in every man subjectively; and Christ the Light which, shining objectively in His Life, and Death, and Resurrection, daily increases, as we gaze, the Light of the Christ within us.

2. The Ministry' is a reflection of Christ's Life in experience. It might be a matter of surprise that God's truth should be conveyed through such feeble instruments-men whom the axe and the lion could destroy. Well, the Apostle acknowledges that it is so. He calls them "earthen vessels :" he knows them to be but fragile receptacles of this "treasure." But this very circumstance, instead of proving that the Gospel is not of God, proves that it is. For what was the life of these men but the life of Christ over again-a Life victorious in defeat? "I fill up," says St. Paul, "that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ:" "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body." So that in their sufferings, the Apostles represented the death of Christ, and in their incredible escapes His resurrection. Figuratively speaking, their escapes were as a resurrection. Compare the word resurrection, used in the sense of escape, in the 11th chapter of Hebrews, at the 35th verse. One might almost say that the Apostles bore a charmed life—a mystic resemblance to their Lord an existence which rose, like the fabled phoenix, into fresher being from its ashes.

Christ then, is the mystic symbol of Christian life: His death and His resurrection are repeated in His people. Only with exquisite truthfulness, and in opposition to all one-sided exaggeration, St. Paul observes, that in some Christians the death was more exhibited, in others the Resurrection: "So then death worketh in us, but life in you." For there are various types of the Divine life, as, for example, in Christ and in John the Baptist. It takes effect sometimes on the side of the Cross, sometimes on the side of the Resurrection. In different periods of the same life, in different ages of freedom

or persecution as we have known in the depressed Church of the Albigenses and the victorious Church of England—in different persons during the same age, the Cross and the Resurrection alternate, and exist together. But in all there is progress-the decay of evil, or the birth of good; for "though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day."

It was in this way that the early Church followed Christ's Life, weekly and yearly. Friday and Sunday showed to them the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. Good Friday and Easter-day filled them with sorrow and with joy. For such is the true Christian aspect of life. We are not to choose the Cross exclusively. The death and the life of Christ are to be manifested in our mortal body. We are to let things come as God pleases, making both joy and sorrow divine, by infusing into them the Cross and the Resurrection. We are to show Christ forth in our lives till He comes. He is the Sun: and Christian life is as the turning of the sunflower to the Sun. This was the explanation of the mystery of St. Paul's own existence in the death and resurrection of his Lord: he was living Christ over again. Christ was Human Nature personified. In His Death, St. Paul saw the frail Humanity subject to decay; in His Resurrection, the Apostle saw human life elevated into Divine existence. He was crucified through weakness, yet He liveth by the power of God."

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And so St. Paul felt that every true human soul must repeat Christ's existence. He could bear to look on his own decay; it was but the passing of the human and meantime, there was ever going on within him the strengthening of the Divine. Thus his own contracted, isolated existence was gone it had been absorbed into communion with a Higher Life it had been dignified by its union with the Life of lives. Just as the tidal pulsations in the estuary, a few inches only more or less, are dignified by referring them to the ocean life

with which they are connected, since they repeat what the sea performed a few hours before: so St. Paul felt himself, in connection with the great sea of Humanity and with God. Pain was sacred, since Christ had also suffered. Life became grand when viewed as a repetition of the Life of Christ. The Apostle lived, "always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in" his "mortal flesh."

LECTURE XLII.

2 CORINTHIANS, iv. 16-18; v. I-3.

-November 21, 1852.

IN

N our last lecture we viewed the Christian ministry as one of Light, and as a reflection of the Life of Christ in word and in experience. To-day we consider

I. The trials of the Christian ministry.

II. The consolations of the Christian ministry.

I. Its trials: This is ground which has been gone over before. We will glance at one or two instances of the trials of modern missionaries: I recollect Weitbrecht who recently died at Calcutta ;-and well do I remember the description he gave of the difficulties encountered by the Gospel missionaries in the East. What a picture he drew of the almost unconquerable depression which was produced by the mere thought of going back to India: to struggle with the darkening effects of universal idolatry-with the secret sense of incredulity in Christian Truth, giving rise to the ever-recurring doubt-" Can the Gospel light be only for us few, while countless myriads of the human race still walk in the 'shadow of death?'"Observe too, the peculiar class of trials to be encountered in hot climates, which intensify the passions of our human nature, and render a resistance to opportunities offered for their gratification a difficult task indeed. For the martyr spirit is not shown merely in physical suffering.

Take another instance :-The dangers and escape of the missionary Krapf in East Africa. What obstacles did he not

encounter in his endeavours to effect a chain of missions from West to East of that dreary continent! now attacked by robbers in the mountains of Bura;-and then many days without food, is forced at last to drink water from a musketbarrel and to eat gunpowder !

Remember too, the graves of the Christian missionaries piled so soon and so rapidly on the pestilential plain of Sierra Leone-remember Gardiner at Terra del Fuego;-Clapperton dying amid the sands of Africa-the Landers-Mungo Park; -and you will find that the missionaries and pioneers of Christianity still encounter the same trials, the same dangers, from famine, pestilence, and the sword, of which St. Paul so eloquently speaks in his Epistles.

II. Christian consolations.

1. The comprehension of the law of the Cross. Spiritual life is ours through temporary death: for " though our outward man perish, yet our inward man is renewed day by day." Strength is ours through suffering; for "our light affliction

worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Thus, the law of our Humanity is life out of decay; the type and exemplification of which is the Cross of Christ. And this is the true soother of affliction-this one steadfast thought the glory which is being worked out thereby. For pain and death change their character according to the spirit in which they are viewed, just as the amputation of a limb is quite as painful as the shattering of it by an accident; yet in the one case the sufferer shrieks, in the other bears it heroically; because his will goes with the operation, because he feels it is right, and knows why it is done. Mark however, one distinction: It is not merely the perception of the law which makes trial tolerable, but a law personified in One whom we love. The law is, "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us glory." Stoicism taught that but