There are two tables of Commandments: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God," and "Thou shalt love. thy neighbor as thyself;" and there are two orders in which they stand to each other. In the order of importance the love of God is first; in the order of time the love of man precedes, that is, we begin by loving Man. we do not begin by loving God. Let us trace this principle further. Love to Man also begins lower down. We do not love our neighbors first; we do not all at once embrace the Race in our affection; we ascend from a lower point. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" -the Table given on Sinai does not say that: it only specifies one kind of love the love of children to parents. There are no rules given there of friendship, of patriotism, or of universal philanthropy; for in the Fifth Commandment they all lie as the future oak-tree lies in the acorn: the root of all the other developments of love, is love and honor unto parents. That injunction laid the foundation deep and broad. For life depends greatly on the relations: "the child is father to the man." Rarely, when the mother has been all that woman should be, and the father has been true to the protecting and guiding, the tender and strong instincts of his manhood, does the child turn out unnatural. But where there has been a want of these things, where any one part of the boy's nature has remained uncultivated, there the subsequent relationships will be ill sustained. For the friend, the husband, the citizen are formed at the domestic hearth.

There is yet one step further: out of human love grows love to God. A miserable and sad mistake is often made in opposition to this fact. There are men and women of cold and palsied affections, who think of giving to God the love which has become cold to men. Settle it in your minds, God does not work so. It is quite true that Christianity makes the sublime demand on believers, "If a man hate not father and mother, wife and children, his own life also, he cannot be my disciple;" but before that was said, it had demanded that we should "love our neighbor as ourselves," that

we should "honor our father and mother." And paradoxical as it may seem, you will never attain to that state of love to God, which can sacrifice the dearest affections rather than do wrong, until you have cultivated them to the highest possible degree. For it is only by being true to all the lower forms of love, that we learn at last that fidelity to the highest love, which can sacrifice them all rather than violate its sacredness.

Again, there is another mistake made by those who demand the love of God from a child. The time does come to every child, as it came to the Childhood of Christ, when the love of the earthly parent is felt to be second to the love of the Heavenly Father; but this is not the first, "for that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural." It is true, there have been cases where children have given striking proof of love to God, but these, even to a proverb, die young, because they are precocious, unnatural, forced; and God never forces character.

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For a time the father represents God, is in the place of God to the child. He is to train the affections which afterwards shall be given to God; and the brother those which shall expand hereafter for Christ. Like the trellis round which the tendrils clasp till they are fit to transplant, so are the powers of love within the child ported and strengthened as he leans upon his father, till they are mature enough to stand alone for God. And you cannot reverse this, without great peril to the child's spiritual nature. You cannot force love to God. By no outrageous leaps, but by slow walking, is the spiritual love reached.

Lastly: The Moral precedes the Spiritual.

Let us remember once more the definition we have given to the word "soul," the moral and intellectual qualities belonging to the man. And then let us take the Apostle's own words, "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." And this is true of all, for the history of the Jewish race, of the Human race, is repeated in the history of every individual. There is a time when the

Adam is formed within us, when the Christ begins to be formed, when we feel within us the sense of "Christ in us, the hope of glory," when the "living soul," as ruler of the man, gives place to the "quickening spirit." Ever it is true that the animal, the intellectual, and the moral precede the spiritual life.

But there are two stages through which we pass: through Temptation, and through Sorrow.

1. It was through temptation that the first Adam fell from a state of nature. It was through temptation, too, that the second Adam redeemed Humanity into a state of grace. To the first Adam this world was as a garden is to a child, in which he has nothing to do but to taste and enjoy. Duty came with its infinite demands: it came into collision with the finite appetites, and he fell. The first state is simply that of untempted innocence. In the temptation of the second Adam infinite. Duty consecrated certain principles of action without reference to consequences: "Man shall not live by bread alone:" "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God; ""Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve." "We pass into the spiritual state when we fall. It is not better to do right: you must do right. It is not merely worse for you to do wrong the law is, Thou shalt not!

2. Through Sorrow. Note here the difference between Adam and Christ. Adam's was a state of satisfied happiness, Christ's was one of noble aspiration ; His was a Divine Sorrow, there was a secret sadness in the heart of the Son of Man. There is a difference between Childhood and Age, between Christian and un-Christian motives. Out of contemplations such as these we collect a presumption of immortality.

LECTURE XXXII.

1 CORINTHIANS, xvi. 1–9. — “Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come. - And when I come, whomsoever ye shall approve by your letters, them will I send to bring your liberality unto Jerusalem. And if it be meet that I go also, they shall go with me.- Now I will come unto you, when I shall pass through Macedonia for I do pass through Macedonia. - - And it may be that I will abide, yea. and winter with you, that ye may bring me on my journey whithersoever I go. For I will not see you now by the way; but I trust to tarry a while with you, if the Lord permit. But I will tarry at Ephesus until Pentecost. For a great door and effectual is opened unto me, and there are many adversaries."

THE whole of this Epistle is fragmentary in its character; it is not purely argumentative, like that to the Romans, nor was it written to meet any one cardinal error, like the Epistles to the Galatians and Hebrews; but it arose in the settlement of a multitude of questions which agitated the Corinthian Church. The way in which St. Paul, in this chapter, enters on new ground, very characteristic of the abrupt style of the Epistle. The solemn topic of the Resurrection is closed, and now a subject of merely local interest is introduced. The Apostle gives directions, in the first four verses, respecting a certain charitable collection to be made by the Corinthians, in conjunction with other Gentile Churches, for the poor at Jerusalem and in Judæa.

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We have here an illustration of one peculiar use of Scripture. The event recorded here has long since past the interest which hung around it was merely local the actors in it have been buried for many centuries: the temporary distress spoken of here was long since relieved: even the Apostle himself has written simply and entirely for his own time. And yet the whole account is as living, and fresh, and pregnant

with instruction to us to-day, as it was to the Corinthians of that age. Reflections crowd upon us while pondering on the history. We understand something of what is meant by Inspiration. We watch the principles which are involved in the apostolic mode of meeting the dilemma, and we find that that which was written for a Church at Corinth, contains lessons for the Church of all ages. The particular occasion is past, but the principles and the truths remain.

To-day, then, we investigate two points :

I. The call for charity.

II. The principle of its exercise.

I. The call for charity.

We learn from the fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, at the twenty-sixth verse, the occasion of this collection. It seems that the Jewish converts in Jerusalem, being excommunicated and persecuted, were in great distress, and that St. Paul summoned the Gentile converts in Achaia, Galatia, and at Rome, to alleviate their difficulties. Now observe, first, how all distinctions of race had melted away before Christianity. This was not the first time that collections had been made for Jerusalem. Josephus tells us that they had been sent by foreign Jews to keep up the Temple at Jerusalem, that is, money had been contributed by Jews for a Jewish object. But here was a Jewish object supported by Gentile subscriptions. This was a new thing in the world.

The hard lines of demarcation were fading away for ever, the veil of Christ's Humanity was torn down. He lived no longer as the Jew, He had risen as the Man, the Saviour, not of one people, but of the world, and in Him all were one. Henceforth there was neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female: but Christ was All.

Observe again: Galatia and Corinth were now interested in the same object. It was not merely Corinth united to Jerusalem, or Galatia to Jerusalem, but Je