But what of that great prayer of the apostle's, found in his first epistle to the Thessalonians :—"And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly: and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ"? The answer is, that it is a prayer. Prayer is the ideal rather than the actual life; it shows what we would be rather than what we are; and it calls up every disciplinary act to the highest point. It is in the religious life what high and urgent aspiration is in other objects and services. The painter who desires (prays) to reach perfection will excel the sloven who never knew the compulsion of a pure ambition; so he who desires, with all the vehemence of unceasing prayer, that his body may be preserved blameless unto the coming of Jesus Christ will, as a reward, be enabled to realize the highest possible degree of self-control and chastity. That is the great and beautiful life which confesses its faults and turns each of its mistakes into a reason for more critical self-watchfulness; and that is a poor and superficial existence which declines all hard tasks and. all severe exposures, lest so much as a flaw should mar the polish of its respectability. It should be remembered, too, that higher holiness always brings with it higher sensibility, so that where once an evil action could be looked upon without self-reproach, now even a questionable thought, in its most transient passage through the mind, leaves in the heart a sting of shame and self-hatred. That is proof

of growth. It is worth while to say these things, because they may help others towards a godly cheerfulness in passing through the sharp discipline of a life which is assailed and torn through the weakness of the flesh.

XIII

THE GIFT OF THE HOLY GHOST CONSIDERED AS THE CULMINATION OF THE GOSPEL.

To understand the meaning of the proposition that the culmination of the Gospel is to be found in the gift of the Holy Ghost by Jesus Christ, it will be needful to get at least some general notion of what is known as the Gospel scheme,-scheme, novel as may appear this application of the term, for the Gospel has a distinct though often a hidden or unprojected method; that is to say, it is not a mere congeries of assertions and emotions, but a vital system of thinking and service though with next to nothing of framework or technicality. In other words, the Gospel is stateable in distinct and progressive propositions, and consequently it can be treated methodically for expository and argumentative purposes. This is what we mean in applying the word "scheme" to the Gospel, and it is of such scheme that we now propose to get a general notion.

1.

In the first place, the Gospel proceeds upon a most distinct and exceptional theory of human nature. If this theory be mistaken or disputed by the

student, there will be a succession of difficulties and angry controversies along the whole of that historical and doctrinal line which terminates in the cross of Jesus Christ. No point in that line can have its proper relation and value assigned if this theory be unknown or unaccepted, a fact which shows that the doctrine of human nature as held by the Gospel is fundamental; that is to say, is neither tentative nor potential, but absolute and unchangeable. Herein is one of the permanent difficulties of Christianity, namely, that its students too generally approach it upon the divine rather than upon the human side. Thus, they begin with the cross; they invert the natural and self-explanatory process; and in doing so, the mind becomes unbalanced by the pathos of the spectacle, and is tempted to suggest that surely something less awful might have sufficiently met any exigency that could have arisen in the growth and discipline of moral life. In this way a prejudice is set up. The inquirer is troubled too much to be able to look calmly at the whole argument; the shadow of the awful cross accompanies him and darkens all subsequent study: he owns himself at a loss to imagine the fundamental theory of a movement which has culminated in so distressing a catastrophe, and thus he comes upon the mystery from a wrong level, and probably may be either revolted by its extravagance or tempted to regard it as a merely dramatic agony. Instead of beginning with the cross, he should have begun with himself; that

is, with human nature. Undoubtedly the Gospel theory of human nature is one which involves severe and unmitigated accusation; so severe and unmitigated, indeed, that if we did not already know every step of its progress we should wonder how such a theory could be succeeded, argumentatively, by anything short of perdition. What is that theory? It is expressed with infinite simplicity and terribleness by Jesus Christ in one word; according to the teaching of our Lord, human nature is " lost." At this moment we are not asking whether the Gospel theory is true or untrue; we are merely asking what it is. Let us keep to this one point closely, resisting every temptation to mix up with it something for which we are not yet ready. We must completely understand the impeachment before we accept or reject it.

Christianity teaches that all men have erred and strayed like lost sheep: "all we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own. way;" it insists that all men are morally alike : "there is none righteous, no not one; " it pronounces mankind to be "dead in trespasses and sins." Never, even for one moment, is it tempted to relax the severity of its charge, so as to modify what it has to offer in the way of salvation. It acknowledges the accidentally or temporarily beautiful aspects of human life, but, fundamentally, includes it in one condemnation that it may afterwards recover it by a common process. We speak of the fall of Adam, and baffle ourselves by