are.

Therefore, we will not fear: what can man do

unto us?

Again, when we say, "The God of Jacob is our refuge," we reach back into the past, and lay hold of the mercies promised to, and received by, the long vanished generations who trusted in Him and were lightened. As, by the one name, we appeal to His own Being and uttered pledge, so, by the other, we appeal to His ancient deeds-past as we call them, but present with Him, who lives and loves above the low fences of time in the undivided eternity. All that He has been, He is; all that He has done, He is doing. We on whom the ends of the earth are come have the same helper, the same friend that "the world's grey patriarchs" had. They that go before do not prevent them that come after. The river is full still. The van of the pilgrim host did, indeed, long, long ago drink and were satisfied, but the bright waters are still as pellucid, still as near, still as refreshing, still as abundant as they ever were. Nay, rather, they are fuller and more accessible to us than to patriarch and psalmist, "God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect."

For we, brethren, have a fuller revelation of that mighty name, and a more wondrous and closer divine presence by our sides. The psalm rejoices in that "The Lord of Hosts is with us;" and the choral answer of the Gospel swells into loftier music, as it tells of the fulfilment of psalmists' hopes and prophets' visions in Him who is called "Immanuel," which is, being interpreted,

"God with us." The psalm is confident in that God dwelt in Zion. And our confidence has the more wondrous fact to lay hold of, that even now the Word who dwelt among us makes His abode in every believing heart, and gathers them all together at last in that great city, round whose flashing foundations no tumult of ocean beats, whose gates of pearl need not be closed against any foes, with whose happy citizens "God will dwell, and they shall be His people, and God himself shall be with +hem, and be their God."

65

SERMON V.

THE SCHOOL OF CHRIST.

EPHES. iv, 20, 21.

But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him.

THE direct and immediate purpose of these words is

to show the irreconcilable contradiction between a course of life such as that of other Gentiles, and the Christian discipline and instruction which these Ephesian believers had received. The Apostle draws a dreadful picture of heathenism, which we might profitably hang up by the side of the flattering portraits of "elegant mythologies" which we meet with in these days, when there is some danger that the study of the philosophy of mythology may blind us to the moral and spiritual effects of idolatry. Here is the estimate formed by a man who had looked at the thing with his own eyes, sharpened and cleared by fellowship with God-"In the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them-past feeling, have given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."

He starts back, as it were, with quick recoil of abhorrence from such a hideous picture as that-" But ye have not so learned Christ." The diametrical opposition between so foul a life, and the principles in which you have been trained, needs no more words. And then, as is natural to so fervid a disposition, in which logic is blended with emotion, he seems for a moment to forget his more immediate purpose, and to branch off into what, brief as it is, is yet almost a complete view of the school of Christ-the scholars, the teacher, the theme, the process of education, and the purpose for which it is all given.

The words are very remarkable; carrying, as I think, some very precious lessons, and opening up regions of truth not so familiar as they should be to much of our popular religious thought. With this general idea, that the words of my text are a description of the School of Christ, I wish to consider them a little more particularly now. If we look at them and those which immediately follow, we shall see that they present Christ Himself as the great lesson learned in His school-"Ye have not so learned Christ;" that they regard Christ himself as being the teacher as well as the lesson-"Ye have heard him ;" that they contemplate the learning as a gradual process of tuition, which takes effect on condition of union with Christ "Ye have been taught in him," not "by him," as our translation inaccurately has it; that they further define the form and manner of the teaching as being in accordance with truth in Jesus-embodied as it were in Him, and that they put the whole purpose, or possibly in

another aspect the whole substance, of all this educational process as being the investiture of the scholars with a new nature made like God, and the divesting them of their ancient evil-"That ye put off the old man, and put on the new man, which, after God, is created in righteousness and true holiness."

It would lead us too far to attempt to cover all this ground to-day. But we may consider together these three points contained in our text in a somewhat different order, and deal briefly with The Teacher; The Process of Instruction; and The Theme.

I Notice that we have here distinctly affirmed that The living voice of Christ himself is our teacher.

"Ye have heard Him," says Paul. Do not water down these plain and strong words as if they meant only "Ye have heard about him," and were nothing more than a strongly figurative way of speaking. We do, indeed, say of men long gone, the mighty dead who "rule our spirits from their urns," that "being dead they yet speak." In their books, in the records of their lives, in the influence which still vibrates from their deeds, we may be regarded as hearing them still. But it is no vague prolongation of influence from the shadowy past that Paul is thinking of, when he says that these Ephesians had heard Christ. Neither is it any literal listening to His words when He spake on earth that could have place in the experience of these men, who were "worshippers of the great goddess Diana, and of the image which fell down from Jupiter," when he lifted up the gentle voice that was not heard in the streets. Remember that the New Testament