and then they suppose us to be some modern sect of revivalists that have newly sprung up, although we are preaching that which is and always was the gospel, the doctrine by which you may test whether a church stands or falls-salvation, not by the works of the law, but according to the grace of God. Crowds of people cannot endure grace. And as to the term "free grace," they say that it is a tautological expression. It may be so, but it is a very expressive term, and because they do not like it I always intend to use it. It will do them good to be made to know that we mean it, and therefore use doubly strong language. It shall not only be "gratis," which is free, but "free gratis"; and we will, one of these days, put something else on to make it plainer still, if possible, and say, "free, gratis, for nothing." Salvation through eternal love, salvation through mercy alone; salvation, not of merit, salvation, not of the will of man, nor of blood, nor of the flesh, but salvation by the eternal purpose of divine sovereignty, salvation by the will of God, who has said, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion," this we will preach evermore. Grace free as the air, spontaneous, undeserved, but given of God because he delighteth in mercy. Ay, they kick against this; but, if they knew themselves, they would know that nothing else will ever suit the sinner but this. He who has broken the divine law is never in a right state of heart till he feels salvation by himself to be hopeless, till he is shut up in the condemned cell and hears the sentence read against him, condemning him to die, and knows that nothing that he can do can by any possibility reverse that sentence, and then sees Jesus interposing in all the freeness of his love, and saying, "Now thou hast nothing to pay. I frankly forgive thee all." Grace is the glory of the gospel. Do not be offended with it, I pray you, or you will be offended with your own life. Then, on the other hand, there is another class of persons who are offended with our blessed Lord and Master because of the holiness of his precepts. Alas that there should be traitors in the camp who can get on very well with grace and free grace, but then, alas, they turn it into licentiousness and take liberty to sin because of the freeness of divine mercy. 'If you begin to declare that "Without holiness no man shall see the Lord,' if you preach, as Jesus did, that he who forgiveth not his brother abideth in death; if you tell them that the omission of these outward virtues will prove that the inward life is absent, if you declare that the axe is laid to the root of the trees and every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire, if you go on to insist upon it that there must be the outward marks and evidences of saintship or else the pretence of experience is a mere lie-then by-and-by they are offended and exhibit a bitter spirit. Oh that none of us may act so. The highest holiness is the delight of the true believer. If he could be absolutely perfect he would rejoice above measure. It will be his heaven to be perfect, and the one thing he strives after here below is to get the mastery over all sin; not that he hopes to be saved by that, but because he is saved, and being saved, out of love to Jesus Christ, he desires to adorn the doctrine of God his Saviour in all things. May we never be offended by the purity and perfectness of our Lord and his teaching.

I might continue this long list of things by which men have been offended with Christ-some because the gospel is so mysterious, they say, and others because it is so very simple that it is not deep enough for such great intellects as theirs. Men, if they want to be offended with Christ, will be sure to find something or other to quarrel with. They stumble at this stumbling-stone, "Whereunto also," says the Lord very solemnly, "they were appointed." They put this stumbling-block in their own way, and God appoints that they shall fall. They fall upon it now and are broken, and one of these days that stone will fall on them and grind them to powder.

My dear hearers, I cannot stay longer on this subject, but if there are any of you that are offended with Christ, I pray the Lord to make you feel your extreme folly and wickedness. Offended with the Redeemer! What madness! May you go and confess this insult to your Saviour, and accept him at this very moment as your all in all.

II. Now I want to speak to professing Christians. THERE ARE SOME WHO JOIN THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST WHO AFTER A TIME ARE OFFENDED. Now, why is it that some who profess to know him are offended with Christ?

Well, with some it is because the novelty wears off. Very earnest services were held, and they were greatly affected, and they thought that they repented and believed; so they joined the church. Now the good men are gone who held the services, and everything seems rather flat after such excitement, and so they have gone back again. They jumped into religion like a man into a bath, and they have jumped out again, put on their clothes, and gone back to the world and to what they were before. Persons of this sort are very plentiful just now. If they were ever born again, they were born with a fever upon them, and if you do not keep up the heat, and let them live in an oven, they will die. We know that such hothouse plants will never pay for the fuel used in forcing them; we are grieved that it is so, but we have seen it so often that we do not wonder at it so much as we did. Hot weather breeds flies, and warm showers bring out reptiles.

There are not a few who professed to become Christians and who thought that they were always going to be happy. The evidence that they gave of being Christians was "that they felt so happy." I do not know that mere happiness is any evidence of being a Christian at all, for many are living far from God and yet account themselves very happy, while some of those who live near to God are groaning because they cannot get nearer still. Yet a joyful feeling is by many regarded as conclusive evidence of salvation, and they add to this the notion that as soon as ever they believed in Jesus Christ the conflict was all over, and there remained nothing more to be done in the way of resisting sin and denying the lusts of the flesh. They dreamed that they had only to start on pilgrimage and get to the Celestial City in a trice-only to draw the sword from the scabbard and all Canaan was conquered in an hour. Very soon they find that it is not so. Their old corruptions are alive; the flesh begins to pull a different way from that which they profess to have chosen, the devil tempts them and they are so disappointed by their new discovery that they become offended with Christ altogether. A sudden victory would

suit them, but to carry a cross before winning a crown is not to their

mind.

Others of them have met an opposition they did not expect from their adversaries, while from their friends they have not met with all the respect that they think they ought to have. Their friends and acquaintances have laughed at them; their workmates in the shop have jeered at them; they did not reckon on this, they never counted the cost, and so they are offended with Christ. Is it not a strange thing that we who begin our religion at the cross, if we begin aright, should ever be astonished that the cross keeps close to us, or should be surprised that the world treats us with disdain? But so it is. Persecution arises, and many are offended. It is not that they burn them to death, or put them in prison. No, no, they only make a joke or two, or they give them the cold shoulder, and shut them out of society, but the poor creatures are so thin-skinned that they cannot endure even these light afflictions; and so they are offended, and miss the blessing. When they joined the Christian church everybody was so glad to see them at the first, as we always are when there is a new-born child; but many more new converts have come since then, and the former ones feel that they are not made so much of as they were, and so they become annoyed, and under one pretence or another slink away. Because Christ's people do not carry them about as wonders, and cry "Hosanna over them all their days, they are ready to go back to the world and complain that they have been disappointed with religion and with Christians. Oh, but this is naughty: this is a wrong spirit which must by no means be countenanced; yet I fear it is to be seen in many places. This is an offence which ought never to arise.

We have known some who have become offended with Christ, or were in great danger of it because they began to find that religion entailed more self-denial than they had reckoned upon. The precepts of our blessed Master come very close home to their consciences and gall them somewhat. He told them that the yoke was easy and that the burden was light, and so it is to the meek and lowly in heart, but they are not changed in heart, and therefore they find the burden heavy and the yoke galling. I do not wonder that it is so, for that which is the delight of the renewed heart is bondage to the regenerate spirit, and self-denials, which really are no denials at all to the man who is born again, are an iron bondage to those who still remain in their unregenerate state; they get offended and they go away from the Master whom they professed to serve.

I have known some good souls almost offended at the Master through the hard speeches of those who ought to have encouraged them. I was speaking not long ago with a young lady who had for some time been devoting herself very earnestly to the cause of Christ. I do not know one who had done more than she had done in her own sphere; but she was in great distress because the person with whom she had worked for many months had spoken very bitterly of her. Though she had been his best helper he seemed to regard her as his worst enemy; and as she told me what he had said, I was very sorry, but the worst part about it was the temptation which the devil put in her way. The evil one whispered, "Never take a prominent place again. Give up your work.

You are said to be officious; now be quiet, and do nothing." Now, it will happen to all of us more or less that if we try to be zealous in the Master's cause we shall be misunderstood; wet blanket manufactories are pretty numerous, and some benevolent brother is sure to bring one of these articles for our use. He thinks that it will do us good; but it is mischievous to our spirits. Blessed is he who cannot be offended in that way. It may encourage you to know that, generally, those whom God largely blesses have to go through a great fight at first, from their own brethren. Look at David. He was to bring home giant Goliath's head, but those elder brethren of his all said, "Because of the pride and the naughtiness of thy heart, to see the battle art thou come." They recommended him to stop at home with his sheep, even as they told us to keep clear of a pulpit: but God did not mean that he should remain hidden. If the Lord means to bless you, some of his very dear people will be for putting you back among the sheep again; but do not be scandalized at Christ on that account. Stand firm as you have done. Press forward; be not disgusted or discouraged, but, on the contrary, recollect that opposition is very often the sign of coming success. Press forward, for "Blessed is he that is not offended in

Moreover, many young Christians are greatly staggered by the ill conduct of professors. I think that there is no worse trial to a babe in Christ than to see elderly Christians walking inconsistently, and living in a lukewarm state, and even speaking as if they were antagonistic to all earnest attempts to spread the kingdom of Christ. If you are one of God's children you will not die at their hands, any more than Joseph at the hands of his brethren. If the Lord has indeed. quickened you with spiritual life you will press on and work for the Master and not be ashamed.

It has frequently occurred to me to deplore that some professors fall back through trials of providence. We occasionally miss members of the church because they were pretty well-to-do when they joined with us, but things have gone badly with them, and they feel as if they could not show themselves. They will even say that they have not got clothes fit to come in. I have often told you that any clothes are fit to come in as long as you have paid for them; clothing, be it fine or threadbare, is nothing to me. As far as I am concerned, I really do not know what people wear. It never strikes my eye; I am too busy looking at your faces, when I can see you, to look at what you may happen to wear. Come, oh come, to the house of God, my suffering brother. Never let the devil prevail upon you to stop away. If your shoe leaks, if there is a hole in the elbow of your coat, the Lord does not look at that, nor do we. You come along. We shall be glad to see you, the most of us; and if there are some who will not be glad, they are nobodies: do not take any notice of them. But never stay away from the house of God because of your shabbiness; what can it matter? When you begin to get low in circumstances do not be proud and say, "I can't dress as I once did, or make such a dash as I did, and so I shall not go." Why you are just the same person: a man is a man notwithstanding the little or the much which he possesses; and when earthly comforts are going you ought to seek heavenly comforts all the more, and the poorer you get

in substance the richer you ought to seek to be in grace. "The poor have the gospel preached unto them." But I know that this is a temptation. I have heard it said that in Jamaica in the negro churches, when wages are low, attendance at the means of grace begins to decline: I know that it is so, but so it ought not to be. Do not be offended with Christ. If he chooses to let you be poor, be satisfied to be poor; yea, if you get to be as low as Job who sat on a dunghill, scraping himself with a piece of an old pot, yet learn to say with the heroic patriarch, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." If he is not ashamed of me I will not be ashamed of him, or ashamed to follow, even in rags, the standard of him who hung upon the cross and triumphed there for me. "They parted his garments among them, and for his vesture did they cast lots." I cannot be worse clad than he. Be not ashamed of him then.

III. The last head is to be, that THERE ARE SOME WHO ARE NOT OFFENDED IN CHRIST, AND THEY ARE DECLARED TO BE BLESSED. They are so because if God had not blessed them they would not be found clinging to their Lord, but would have gone back like others.

Apart from anything else it is a blessed thing to have grace enough given you to hold fast to Christ under all circumstances. If you were not one of those whom he has chosen from before the foundations of the world, if you were not one of those whom Christ specially redeemed with blood, if you were not one of those in whom the Holy Spirit has placed a new heart and a right spirit, you would go back. But if you hold out to the end, you have in that the evidence that the Lord has loved you with an everlasting love. Oh, you that are on and off with Jesus, what a poor hope yours must be. You that can run with the hare and hold with the hounds, you that try to serve God and Mammon, you have no marks of being God's children. But those of you who put your foot down for Christ, and cannot be moved; you who have said unto your souls, By his grace, I will not depart from following the Lord;"-you have, in that very fact, the evidence of being blessed.

And then you shall find a blessedness growing out of your fidelity. I believe that persecuted ones have more blessedness than any other saints. There were never such sweet revelations of the love of Christ in Scotland as when the Covenanters met in the mosses and on the hill side. No sermons ever seemed to be so sweet as those which were preached when Claverhouse's dragoons were out and the minister read his text by the lightning's flash. The saints never sang so sweetly as when they let loose those wild bird notes among the heather. The flock of slaughter, the people of God that were hunted down by the foe, these were they who saw the Lord. I warrant you that in Lambeth Palace there were happier hearts in the Lollards' dungeon than there were in the archbishop's hall. Down there where men have lain to rot, as did Bunyan in Bedford jail, there have been more dreams of heaven, and more visions of celestial things, than in the courts of (princes. The Lord Jesus loves to reveal himself to those of his saints who dare take the bleak side of the hill with him. If you are willing to follow him when the wind blows in your teeth, and