Corinth ? It went right clean smash into the midst of Corinthian worldliness and commercial activity, and laid hold of Erastus, the City Chamberlain, and held him out as a sample. It saved him—a man right in the thick of it. And if Paul should say, on the other hand, "But those Corinthian households, I cannot get into the families, Lord, and that is one of my discouragements "-you remember how the Lord rebuked him. "Ye know the household of Stephanas, the firstfruits unto God in Achaia." Yes, he got the families there, and we will get them, and the old Gospel will get nations—“The nations of them that are saved will yet walk in the light of it." It is the biggest, grandest thing that was ever heard of, the plan of salvation through the preached Redeemer. And if he would say again, "Lord, there are people here sunken in drunkenness and in lasciviousness, men steeped-and women, too-in all abominations," what could Christ's Gospel do for them? Listen, listen, how the Gospel told. Here were the kind of people all round about Paul (1 Cor. vi. 9). "Fornicators, idolaters, effeminate, abusers of themselves with mankind, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners. And such were some of you; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." It was no vain word, "I have much people in this city." The Gospel told; and I rejoice to believe in it to day, Oh, brother, if you work in the West End among gilded sin, go back and "speak, speak, speak." "Christ has much people in the city." We know His heart well enough to know that if He comes near to London at all, He comes to do a big thing; there is a great powerful devil here, and Christ will yet fill a big corner of heaven with saints, holy men and women out of London, out of the West End and out of the East End, and from the north, and south, and centre; He will have them from everywhere, everywhere." I have much people in this city." And then I think how it must have encouraged Paul, alone there and apt to be discouraged, this look of things from the Master's point of view. This is the doctrine of election in its practical shape. I do not want to preach election controversially, but I may preach encouragingly to Christian workers. referred not only to the present results of Paul's work, but I believe to what was to be. "I have people here It as yet dead in sin, living in profligacy, but you have simply to go and preach." Is not that a great encouragement? I stand here to-day and do not know you, but I know my Master's plan and purpose, and know that He could not look at a gathering like this; I cannot without wishing to God that you in the gallery and you down here I cannot look at you without wishing that you were washed, that you were sanctified, that you were justified; and shall the man, shall the servant be greater than the master? I know that when Christ looks at an audience like this, He whispers in my ear, "I will get Mine own, oh preacher, out of this company. Call them out; they are sitting there, hard, cold, and far gone; but speak, speak My words--call them." And I call you to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. In His great name I command you this Sabbath morning. Trust Him, give Him your heart, give Him your sins, give Him your all, just as you are and where you are; for from all eternity He purposed this Sabbath morning, by my word, to call His own unto Him out of this company; and if any man says, "But am I His own?" the proof is, accept the call, believe in Christ, give Him your life, yield to His voice by my lips in the Gospel to-day. I like this election plan; it does not say that all will be saved that is universalism, it is simply wind; all evidently are not being saved, but this is the old way of putting it. Well, it is not so windy and does not make so large a show as other ways of putting it; but it infallibly says that somebody will come, and that is what I want. I want no big talk and no gas about all coming back to the Father's bosom and so on; I like the old election predestination Gospel because it secures that somebody will come, i.e., the Gospel will not be preached in vain. "I have much people—not all-but I have much people in the city; some of them already quickened, others of them marked out to be quickened. Go on and preach the Gospel, and My own shall come to Me." I remember what happened to me when I was a lad and my bones were very young and green. On one cold, dark, winter's night when the snow lay heavy on the ground, it had been coming down for nearly a week, and there had been frost, but a thaw had come. You know what that means on a country road. I was sent on a message of life and death for the doctor. We had no doctor in our village, and the nearest place was a good many miles away. I started off at too dashing a pace; my muscles soon demonstrated this to me. There was no purchase or grip for your foot, as soon as you put it down it slipped away, and, if I may use an old familiar Irishism, for every step forward you took two backward. More than once I felt that awful temptation to fall asleep, but I staggered on, and struggled on, slipping, sliding, and tumbling-but on, on, with every bone in my body and every muscle proclaiming itself, and a weariness that no tongue can describe. And I shall never forget when I came trembling, floundering, and plunging, and at last my foot struck the plain stones at the far end of the town I was making for. The pavement there, of course, was swept, and I suddenly plunged through the toll-bar, and my feet struck good hard ground; it shot the of firmness and grip through my whole frame. I remember it yet-the grip of the hard solid road beneath my feet. No more pushing, forcing, and struggling. So with Paul. He was floundering in Corinth. He seemed to be slipping, sinking back; and the more he tried to push himself forward, the more tired and weary he became. Then, suddenly, Christ put beneath him the Bed-rock of the Eternal Purpose. His heel grated on it; and the strength of it shot through him, body and soul and spirit. Let others preach the Gospel as they please; I will not be controversial, if I can help it, but this is my plan: I stand on the Rock of the Eternal Purpose. As a fisher of men I stand on this Rock in the great Stream; and, standing there, I cast my "invitations all around, sure of it that by an eternal decree, out of those dark waters something will rise to my rod most certainly. "I have much people in this city," and all that we have to do is to go out and call them in. Don't go out to preach election. But, grounded on that, preach the Gospel to every creature. And the Lord will look after the rest. His own will come to Him. And, as one has said, if you should happen to save anybody who wasn't "chosen in Christ before the world began," Christ will forgive you! Now, let us away to a work in which failure is impossible, and discouragement should be unknown. The Lord bless His Word. Amen. Henderson & Spalding, General Printers, Marylebone Lane, London, W. THE THREE CROSSES. A Sermon DELIVERED IN REGENT SQUARE CHURCH, BY THE REV. JOHN MCNEILL. LUKE Xxiii. 23-39. WE are hampered by an embarrassment of riches when we come to the 23rd of Luke; we scarcely know where to begin, or where to end. And even when we descend on this particular passage, there is so much, not only in connection with the three crosses, and with each one, but there is so much in those who are gathered round the crosses, that it is difficult to keep the eye from wandering, and to settle it steadily for a little on one particular place and aspect of teaching. Two words, however, two words of mighty meaning, will focus for us the lights (and shades) of this solemn scene. Guilt and Grace, Sin and Salvation, and each at its height-these are the terms, the thoughts, that shape themselves most vividly before our minds. These are the bright and the black bands, may we say, in this "spectrum analysis." By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." It is a scene of death three times repeated; and therefore the power and dominion, the doom and gloom of sin receive a threefold emphasis. Christ, the Grace of God, as we may well call Him, on the Central Cross, dying unto sin, as the Scripture says; or for sin, in the true, real, substitutionary sense. On one side of Him a man dying in sin-cold, hard, twice dead, with No. 15. 66 all such sensibilities as repentance and faith utterly plucked out by the roots. On the other hand, again, a man—a sinner, but dying in faith, in hope, in expectation! Now let us look for a little at these three crosses, and try to get something out of each. Let us take, first of all, he who is mentioned first: "One of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Christ, saying, If Thou be Christ, save Thyself and us." Here, in this awful scene let us expect to see everything in connection with sin and death, with grace and salvation, made most wonderfully vivid, quick, and powerful. And surely we see in this man the power of sin in its most awful aspect. What is sin? I think the Catechism, on which a number of us were fed, gives the best answer. That old teaching of ours always lands sin up close against the very throne of God and the very person of God Himself. It makes sin to be " It makes sin to be "Any want of conformity transgression of, the Law of God." "Against unto, Thee, Thee only, have I sinned." What is a sinner? A sinner, if I might use an illustration which has some freshness to-day, is a poor, puny wretch of a creature, steeped in ignorance and error; debauched, infatuated, and intoxicated; an incarnation of all ideas dark and devilish-a little insignificant wretch of a creature whom God could crush into nothing in a moment, whom God could have obliterated the first moment that his infatuation possessed him, but whom, strange to say, in His inscrutable grace and mercy, He permits to live! This wretched little creature goes and tries to explode his own little parcel of dynamite against the very throne of God! As you have it in Exodus xvii. 16 (margin)-A hand lifted against the thrones of Jehovah! That is what sin is; let that be an illustration of the sinner. I suppose, whatever be our politics (and you know mine), we have a horror here of the people who use dynamite. My friend, did you ever think how like them you are? We all admit that there is no more dastardly wretch on earth than the dynamitard; none more infatuated, none so utterly out of reason, none so possessed of |