glorious temple, where every devout soul shall find an oratory, and every devout thinker shall lift up his voice in freedom, and every loving worker for God and man shall receive a benediction. When the Son of Man thus comes in the spirit may we be found faithful, and not be judged either to have conformed to this world because we feared to stand alone, and bear the reproach of Christ, or to have repeated the old, sad story of men who were called to liberty, but gradually fell away into self-assertion, narrowness, and exclusiveness. It is in this larger Church, with its many mansions and its variety of life, that the redemption and expansion of the individual life must be sought. There is a deep truth in the old saying, that "outside of the Church there is no salvation." This saying may be used as the instrument of bigotry, and terrify the soul into a reliance on what is formal and external, which will bring, not salvation, but ruin. But it may be applied in a far nobler sense. Men become sooner or later assimilated to the fellowship in which they move. To few is it given to live only in the power of divine fellowship, and know a fulness of life within which comes directly from the Father upon His child. He who grows up the familiar companion of thieves will probably be a thief. He whose heart's delight is in the worldly will contract the taint of worldliness. He who knows even the great and good only on their lower and earthly side will miss the inspiration of their nobility. Not till we enter into communion with men in that which is highest do we feel an inflowing life which enriches our poverty, and lifts us to a new elevation of thought and feeling and endeavour. A church is an association of men on the spiritual side of their being, and within it the spiritual life comes. with an accumulated force, and flows like a refreshing stream into the soul of him who lacks. In fellowship with the holy we find holiness to the Lord" written upon our own hearts; in that corporate life which alone can include the fulness of the spirit, our small and one-sided life is enlarged. To have this effect, doors to every If we wilfully of life into the narrowness the however, a church must not be a human club, formed for the quiet intercourse of men marked by some salient peculiarity, but be filled with the fulness of God, and open its variety of Christian manifestation and effort. shut out this variety, we erect a single type standard for humanity, and make our Own measure of the gifts of God; and the result upon ourselves is that our church contracts instead of enlarging our minds, and deepens the shades of prejudice which hide from us the light of heaven. Let us maintain our old demand for a wide inclusiveness; and if others cast us out as evil, and force us into an isolation not of our own choosing, let us not retaliate, but try to see the good everywhere, and through literature and history seek fellowship with the invisible Church of God, and gather to ourselves the sainted of every nation and creed who have borne in their lives the image of the Son of God, and then, steadfast in faith and love, we shall escape the limits of individual and party life, and through the manifold inworking of the Spirit grow “into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." And now what are we to say of the future of this house of worship, so dear to many of our hearts, so especially dear to mine; this home of ancient piety and manly fidelity to principle? What part is it still to take in the life of this vast city? Is it still to hold aloft the standand of truth and righteousness and freedom, of honourable dealing and plain living, to manifest the heroism of the martyr and the tenderness of the saint, and amid the hot pursuit of material wealth to allure men to the tranquil beauties of a spiritual world? We cannot anticipate the providence of God; but let us take to heart the lessons of the past, and in the chambers of memory hold communion with the faithful men and women who have found here the consecration of noble lives, and deemed it an honour to labour, and to suffer, and to give, that they might be true to the voice of conscience, and lead their fellow-citizens towards worthy ideals, and procure for them that ordered freedom in which alone our nature can attain its fullest power. Still bear an undaunted witness, and proclaim that "Gospel of the Kingdom" which is wide as the humanity of Christ, unlimited as the love and righteousness of God. It will be unto us according to our faith. In faith let us follow the Divine leading, as our fathers have done before us, and, like them, let us treasure in our hearts the ancient motto, 66 Holiness to the Lord." THE SOCIAL BOND. THE SUBSTANCE OF AN ADDRESS given to the Teachers and of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good." (1) The Psalm was one of the Songs of Degrees chanted by the pilgrim-bands, as they journeyed from the country towns and villages, to keep the great Festivals at Jerusalem. The poet responds to an invitation from his neighbours to go with them in their procession. Jerusalem reached, he is impressed by its beauty, stateliness and compactness. For the sake of the House of God, he will do all in his power for the city which it crowns. (2) Commemoration implies gladness. To us, the assembling of ourselves together here to-day is a pilgrimage of joy. But to none is the House of God so dear as to those who, for the sake of their common faith, suffer persecution. It is difficult for us to realise the deep attachment with which the Founders and Makers of this congregation clung to the walls within which we now worship. (3) This attachment was also to them the basis of citizenship. For the sake of the House of the Lord they sought the good of the community in which they lived. School-membership, like many another form of association, excites and encourages a spirit of comradeship; but Churchmembership awakens and maintains the deeper and wider "love of the brethren," out of which true citizenship and patriotism are formed. Religion supplies the purest and the most enduring social bond. HOLINESS TO THE LORD. A SERMON, preached at the Evening Service in Cross Street Chapel, on Sunday, June 24th, 1894, by the Rev. S. A. STEINTHAL. Exodus xxviii. 36.—“ Holiness to the Lord.” It is impossible for us to-day to reproduce the feelings with which, two hundred years ago, our spiritual forefathers must have entered this meeting house, and with their beloved ministers have bowed themselves in spirit to worship God their Father in a place specially built for praise and prayer. The long years of persecution and of trial seemed to be overpassed, and, in accordance with the dictates of their conscience, unbound by the limitations which the Act of Uniformity had tried to impose upon their services, they met with grateful hearts, led by their long tried friend, to seek communion with the Lord. There must have been very mingled feelings in their hearts as they gathered within these walls. For more than a quarter of a century had they been obliged to meet in secret, fearing the heavy hand of the persecutor, or half reluctantly making use of regal indulgence, the legality of which they doubted; gathering themselves together in private houses with open doors, or in old barns temporarily fitted for the purpose, to pray and to strengthen each other in the religious life; and now becoming convinced that the toleration` won by the Revolution was truly secured, they dared to build a house for the Name of the Lord, where they might meet, none daring to make them afraid. Gratefully must their hearts have risen in prayer and in thanksgiving, as they felt that they had been blessed at last with the freedom for which they had so long yearned; and yet there must have been no small grief in their minds as they recognised that they were shut out from the place with which so many sacred associations bound them, that venerated church, beneath whose roof they had learned to love their senior minister's silvery voice, and where they had felt the hallowed influence of his spiritual teaching. They were not willing separatists, dividing themselves by their own free choice from the National Church, but, called by conscience to protest against the imposition of rites and ceremonies which they deemed unscriptural and consequently unlawful, they left the hallowed church with its many dear associations, still hoping that some day the Church would once again open its doors to them, and become, indeed, the nation's Church again. How things have changed since then! Newcome himself had feared he might not live to serve within these walls, and, as his strength was failing, he only occasionally preached before God called him home, little more than twelve months after he preached here for the first time, two hundred years ago to-day. But, though he was no longer visibly present with his people, the spirit of conscientious consecration to duty and to God, of which his life was so conspicuous an exemplification, has never passed away from his flock. And still from his grave he speaks to us, and bids us uphold under the changed conditions of the day the object for which he lived and toiled and suffered, the establishment of "Holiness to the Lord." Yes, our conditions are changed. Many things which marked that day so many generations ago could not occur to-day. I have no doubt but that when the first congregation of Cross Street Chapel gathered here they spent more hours than we should feel possible in the services of the sanctuary; and the |