the evils it produces immediately; it but reduces them gradually. If sin only carried fear with it, and not sorrow also, mercy could cure it at once. And sometimes, when the sinner, hunted like a wild beast by men, hears these words from the lips of Christ, "Neither do I condemn thee,”he may, in his thankfulness, feel that all pain is now for ever over, and only joy before him. But is it so? Does not the pain return-the pain of having sinned against One who thus forgives-❘ the self-upbraidings, the over-mastering, breaking sorrow of the sin? Rather, sometimes, would we choose to face the penalty of the offence than this bitter compunction for it when forgiven. Against a judge we could steel our heart, and nerve ourselves to bear whatever he might inflict; but against the miseries of self-reproach we have no

They rise awe-struck and terror-laden. Perhaps it cannot be shown that they have risen with bodily ailments, with sinews wrenched and joints displaced. Rather is the event to be held literal. An Angel entered Abraham's tent. He let his feet be washed; the same who in after days washed his disciples' feet. He allowed meat to be set before him ;-as in after times he asked, "Children, have ye any meat?" And a man he wrestled with Jacob; as now man for ever he

What premonitory approaches his adversary flict. | made, if any, we know not. Suddenly Jacob felt himself carrying on a great struggle-wrestling in the darkness with an unknown adversary. His whole nature was stirred. The struggle is the main thing for a time, not the adversary. That he should know his adversary at first was not meant; it was the Unknown that he must wrestle with. It was meant that he should be troubled, opposed, wrestled with, shaken to the very deeps of his nature; flung into a vague, dim, dark con-wrestles with us all in love, though we oppose flict with a power but indistinctly known. His him in earnest. adversary did not seek to oppose his advance, his passage forward; there was no such definiteness in his purpose, nor any such definiteness in Jacob's resistance. It was a wrestling match pure and simple; not for advantage, but for victory; not willingly entered upon by Jacob, but of necessity: for men do not invite such encounters as these, but when they feel them coming would gladly flee from them. Yet they cannot put them off; they must separate themselves and fling off from them wives and sons, and go alone into the darkness, to meet that mysterious Form and behold that face.

We discuss this wonderful event, and take sides as to whether it was a real, outward thing, or only a transaction in Jacob's soul. Some think it important to hold it literal and outward, and unsafe to regard it as mental. It is characteristic of very many of the views for which men fight, that they are excellent things to fight about, because there is no means of deciding them. It is also occasionally a characteristic of them that no interest whatever attaches to their decision, one way of them being quite as good as another. If God presented a real, outward form to Jacob, so that he entered into a physical wrestling with it, it was very wonderful and divine. If God's Spirit of revelation and holiness so touched the conscience and the memories of Jacob's heart that the agitated spirit deemed itself wrestling through the body, and did indeed in its own awful agony agitate and dislocate the bodily frame, was it less wonderful or less divine? The balance of probability perhaps lies on the side of the external reality of Jacob's adversary. Many a time in dreams the whole frame is agitated, and wrestles. Men do rise weary after nights of con

Gradually, from being vague and dim and in the darkness, the encounter passed on to greater clearness. Jacob, who had apparently sustained the combat with dogged, speechless tenacity, as was natural to him, came to know something of his adversary. From the first he knew that it was a man that wrestled with him. It was a person,-it was with a personal will that he was grappling. But after a time both adversaries stand out more clearly. The morning began to break, and with the light the spell of the Unseen over the patriarch will break too. The conflict must cease, lest its advantages be lost. The heavenly wrestler seeks to depart. He said, "Let me go, for the day breaketh." And Jacob said, "I will not let thee go, except thou bless me." Ere now there had begun to break upon Jacob's mind some consciousness of the rank of his adversary; and perhaps to complete it, he touched the nerve of his thigh and paralyzed it. And then the conflict quite changed its nature, from using force, to mere supplication. And here the details supplied by Hosea come in: "He had power over the Angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication to him" (xii. 4). God had put out his hand upon him at last, having allowed him to wrestle with him for a night,-a symbol of that obstinate struggle which, in his confident, unsubdued strength of nature, he had been waging against him all his lifetime. His Spirit cannot always strive with him: some decisive stroke must be put forth upon him, to break him once for all, to touch him in the vital part, that, utterly disabled, he may know whom he has been opposing, and how vain such a conflict is. And, altogether helpless, he can but throw his arms about his adversary and hang on to him-"I will not let thee go." And then, that

he might bless him, the Angel asked him his name. "What is thy name? And he said, Jacob." God first broke his power, and then brought well home to him what he was. As if the locality, and the circumstances, and the terror of his brother had not enough brought him before his ownself, he asked him his name. He worked him back through his whole past life to its starting-point; drove him down to its old beginnings, and to the confession that it was even now much as of old. God does not name him Jacob. He takes it out of his own mouth. He merely put it to him: "What is thy name?" Jacob was in no mood, and would hardly venture to evade the question. However unwilling his tongue was to utter it, the divine demand drew it forth; it cannot be withheld. Before the new name be conferred, the old must be fully confessed-the old name and the old nature, the old opprobrious, shameful title, and the old cunning, crooked, scheming, unmanly nature, that always gives to force, and seeks again to retrieve itself by fraud.

Whichever of the two it was, it was not enough. It needs to be renewed. And now, after twenty years, he knows it is not enough; and when, amid the old scenes, and with the old feelings again in his heart, God puts to him the question, "What is thy name?" who art thou? he falters out his old birth-name; he must confess he is but little, if any, altered from what he ever was. But this confession made, he is blessed, and receives

a new name.

And now the struggle is over, and Jacob passes on; but it is said that "as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted." These struggles leave their mark upon a man. God's touch abides. You cannot go through conflicts with him and show no scars from them. You go through life halt from them. Men see the difference, and remark on it, and speculate on its cause. Those are not what they were who have passed through such a wrestling as Jacob did. There is a brokenness of the old elasticity. The self-confidence is gone, and reserve takes its place. Forwardness, or even promptness, is away, and patience is in its stead. There is often a mysterious weakness to men's eyes, that comes from such struggles, though it may be inward strength; a want of positiveness, sometimes even a halfwayness and irresoluteness, an inwardness and self-inspection that begets uncertainty, and a drawing back even after moving forward. Men halt after such wrestlings with God. Jacob was weak somehow after this in outward things; more subdued and feeble before difficult undertakings than formerly-in guiding men's passions, in governing his turbulent and mutinous children— weak before misfortune, with no resolution to meet an emergency, with no promptitude to resent an indignity-he halted his life-long through. And when that great calamity befell him through his daughter, it is said of him that he was silent; and when an almost sorer grief came to him through the misconduct of his eldest son, it is said merely, that Israel heard it; and when his beloved child was sold, so ready was he to look for evil, that the falsehood invented by his sons seemed probable to him: "An evil beast hath devoured him. Joseph is without doubt rent in pieces. And he refused to be comforted, for he

A common history surely this of Jacob's, repeated in the life of many a man returning from a foreign land. Long ago going abroad, like Jacob, he had experiences on which he was founding much. God seemed to offer himself to him as to Jacob at Bethel, saying, “I am the God of thy father; I will be with thee in all places whither thou goest." And he vowed that the Lord should be his God. It is true the youthful vision of romantic purity and nobleness has hardly been lived up to; the high resolutions of an enthusiastic young mind have often been forgotten, and the mind itself has not been left altogether undebased by passion and craft and the competitions of life; and after so many years the outlines of that vision can hardly be recalled, and the fair ideal of life then set before him is scarcely now to be hoped for;-yet what took place then cannot be forgotten, and he thinks it cannot have been altogether in vain. It may not have been quite in vain. And it is needless raising subtle questions over it, whether it was but a preparatory influence of grace, deep it might be, restraining sin all life through, but yet not effectual; or whether it was the sowing of the true divine seed in the heart, which the cares of life grew up rankly over and blanched and well-nigh choked. I said, I will go down into the grave unto my son

mourning," a man with a broken, irresolute, unhopeful spirit henceforth. This great struggle had been too much for him. To subdue him, it had been needful to break him. No doubt he had an inward strength. All his own passion

was burned out. He was himself nobler and more straightforward and patient, having learned the secret of strength with God. And his life, though feeble outwardly, had a calm, mellow, evening light around it.

THE EXPERIENCE OF A SOCIAL REFORMER.

AN ADDRESS BY THE REV. GUSTAVE WERNER OF REUTLINGEN.

T is now forty years since gospel truth took | neighbour as ourselves-before, in short, we understood hold on me, and I became a converted man. The Spirit of God from the very first impressed on me the necessity of putting my new principles into practice. When, thirty-six years ago, I became a minister of the gospel, the duty of laying hold of the young, and endeavouring to bring them up for the Lord, seemed more than ever mine, and thus the Reutlingen Institution arose.

When I founded the House of Refuge there, and devoted myself to the rescuing of neglected and outcast children, I learned more and more of how deep unbelief and depravity had already gone among our populations; but when I look round at the present time, and consider present circumstances, I am amazed at the rapidity of the progress of evil among us, and at the apparent nearness of some terrible crisis. It has not been hidden from me all along that a great danger threatens us from increasing carelessness of good, from degradation of morals, and from widely-spread and fast-increasing infidelity among us. And it soon became evident to me that, in the industrial world, the beginnings of most dangerous principles were at work, which now appear ready for their threatened development.

All this urges me on to seek for fellow-workers who would give themselves, with me, with all their strength to the service of our neighbour, in the spirit of loving devotion.

One point, to which before all others I desire to draw your attention, is the training of the young, another is the care of the poor, and the third is the state of the workingclasses-the workman-question, that great social problem of the present day. In each of these three provinces I have, by God's help, gained good results. It is not surely needful for me to say, that when I speak of good results, I do not in the least ascribe these either to myself or my fellow-❘ labourers, but alone to the grace and mercy of my God.

I was first led to care for the training of the young. God, in his goodness and truth, does not demand too much of beginners; and the work among children, even of the most neglected kind, is indeed a sweet and light work as compared with that among the grown-up, especially when these have gone far in error and sin. And yet, even as regards the training of the young, we had to go on learning for long before we had reached the one great first principle of truth in regard to it-namely, the principle of obedience to the great command, to love our

that we must truly love these children if we were to do any good with them; yea, love them with just such a love as parents have for their children, and care for them in the same manner that a loving father cares for his little ones. When this point is once reached, then one just wonders that one has been so long of gaining it, and that one has so long struggled against giving in to the command to deny one's-self, to leave all and follow the Lord Jesus Christ, and to learn to enter in to the love which he had for the children of men. But when we have got thus far, then we find that his yoke truly is easy, and his burden light. It costs much to become a Christian; and, yet, it is true that it is not hard to be a Christian. It costs much before we are true Christians; but when we are such, it is not a hard service. When we had thus attained to having true love in the heart, although deficiencies of many kinds yet cleave to us, though much wisdom and earnestness are needed to know what to do and how to do it, yet I can testify that the children whom we receive, and who are often of the most neglected and degraded kind, give up their rudeness and defiance, and give in to the spirit of the house with wonderfully little labour and trouble on our part. They find themselves well-off with us; they feel at home, and they prosper in body and soul. I have received children from all quarters; but I can say of all that they have justified our hopes and given us real joy, so that it has been a heart-sorrow to us when any of them have been taken away again.

Many of my former children have already gone forth into the world as working-men; and I have had the satisfaction of learning of most of them that they have not given way to temptation, or allowed themselves to be led into joining those combinations which lead to such dangerous agitation. Yes, it is only when they leave us, and go forth into the world of labour, that they know the value of the sound principles which they have learned in our house. They have amazed me often by the accounts they have given me in their letters of how, fearful are the temptations of the present time for youths of the working-classes. Destruction must be the issue, if things go on as they do. All this has proved to me, that if the training of the young of the labouringclasses were properly conducted, we should in that have a secure though slow-working means given us to preserve these classes from the threatened dangers, and to

raise them to a higher status of morality. We must not allow ourselves to think this impossible.

I have had children from the very worst homes, drawn from the depths of the lowest degradation. Very lately a boy was brought me whom the police could not longer restrain; another is with us who had wandered about a perfect vagabond. Yet both of them very soon proved pliable. The first, when he came to us, talked of running away, but now he never thinks of such a thing; they are happy, and eager to learn, and I believe that the good seed has been sown in their young hearts, which God will watch over, and not allow it to perish. He will not quench the smoking flax.

there is hope of improvement. Here again essential good might be done among our people were there more of such institutions. It is a great satisfaction to me that the need of them is beginning to be recognized among us. In Würtemburg district institutions of this character are being established, where poor people who formerly went about begging, or lived wretched in poorhouses, shall be gathered together, have useful work given them, and be kept from sin even by restraint, if it be necessary. But let me say, and that strongly too, that if such houses are to prosper and be a blessing, it is quite necessary that they should have men at their head who have received Christ's love in their own hearts, who care for the poor for his sake, and who will really love those over whom they are set as if they were their own. Every human being craves love; the most obtuse and stupid creature still longs for love. I have known men who were almost idiots, and who I thought could not feel the need of love, bring it as a reproach against me that I had passed them by without speaking to them. Any man can be reached and influenced by those who bring true Christ-like love with them.

Much might be done could we remove children from the unwholesome atmosphere, laden with every species of infection, in which they live, to a more wholesome air, where they might be brought up under different auspices. A sore sickness lies upon our people, and healing is partly to be looked for by withdrawing the sick from the pest-laden atmosphere in which they pine, where the healthful air of love and righteousness are awanting, and nothing is around them but sin and lies. From these surroundings they must be extricated, and in that I see a chief means against the dangers that threaten society. But for this work men are needed of a whole-hearted loving Christianity. If I look around and see how great is the power of infidelity and sin in our day, I can only say, If sin is mighty, grace is still Here one has to do, not with children or feeble permightier. "The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage sons, but with strong men, and men, alas! often actuhorribly; yet the LORD who dwelleth on high is mightier."ated by the most self-seeking and selfish spirit, men When we look forth upon the people we see them as a restless sea, which roars terribly and evermore terribly; but the strength of love is greater than the might of passion-the power of mercy and goodness is greater than the strength of hate.

Later on I was led into the work of caring for the poor. Then it became clear to me that we must strive to rouse the energy of the poor, so that they may learn to help themselves, instead of being a burden on others. By God's providence I was led to unite husbandry and industrial employment with the institution at Reutlingen. In that way it became possible for us to receive grownup persons—namely, such neglected and indigent persons as were not in a position to maintain themselves-lame, blind, and such like. In institutions such as ours, where husbandry and industries of various kinds are carried on, there are always opportunities for employing those who are weakly, who lack a limb, or who are feeble-minded. Thus there are now with us two hun

dred persons who are unable to take care of themselves, who before were a burden and a torment to their parishes, but now are well-cared for and happy. But they all work; and if it is only a small thing that they are capable of doing, such as winding yarn, still they who formerly felt themselves despised as useless and unable to gain anything-are now contented and happy because occupied and of use. When a man feels himself of use and loved, better desires arise in him, and

Let us now glance at the subject of the working-man. The question of the state of the working-classes is now one of the gravest we can consider, and to cope with it is the most difficult task before the Christian Church in the present day.

utterly opposed to the truth, and who have in the indulgence of low passions cast away all regard for conscience and good feeling.

In view of such a material to work on, one is ready to despair; but I must remind you that the power of heavenly love is yet higher and greater than all powers of evil. Working-men are now longing to be independent of capital-they wish to be able to stand alone, self-directing, uncontrolled-they wish to be loved and honoured as fellow-men. But in the way in which they are striving for this goal it is quite impossible they should ever reach it. It will only be possible to satisfy these desires of theirs in a right way, and to rebuke and hold in check their unrighteous claims, if men should arise among us, who, in the sphere of the industrial world, shall bring into operation the power and biddings of heavenly love. The enemy comes before us in these days in his greatest might and most terrible power, threatening the destruction of all society; and to meet him effectually, Christianity, too, must develop all her power, and show herself strong in the might of her Lord. This is the problem of our day; and if it succeed, if men of God give themselves to the solving of it, then this dark power of evil which

threatens us may be overcome.

I have said that we are come to a turning-point in the history of the world, a day such as Scripture calls a "day of the Lord," a "day of vengeance;" yet also an