mercy. The one is, if I may so say, the preparing of the cloth for the dye, and after that you have the application of the colour. No heaven except to the victor. The victor does not fight his way into heaven, but Christ gives it to him. And when you and I stand as, God be thanked! we may hope to stand before that throne, we shall forget all about rewardableness and reward, and say, "Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, unto thy name" we give glory. Thou dost give me the grace to fight; thou dost teach my hands to war; thou dost cover my head in the day of battle; it is thine own grace in me that thou dost crown. Thou art first, and last, and all-the motive and the strength of the conflict, the reward and the rewarder of the victory. All, Lord! all that I have is thine, and mine is only weakness, and sin, and defeat.

Dear brethren, make your choice. Fight you must. Are you going to win or be beaten? Make your choice of the image you must bear. Whose? "As we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." Loving confidence in that Divine Lord, whose name is the clearest utterance for earth and heaven of the name of God, and in whom our impotence is omnipotence, strengthens us for the battle, and will crown us at the last. They that know Him and love Him shall be like Him, and they that are like Him shall possess in their deepest souls the joy that in Heaven shall be unspeakable and full of glory. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."

94

SERMON VII.

"SO DID NOT I.”

A WORD TO THE YOUNG.

NEHEMIAH V, 15.

So did not I, because of the fear of God.

THERE are few nobler characters, even among the many noble ones of the Old Testament, than Nehemiah, the leader of the restored exiles. He was no prophet-he was no priest-he made no pretension to possessing a Divine commission, but he was a devout, resolute, sagacious man, with the fear of God in his soul and Jerusalem graven on his inmost heart! Prompt and practical, and with a strong dash of organizing, governmental instinct, there was yet a vein of poetry in him. He was bold and cautious, prudent yet daring, full of ready resource, able to hold his tongue and bide his time; and deep down below all this, there was a great fountain of enthusiasm, which was called forth by the thoughts of God and of his land lying in desolation and ruin.

These touching words from his autobiography which I have read to you have immediate reference to a very small matter, but yet they let us into the secret of a great

part of his character. His predecessors, the representatives of a foreign dominion, had been in the habit of making a gain of their office, or at least charging the maintenance of the cost of their court and household to the people already impoverished and ground down by exactions. Against this practice he makes a stand. It was a little thing, but Nehemiah brought a great principle to bear upon it; and though, says he, it was a legitimate source of gain and a recognized custom, though all my predecessors had done it, and though there was nothing but a sentiment to stand in the way of my doing it, yet could not do it because-I feared God.

And thus we get from the simple words such great thoughts as these. How the loftiest motive may regulate the smallest duties. How religious principle, as we call it in our abstract way, or "The fear of God," as Nehemiah called it, how that may interpenetrate, will interpenetrate, and run through all life, and find a field for its noblest exercise in the midst of commonplace and secular duties! How, wheresoever that principle is strong and vigorous, a man will have to make up his mind to sturdy non-compliance, to dare to be singular, to be unlike the maxims and examples of the people round about him, and how every good man will have to make up his mind to give up a great many sources of gain and profit and pleasure and advantage for no more tangible reason than because a more sensitive conscience makes that which other men can do without winking, if I may so say, a crime intolerable to him.

It is possible, young men and women, to "make the

most of both worlds;" but all true religion will keep a man back from a great many things which "the world" thinks "the best" that it has. "So did not I, because of the fear of God." I think, then, I may venture to take these words, dismissing altogether now any further reference to their immediate occasion, as the basis of some very simple and matter of course, but, I hope, earnest and sincere appeals and exhortations to my younger friends who have come here to-night to listen to me.

I. First, let me put the main principle that lies here in these words: Nothing will go right unless you dare to be singular. "So did not I."

Howsoever common the practice, howsoever innocent and recognized the source of gain, the multitude that approved it, and adopted it, was nothing to me; I had to stand on my own feet, and look through my own eyes, and be guided by my own conscience, and make my own choice, because I had to answer for it at the last. Everything will be wrong where a man has not learnt—and the sooner you begin to learn it the better for your lives here and yonder-the great art of saying "No."

I suppose I need not remind you that in all regions of life, and in many into which I have not the slightest intention of going to-night, that habit, in various forms, lies at the bottom of all that is worthy and noble and great and good, and its opposite leads to all that is ignoble, weak, and erroneous. In the field of opinion, the lazy acquiescence with which men hand their ready-made cutand-dried theories and thoughts from one to another, and never "look the gift-horse in the mouth," but swallow

the thing whole, for no better reason than that contained in the cowardly old proverb that "What everybody says must be true," is the fruitful source of error, hypocrisy, weakness, and misery. Youth is the time to form opinions or rather to learn truth. It is meant that you should now, with the honest use of all the power you can command, canvass and decide upon the Babel of varying beliefs around you. That spirit of inquiry which is so often condemned in you, may, indeed, degenerate into self-conceited rejection of things ordinarily believed, or into mere love of singularity, or into contented doubt of all high truth; but if it be absent in youth there will be no real certitude in age. No man has any belief but what he wins for himself as the captive of his own spear and his own bow. If we are building on traditional opinion, we have really no foundation at all. Unless the word received from others has been verified by ourselves, and changed, as it were, into a part of our own being, we may befool ourselves with creeds and professions to which we fancy that we adhere, but we have no belief whatsoever. You must learn to look with your own eyes, and not through the spectacles of any human guides, authorities, or teachers upon the mystic, awful verities of this strange life, and upon the light that falls on them from the far-off empyrean above.

But these are not the thoughts to which I especially wish to direct you. The chief field for the exercise of this resolute non-compliance with common practice is in the region of moral action, in the daily conduct of your lives. There it is most needful that you should take this