eminent servants have fallen, not into those esteemed little, but into great sins. I have told you before now of one who often prayed, "Lord, keep me from the errors of wise men, and from the sins of good men."

If you look into the Scripture you will see how Noah and David and Peter fell, and fell from their highest excellence; how Moses, the meekest man, spake unadvisedly with his tongue; how Job, the most patient, cursed the day in which he was born; and how Peter, so brave in defending his Master's cause, denied his Lord.

You need not be afraid, Christian, of knowing too much of your own weakness, or of feeling it too much; for, as the Apostle says to the Corinthians, "When I am weak, then am I strong." But blessed be God, we have strength in another; and hence says the Apostle, "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might." And He in whom our strength is found is Almighty. Omnipotence itself is His. His name alone is Jehovah; and "In the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength." He can do for us above what we can ask or think; hence the question is asked, "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" However active and strong any man may be, when he has laboured a while he is weary, he must have recourse to food or sleep. In order that he may do something one half of his time, he is obliged to do nothing the other, but be in a kind of insensibility. But hast thou not known, hast thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of His understanding." Hast thou not heard of His power? "He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might He increaseth strength."

You cannot communicate strength to your fellow-creatures. You may desire it. You may give them medicine, but you cannot give them health. You may give them food, but you cannot nourish them. It is the blessing of God that does this upon the use of those means. You cannot really communicate strength to your fellow-creatures, but God can communicate it.

He can make the weak strong. "Will He plead with me," says Job, "with His great power? No, but He will put strength in me." He has done this in the experience of all His people. Look back and read in history what He has done. See how He enabled Abraham, who was no better by nature than you, to offer up his own son Isaac. See how He gave strength to poor Job, who was enabled to say, "Though

He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." See what he has enabled the Martyrs to bear for His sake; and He is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

Observe, though He strengthens His people, He does not put the stock of strength into their possession, but supplies them as they stand in need. He "renews" it from time to time, and affords them fresh supplies. They come therefore to His throne of grace, that they "may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need." And the promise is, "As thy day so shall thy strength be." So God imparts for days of duty, active strength; for days of suffering, suffering strength; for the day of death, dying strength. It does not therefore become you to dread the approach of death now and conclude that you will feel the same when you come actually to die. No!-when you come to the valley of the shadow of death it is enough for you to know that Christ will be with you then, and that His rod and His staff will comfort you. Yes, and I have known many who have wept upon the mountains of Zion, who have sung, O how loudly-in the valley of the shadow of death, and have been a wonder to themselves.

"Oh," said Dr. Grosvenor, when dying, "I can now smile, because God smiles upon me."

The great John Goodwin was exceedingly troubled with the fear of death, yet it vanished at last, and he said, "Can this be dying? Is this what I have dreaded so year after year? Is this death?" He was then blind, and he desired a person to read to him the eighth chapter of Epistle to the Romans, and when the reader came to the passage, "I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord"-he said, "Put my finger there; I can die upon that." And, my friends, that chapter still remains, and God is still and ever will be the same faithful God. His mercy is everlasting; therefore put your trust in Him.

Then observe the expression. I was struck with it while coming here. It is not said, "You should be strong in the Lord"; but, "Be strong in the Lord." It is not here expressed after the manner of an exhortation; it is a command: "Be strong in the Lord, and in the power of His might." So it is intimated that we are not to be senseless and inactive

under His influences; but that we should exercise holy activity and diligence.

Now God feeds the fowls of the air; but how does He feed them? He does not send an angel to put food into their mouths, but He gives them wings to fly for it, bills to pick it, crops to hold it, stomachs to digest it, and so on. They feed themselves, but see you not He provides for them and feeds them at the same time? Thus with regard to His people, He is the source of all; He makes them not His work, but His work-men, and He works in them to will and to do of His good pleasure. He teaches them, but then they learn. He does not fight the good fight, but enables them to fight. He does not run the race, but enables them to run.

Seek, therefore, my dear brethren, grace and wisdom and strength from the Lord. You have already sought Him, and not in vain. Surely you can say with David, "In the day that I cried, Thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul."

"Tho' in ourselves we have no stock,

The Lord is strong to save;

The door flies open when we knock,
And 'tis but ask and have."

The stock, therefore, is not in you.

"Retreat beneath His wings,

And in His strength confide;
This more exalts the King of kings
Than all your works beside."

"Draw

It will help you much to attend upon the means of grace. It is your duty to be found in the use of these means. nigh to God, and He will draw nigh to you." You will derive profit, refreshment, encouragement, and assistance in a thousand ways by being free and communicative with each other. Thus David said, "Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul." So it was with Jonathan. He went to David in the wood, it is said, and "strengthened his hands in God." You may thus comfort one another by believing reviews of life, and reviews of the dispensations of Providence and grace; like Asaph, who asked a number of questions-"Will the Lord cast off for ever? Will He be favourable no more? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies ?" and so on. "But," said he, "This is my infirmity, this is my apprehension, my ignorance, and my

unbelief. Well, but what will He do? He cries "This is my infirmity, but I will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High." The right hand is the hand of skill, the hand of power, the hand of donation, by which you give; and therefore the years of the right hand of the Lord are the years in which He has displayed His wisdom, His power, and His goodness. Hence the words of dear Newton:

"His love in times past, forbids me to think,
He'll leave me at last in trouble to sink;
Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review

Confirms His good pleasure to help me quite thro'."

"Trust in

O, my brethren, trust in Him and be not afraid. Him at all times, ye people ; pour out your heart before Him; God is a refuge for us. Look to Him in all your duties, submit to Him in all your trials, and expect from Him the fulfilment of the word upon which He has caused you to hope: and remember that "the Lord God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give peace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly."

407

XXXVI.

CHRISTIAN COURAGE.

(Delivered on Thursday Evening, July 10th, 1848.)

"And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: which is to them an evident token of perdition, but to you of salvation, and that of God.”—PHILIPPIANS i. 28.

ALL the stars shine, but one star differeth from another star in glory; all the good ground in the parable was productive, but it yielded in some places thirty, and in some sixty, and in some a hundredfold. Now we may apply this to pious individuals. What difference do we perceive here between one Christian and another? Lot, the nephew of Abraham, is called "just Lot," and yet what is he when compared with his godly uncle?

What a difference we perceive between the centurion, who was satisfied with our Lord's word, and Thomas, who said, "Except I see in His hands the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe!" which led our Lord to say, "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me thou hast believed; blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed." This will also apply to churches and even to primitive churches. There were some good persons in the Church of Corinth; they abounded much in gifts, but they were proud and disrespectful; and with regard to Paul, the more he loved them the less he was loved. He therefore would not be beholden to them. He would not receive anything from them, no, not a penny, and all the while he was with them he laboured, working with his own hands to sustain himself, and said with a noble independence, "We seek not yours, but you." It was far otherwise with the Church of Philippi. What a lovely body of Christians were they! We admire them, if it be only for their behaviour towards Paul himself. Therefore he says, "I rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that now at the last your care of