We are safe because God is our Father.

And the

true doctrine of work is, that we will work, because, since God is on our side, it is worth while to work: our work is sure to be effectual, and come to something.

The Christian Church rests entirely on this doctrine. Reward and punishment separate men: the doctrine of God as a judge puts each man alone with his conscience. When men are striving for a prize, each man strives alone for himself; but, as soon as God is seen as a Father, the Church becomes a family. Then it is not the good alone who belong to the family, but all men, because all are God's children.

The only condition of membership in the true Church is to believe that God is your Father; then you at once see that all who believe it, with you are your brothers, and know it. You look on them goodness in them;

as brothers, not because of any they look on you as their brother, not because of any goodness in you, but because you are God's child just as much as they are.

The Church is founded on this doctrine. We believe that God is our Father, not our Judge or King. We believe that we are to be saved by his grace, not by our own peculiar or special goodness. Therefore we recognize all as brothers who recognize God as their Father. Christ is our Master, because he teaches us this. We wish to learn it more fully: therefore we come together. We invite all to join us, and become members of the Church, if they believe God to be their Father; if they can trust in

him as able and willing to save their souls. If they feel safe because they see God as a Father, they can take each other as brethren and sisters, and try to work out this salvation together.

Therefore, my friends, in conclusion of our meditations, let me give you, as the sum and substance of the Christian doctrine of grace, these statements:

1. God's free, fatherly love has made all men to become his spiritual children. His grace has predestined us, before the foundation of the world, to become wholly his, free from sin, and full of truth and holiness.

2. We become his children as soon as we see that he is our Father; and our salvation is this, we are safe as long as we believe that we are God's children, because then we shall always go to him in any temptation and danger. We are therefore saved through faith by grace.

3. We work out this salvation by obedience; correcting all our faults, learning to do all we ought, not in any strength of our own, but by means of the inflowing life and love of God, which he pours into our hearts so long as they are open to him.

This is the gospel. It is not the law of Moses. It is not the law of morality. It is not the law of prudence. But it fulfils all these laws by making us do, from gratitude, love, hope, and faith, what these laws make us do from fear, from conscience, from good sense, and a refined, virtuous prudence; and so we may say always as Paul said, "By the grace of God, I am what I am."

W

XVIII.

"NO MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL.”

Ps. cxlii. 4: "No MAN CARED FOR MY SOUL."

HAT an amount of pathos is contained in this expression! How sad that any human being should ever have occasion to utter it! As long as any Christianity is left in the world, as long as common humanity even has not wholly deserted it, no one, we should think, would be so utterly forlorn, so wholly desolate, as to be obliged to say, "No man cared for my soul."

Several winters since, a fleet of fishing schooners came to anchor in one of the harbors of Massachusetts Bay, just at evening, in anticipation of a storm which seemed to be coming on. It came that night, one of the most terrible tempests known for many years; and the wind blew so directly into the harbor, that the place where they were riding at anchor, usually quite safe, soon became very dangerous. One after another of the vessels was blown from its moorings, across the harbor, upon the rocks, close to the shore,

but where it was impossible to render them any assistance. The inhabitants of the town, crowded together on the bank, saw the faces of their neighbors and friends on board, saw the vessels go to pieces, and could do nothing to help them. Yet what a terrible night it was to those who stood in safety on the land, no less than to those whose lives were in peril! And when, on the morrow, they carried to the church the bodies of twenty or thirty persons, many of them strangers, the town was filled with gloom, and sadness rested on all minds long after. If it had been otherwise, they would have been barbarians. Common humanity dictated this sympathy and interest in the distress and peril of their fellowcreatures.

Why, then, should there not be equal sympathy, equal interest, manifested when souls are in danger, -when souls are shipwrecked on the rocks of sin? The danger is as great, the consequences more terrible. Even if we could do nothing to help each other's souls, we might show an interest in their condition, and grief for their destruction.

When an alarm of fire is given in the night-time, the whole city rouses itself from its slumbers, and multitudes hasten to preserve the property of a fellow-citizen from danger. Why should not churchbells be rung when his soul is on fire with bad passions and hot desires, and Christians run to snatch him like a brand from the burning? How often, when a child falls into the water, and is likely to be drowned,

does the impulse of humanity cause a stranger to leap in, and risk his own life to save it? If the child's soul is likely to be drowned beneath the accumulating waves of worldliness and worldly prosperity, ought we not to hasten as suddenly to rescue it? I read the other day of a child who was lost in the woods, and how the whole population turned out, and spent days in looking for him, and was filled with joy when he was found. But if he had become lost to God and lost to himself, if he had wandered from his Father's house, if he had become entangled and bewildered in the mazes of sophistry and falsehood, how much greater might have been his real peril, and how much more ought a Christian community to have exerted themselves to save him!

If death enters a home, and a fair child, a dear wife, an aged and honored parent, is taken, all come to mourn with the mourner; all come with softened and humbled minds, deeply impressed with the solemnity of the presence of death. But, if souls die, ought we not to show a deeper sympathy? Ought we not to go and mourn over the morally dead? Ought we not to attend the funeral of innocence, of purity, of peace? Ought we not to console, if we can, those who are bereaved of the living, and to sympathize with the exceeding grief of the mother in whose child's heart affection has died, obedience and gratitude lie in their coffin? Ought we not to sympathize with the father whose son has become polluted with sin, stained with guilt?