selves upon thoughtful minds, may reconcile us to the fact of God's seeming cruelty, injustice, and insensibility to our pain.

22. And now you ask the nature of man's communion with God. How can we realise His personal sympathy? It is a mystery, but so is all personal sympathy. It is a consciousness, it is a life. Why is it that you love one person, and not another? There may be a person who has no outward attractions, no gift of mind or body, but is even to some extent poor, as to the cast and character of his intelligence, yet you perceive that you love him, and would suffer for him, and even die for him. And there are other people most attractive and gifted, but you say 'they are unsympathetic, to you at least; you care not for them.' What is that mysterious power which has drawn you, which has repelled you? It is the mystery of a personal sympathy. And so with regard to God. I firmly believe that there is what I may term the minor personality of God-that side of God open to man, intelligible to man, the circle within the circle, the limited within the unlimited; and I assume that from this minor personality of God there comes an effluence, a sympathetic force; so that our God thus takes a stream of personal influence, and pours it in waves of tidal emotion upon the human soul; thus He comes unto us, and makes His abode with us; we receive of His fulness, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all. This communication enables men most intellectual, who might attribute their religious consciousness to other sources, who cannot

always justify their convictions-men whose minds are reflective and sceptical-to maintain that they are guided by God, protected by God, not from outward evils, but protected inwardly-taught to look aright on the distresses of their lives, and on the insoluble mysteries of the world; taught the ways and means of finding out how to escape from one sin after another, how to be kindled and comforted in the midst of their afflictions.

And if you are in communion with God, this assurance, this earnest of the Spirit, will come to you also. It is not anything which people can explain to you, but the religious sects in the midst of their narrowness and bigotry, have all, more or less, seized this truth. When they begin to talk about it, they often get into great confusion; they may talk nonsense and give bad reasons, which fortunately satisfy a great many simple-minded people, the simple minded people understand the root of the matter, and are not so much injured by the bad reasons as we might expect, for they too are brought into sympathy with God, and live.

Let us sit down with the little children and the poor and the broken-hearted, and learn the same lesson, and then we shall lay hold not only of 'a stream of tendency,' and a moral law,' but of One who bows down His ear to our complaints, and lifts up the heart of them that have no might' by pouring into it a divine strength made perfect in weakness.

III.

CHRISTIANITY.

ARGUMENT.

CHRISTIANITY is one of many religions. It has important affinities with the past, but the Type of Life which it has created constitutes its originality.

The Person and Work of Jesus are then specially dwelt upon, and miracles are discussed.

Christianity has given to the world a history, a system of ethics, and a spirit flowing from a Divine life. Its triumph over Dogma, Superstition, Scepticism, and Crime, is then briefly traced. Its sufficiency is vindicated, and the Character of Jesus is dwelt upon as a proof that His religion favours neither asceticism nor onesidedness.

In the next discourse on Christian Ethics, the permanence of a Moral Law is asserted. The mission of the Jews is dwelt upon; and an attempt made, by a comparison with the Talmud, to show the points of contact between Judaism and Christianity.

Certain inferences are then drawn. Christianity is still declared to be original, and its characteristics are dwelt upon in some detail.

The teaching of Christ is shown to be superior in spirit and comprehensiveness to all other teaching, and to correspond to 'the deepest thoughts and feelings of human beings.'