And now what a solemn truth does he state-" We are the savour of death or the savour of life”—that is, the Gospel which he preaches has that effect. This is a very important thought, and I earnestly pray that every one may feel it, that this blessed Gospel, however feebly, if only fully and faithfully preached, never leaves you the same person that you were before you heard it. By a great law, it is to you the savour of death-that is, hardening more and more; or it is the savour of life—that is, sanctifying, quickening, comforting more and more. No person retires from the sanctuary just as he was when he entered it; and every time that a hearer rejects the Gospel, he has more fitted himself to reject it next time. Every time that a great obligation is pressed upon you, and you ignore or despise it, or treat it with contempt, you will come back next Sunday more able to repeat the too successful experiment. Therefore, when you hear this blessed Gospel, let every one feel within himself, "Now, when I listen to this book—when I hear that honest, true, and faithful sermon-I hear that which will either be an impulse carrying me nearer to God, or an impulse carrying me further away from him."

And well might the apostle ask, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Not man, not an angel; God only is, who makes the weakest things strong, and the humblest things great, and the fewest things effective in winning souls to himself, and giving glory to his blessed name.

Now review the whole chapter; and does not the impression strike you, first, this man who wrote it was

thoroughly in earnest? Does it not strike you, in the second place, that he was thoroughly unselfish? Does it not occur to you, in the third place, that his happiness and his joy were bound up with the happiness and joy of his people? What can have made him so? Not temporal reward; for he knew that the cross of Christ was shame, sorrow, ignominy, loss, below. Not earthly renown: for he had none reasonably to expect. The only solution of it is, he was inspired by the Spirit of God. This powerful mind was convinced by the clearest arguments that Jesus was the Son of God; and he felt it alike his dignity, his duty, and his delight to spend, and to be spent, for Christ's sake, and for your salvation.

In this chapter we see condemned everything like ecclesiastical or hierarchical despotism. The sentence on the guilty was pronounced by Paul, but inflicted by the majority. The Christian laity are here regarded as co-equal in such matters with the apostle.

"This feeling of the double aspect of Christianity-of its failures side by side with its successes-of its judgments and responsibilities side by side with its pleasures and privileges-is characteristic of all parts of the New Testament. The falling and rising again of many in Israel''a sword and a fire upon earth'—and the Son of Man finding no faith when he comes-are amongst the many instances in which, as here, a shade of pensive and melancholy foreboding goes along with the most triumphant exultation."-Stanley.

CHAPTER III.

THE WORKMAN TESTED BY HIS WORK-LETTER AND SPIRITGLORIES-PLAIN SPEECH-THE VEIL ON THE

CONTRASTING

HEAD OF THE JEW-THE TRANSFORMING LIGHT.

I NOTICED, in the course of my introductory remarks to this Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians, that a great deal of it is a sort of personal discussion, owing to the fruits produced by their reception of the first Epistle which he addressed to that divided and quarrelsome Church. In this chapter which we have now read, and which is strictly and properly a continuation of the previous one, he says, "Is it now at all necessary that I should praise myself, or that I should try to persuade you that I am what grace has made me? Or can it be said that I have so little weight with you, to whom I have written and addressed so much, that I need some other person to give me a letter of commendation to you? I do not want such things; for," he says, "if anybody want to see what are the fruits of my ministry, he must not listen to what others say, or ask for a testimony that others can give; but let him look at the results." If you see an exquisite statue of Pentelican or Carrara marble, beautifully chiselled and made, you say the sculptor knows how to use his chisel. If you see a fine painting, in all its proportions perfect, in all its colouring harmonious, you say it must have been a man who knows how to use his brush.

And if you see a flock holy, happy, prosperous, growing in grace, liberal in their contributions to all that is good; why, what is the inference? That the minister, the under-shepherd, who has been teaching that flock, knows his work, and has been by God consecrated to do that work with success and with a blessing. So, says the apostle, you are our epistles. If you want to judge of my penmanship, look into those hearts that were once bowed down beneath a load of sorrow, and see them bounding with joy; look into those countenances once clouded, now radiant with bright sunshine. If you want an epistle to prove what I am, and who I am, and to what extent God has been with me, look at yourselves; you are epistles; and epistles not written with letters that will be expunged, not written on the broad parchment that the flames of the last day shall consume, not written upon tables of stone that another Moses may drop, and suffer to be shattered into fragments; but on the living tablets of hearts that shall beat with love while God's throne lasts; that are immortal, and therefore imperishable. What a magnificent testimonial is this! what noble evidence of true succession is this! That man need not count the links of his ecclesiastical pedigree, or appeal to fabulous genealogies or to anile fables, whose work is blessed, and of whom many a sorrowful heart says he has indeed been by grace a blessing to me.

Now, says the apostle, "we have such trust through Christ to God-ward; not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God." The expression in the 6th verse, "who hath made us able ministers of the New Testament," is barely correct. It is the same word used as

a verb which is here used as an adjective and also a noun substantive, "Our sufficiency." The words are not, "God has made us able," but, "he has made us sufficient ministers of the New Testament." "And not of the letter, but of the spirit." There has been a great deal of difficulty in determining what is the precise nature of the contrast; what is the letter and what is the spirit. Judging from the whole chapter, one would say that the letter is the Mosaic institutions, viewed as ultimate things; the spirit is the Mosaic institutions, viewed as evangelical foreshadows, testimonies and types of those good things that were to be. If, for instance, you read of the cities of refuge, the story of the brass serpent, of the high-priest, the temple, and the cherubim, and the glory, and the mercy-seat; if you say, These things mean, and are restricted and intended to mean, exactly what is stated by Moses, and were meant to illustrate that economy only, and not to go beyond it in any prospective reference; that seems very like reading the Old Testament in the letter; it is living under law, condemning and unedifying law, which can do you no good. But if you read these things in the light of the New Testament, and see the city of refuge as a type of Christ, and the brass serpent a type of Christ, and the high-priest a type of Christ, and the glory between the cherubim God's glory in him; and the mercy-seat the propitiation made through him; then you do not restrict your studies to the letter, but you see shining like a living glory, out of the very heart of the letter, that which is the life and spirit of it all,— Christ, and him crucified.

Now then, says the apostle, "If the ministration of death," the law, with its condemnatory accents,