fession of sin to God's ministers, which the Church permits to those who humbly and heartily desire it. It substitutes for our own judgment, the judgment of another; for our own self-indulgent decision, the decision of God's servant. And more than this, because He has said of His priests, "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," it gives in their pronounced judgment the awful but blessed presence of Jesus, in seeing and knowing whom, we know ourselves.

Lastly, remember what was said of those two disciples. who, when the first Lent was over, went, on the first Easter, with one they knew not, a Sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem. We read: "He made as though He would have gone further, but they constrained Him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And He went in to tarry with them. And it came to pass, as He sat at meat with them, He took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew Him; and He vanished out of their sight." And straightway they knew themselves, for "they said one to another, Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us by the way, and while He opened to us the Scriptures?"

Blessed Eucharist! Happy Communion! Feast of Joy! Remember, beloved, in that Holy Supper is the presence of Jesus manifested, and with it the knowledge of ourselves.

In conclusion, I reverse the words of my text. shall be judged if we do not judge ourselves. Have you ever thought why, in many cases, God sends sorrow and affliction and misery upon His servants? One has pain of body, uneasy days, restless nights; another has anguish

of mind, and spiritual darkness and desolateness of soul; another has children, and dear ones, and friends taken away; another lives in poverty and humiliation, and in the scorn and contumely of men. Do you know why these things come? It is because Christ loves His children, and seeks to give them, even by pain and anguish, the knowledge of Him and the knowledge of themselves. Happy they who hear his voice, and see Him and their own condition, even when He thus speaks to them. Alas! alas! for those who will not hearken in this life, and wake up to the awful consciousness in the great and terrible Day.

This is the reason why the Church bids us to observe Lent. It is that we may judge ourselves. She bids us leave Jericho, and go up to Jerusalem. The way is steep and rugged, and robbers lurk in coverts and behind the gloomy rocks, and the plain of Jericho is fair to the eye, and blessed with the shadow of palm-trees, and with the coolness of running streams. On she bids us go. She will let us pause awhile at Bethany with the holy sisters, but only that we may be the more ready to cross to the top of Olivet, and find below the deep shade of Gethsemane, and beyond the place of a skull, and the uplifted cross thereon. Thither let us follow Jesus, though it be with tears, if haply some drop of His all-healing Blood may fall upon our hearts and wash our sin away.

X.

THE LIFE-GIVING PRESENCE OF THE
INCARNATE SAVIOUR.

(Preached at Racine, Commencement Sunday, 1867.)

"And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people."-REV. xxi., part of verse 3.

WHILE the world goes hurrying on, with its noise, its outery, and its angry din, it is difficult for one who is in the midst of the rushing tumult to understand the character of the movement. He can not well say whether it is forward or backward. He is too much occupied in keeping his own footing, in pushing and crowding, or in helping those who sink all weary and overpowered, to know exactly whither he is being hurried. The movement is on too vast a scale, as well, for him to be at all certain of his own observations, even if he can make them. He can only see at best the eager rush of the small company of which he is a member. So he hurries and struggles, and presses on, and pushes and crowds, and tramples under foot or is trampled on, until, at last, he sinks to rise no

more.

They who fight with Amalek beneath the mount, hear only shrieks and shouts and clash of arms. They know not whether Israel prevails, or the accursed race. It is only Aaron and Hur, who stay up Moses's hands upon the mount above until the sun goes down, who see full well that the Eternal God is still the refuge of His people, and "underneath are the everlasting arms."

The observers of the world's history have ever divided themselves into two classes: those who have felt that its progress is ever onward, toward a golden age that is to be, and those who have believed that, wearily and sadly, as it grows older and feebler, it but recedes ever more and more from the heroism of the days that are gone, from the golden age which can never return. Indeed, there are expressions in Holy Scripture which seem to confirm this sad view of a declining world. "When the Son of Man cometh," says our Blessed Lord, "shall He find faith on the earth?" Awful are these descriptions of the latter days, of which we read that "nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines and pestilences"; that ye shall be betrayed by parents and kinsfolk and friends, and "shall be hated of all men for My name's sake"; that "there shall be great tribulation, such as was not from the beginning of the world unto this time, no, nor ever shall be"; and those terrible words of the angel in the book of the Revelation, "Woe, woe, woe to the inhabiters of the earth!" and the sounding trumpets, and the opened seals, and the poured-out vials of the wrath of God.

But, in spite of all this, men in every period, and in the better ages with more glowing expectations, have longed and hoped for the new heavens and the new earth.

Ay, even in heathen times, men could not believe that Paradise was altogether banished from the earth. If it lay not near, yet somewhere in the distance-in the happy Iran, among the remote Hyperboreans, in the far land of the Ethiopians; or, if it had vanished, it was soon to be again. And so it has ever been; now in this age and now in that, it has shaped itself into one belief or another. It is shown in that fond delusion of a millennium which is to dawn, which, however erroneous as an interpretation of Scripture, however great an error, bears witness to the longings of the world. A time is yet to come, the voices of the hopeful seem to say, when nature is to be subdued to man; when there shall be no more seas, or mountains, or opposing languages, to divide the human race; when all the world shall be at one again; when peace, universal peace, shall overspread the globe; when barbarism and slavery, when sorrow, and poverty, and disease shall grow less and less, and age transmit to age one ever-increasing flow of happiness and joy.

There are words in Holy Scripture which seem to confirm these high expectations. "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them," says the prophet, "and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.' "A king shall reign in righteousness, and princes shall rule in judgment." Then, "the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever." St. Paul says: "The earnest expecta

tion of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God"; for the "creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.” Our Blessed Saviour says: "When ye see these things begin to come to pass, then