presence." The mysteries of the gospel were hid from the wise and prudent, and revealed to babes. Its blessings were withheld from the rich and the noble, and conferred upon the poor and despised, because such was the good pleasure of his will. He chose such materials for his gospel to operate upon, as would most signally display the workmanship of the divine hand. But there is a philosophy in this result that may not be unprofitably studied. When it is declared that the gospel is preached to the poor, there is a strong implication that they readily and gladly receive it. And this is showed to be the fact by the result. There is something in their very condition that makes the gospel welcome. They are friendless and portionless, and a sense of their destitution presses heavily upon their aching heart. Their circumstances are little calculated to foster pride and vanity and the love of the world. Their condition, with its habitual sense of want and other humiliating circumstances, presents no barrier to the prideabasing and humbling doctrines of the gospel of Christ. Their very circumstances give a predisposition to listen to and accept offers of relief and consolation presented by the gospel. Having no earthly friends, will they not joyfully receive a friend from heaven? They have no portion here; will they not most thankfully accept an enduring inheritance beyond the grave? Will not they who are looked upon with a cold and scornful eye by this world, turn away from beholding its vanities, and lift their eyes and hopes to the unfading glories of an offered home in heaven? With the rich and great the case is different. Wealth makes many friends, and rank and fame are ever surrounded with admiring and applauding throngs. A delusive sense of fancied security shuts out of view their real destitution, and the glitter and glance of their possessions blind them to their intrinsic worthlessness. Not only so, but their circumstances exert a direct influence to unfit them to listen to such a message of the gospel. It is strikingly demonstrative of the utter depravity of man's heart, that the temporal favors of heaven, instead of drawing him by the cords of gratitude and love to their beneficent source, carry him further off, and bind him with a stronger chain to the base earth; instead of expanding the heart with benevolence, and raising it to a grateful contemplation of the all-bounteous Giver, they are made to nurture and strengthen its native selfishness. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, to which temporal prosperity is made to minister, throw around the soul an almost impenetrable shield against the spiritual influences of the gospel. "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God." The process of amassing these perishable treasures, developes, strengthens and matures the covetous principle, until the whole soul is brought under the dominion of the rankest and at most incurable idolatry. How hardly shall they that receive honor from men be brought to believe on the name of the despised and crucified Jesus, and cherish that child-like spirit which is the only passport that admits into his heavenly kingdom!

The state and circumstances of the rich and great are therefore un

favorable to the reception of a spiritual and humbling religion. Not that they are excluded by an ordination of heaven from a participation in its inestimable privileges and blessings. They are exhorted not to trust in uncertain riches, but to seek durable riches and righteousness. They are admonished that the friendship of the world is enmity to God. They are urged to seek the friendship of him, who, when earthly riches and honors and friends are swept away like gossamer before the autumnal blast, will sustain, and finally receive them to eternal mansions in the heavens. No. They exclude themselves. They have chosen their portion here. They are content with the good things of earth. They judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life. But all are not so. Through all the blinding and stupefying influences which riches and honors throw around their possessors, the gospel has sometimes made its way to their hearts, and shown them that notwithstanding their outward state, they were wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked. Awaked to a sense of their true condition, they have turned away sickened with the vanities and delusions of earthly distinctions, and sought the imperishable gold and spotless raiment of the kingdom of God. And it is a goodly sight to see the rich and great laying aside their pomp and their pride, and bowing low at the foot of the cross, and consecrating themselves, with all their possessions and talents and influence, to the work of spreading over the earth the unsearchable riches of Christ.

How mistaken the notion that there is any degradation in all this!. The religion of Jesus Christ alone clothes a man with true dignity, and confers real elevation of character. Its hallowing and refining influences give the highest grace and elegance to conspicuous and affluent state.

But it is still lamentably true, that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are found among the humble and genuine disciples of Christ. But the poor of this world are there. Let us consider,

II. The blessings which the gospel confers on the poor. They hear the gospel gladly, and well they may, for the blessings it confers upon them are unspeakable.

In discussing this part of our subject, we must speak of the blessings of the gospel in their general scope; but our remarks will have a particular significancy with reference to the poor, inasmuch as in their case these blessings are most conspicuously and signally manifested.

1. The gospel finds them utterly destitute and helpless, it leaves them enriched and glorified beyond all power of conception. "It raiseth the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and make them inherit a throne of glory. Though they have lain among the pots, yet they are made as the wing of a dove covered with silver, and her feathers with yellow gold." The speaker approaches this part of his subject with an overpowering sense of his utter inability to discourse worthily of a theme so high and glorious. The strongest powers, aided by the

strongest language, are impotent to describe, in adequate phrase, the blessings of that gospel through which life and immortality are brough to light. It is a theme on which the boldest figures are tame, the loftiest rhetoric idle, and the highest exertion of human eloquence feeble. His lips must be touched with hallowed fire from off the eternal altar, and his hand skilled to sweep an angel's lyre, who would adequately extol those living and satisfying streams that flow from the unwasting fountain of truth and consolation.

Where shall we begin to speak of the blessings of "the glorious gospel of the blessed God"—a scheme which procures pardon to the guilty, sanctification to the polluted, light to the blind, joy to the sorrowing, and completely settles the controversy between man and his Maker, and joins them in eternal union? But, to be more particular, 2. Shall we tell of the treasures of knowledge the gospel unfolds? Through it alone life and immortality are brought to light. It alone sheds the light of eternity upon time, and communicates to fallen and degraded man all the certain knowledge he possesses, of the God who made him, of the Saviour who redeemed him, and of the destiny which awaits him. It exhibits the true character of that God, and of the relations we sustain to him. It informs us respecting the office and work of that Saviour in whom is all our hope, and of the fearfulness and eternal duration of that destiny.

3. It fully and satisfactorily answers that great question in comparison with which every other sinks into insignificancy, "How shall man be just with God?" It is alone the source of true and living knowledge, and is to the soul of man its eternal life. Compared with this knowledge all the brilliant and astounding discoveries of science, and all the rich and varied treasures of literature, and all the splendid and prodigious achievements of genius and learning, are utter foolishness. I beseech you, consider the FAITH which the gospel inspires. It is defined by the apostle to be "the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." It substantiates and appropriates all that is said and promised in the Bible. And now I ask the infidel to sit down with me and read over the great and precious promises, and all the glorious things uttered in the wondrous volume, and then tell me candidly if he does not think that a principle in the heart which realizes to itself all these things, and anticipates their full possession with joyous and exulting certainty, is a blessing worth having! Now this is the simple fact with thousands. He may say after all, these are but illusions; but they are not illusions to the believer. They are substantial realities, as much so as the objects he sees with his natural eyes. Well may such a faith enable the soul to overcome the world, breaking as it must the spell of sense, and the paralyzing power of "things seen and temporal," and surrounding it with the realities and sublimities, with the glories and joys of a spiritual and eternal state. How oft, upon the wings of this faith, has the humble and spirituallyminded Christian been borne away from earth up towards his heavenly home, until its splendors broke upon his enraptured vision, and its

eternal songs upon his ravished ear? The faith of the gospel, in lively exercise, does indeed produce in the soul "joy unspeakable and full of glory." O how blessed are God's chosen poor who are "rich in faith."

4. Consider again that good HOPE which the gospel gives. It is represented as "an anchor to the soul both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil." Yes, it is immovably fixed hard by the throne of God where stands for us our Forerunner. Attached to this anchor thus secured, the soul with all its eternal interests may rest with the most entire confidence. This security can never fail. The power of a mere earthly hope to cheer and invigorate the mind amid adverse and depressing circumstances is well known to all: its cheering ray darting across the dense gloom of despair will infuse new life and joy into those just ready to give up all in hopeless anguish. It is the great cordial for human wo. But this hope" perisheth at the giving up of the ghost," and leaves the soul just where its support and consolation are needed most. The hope of the gospel enters within the veil and lays hold on the eternal throne. Let earth and planets and suns and systems and all the material universe be rent into fragments, and swept down the gulf of annihilation; the soul, secured by the hope of the gospel, would be perfectly safe and unhurt amid this awful disruption and passing away into utter nothingness of the universal material frame of things. It would still hear a voice from the throne saying, "Because I live thou shalt live also." What need has he who has this hope to care for the losses and calamities, the destitutions and afflictions of his present state? These are but for a moment; but the weight of glory on which his hope is fixed is "exceeding and eternal." And this living hope to which he is begotten will not leave him until it has put him in possession of the "incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance" which is reserved for him in heaven.

5. Consider yet again the LOVE of God which is shed abroad in the heart of the disciple of Christ by the Holy Ghost. This is something to be felt, but there is no language on earth, nor I suppose in heaven, which can describe it. It was never intended to be described. The attempt to do so would be profane. But it is a glorious reality which not only passeth the power of language, but "all understanding." It is a stream from that eternal fountain in the bosom of God that pours over heaven "fullness of joy and pleasures for ever more."

6. Think of the HOLINESS which the gospel produces. It not only effects the emancipation of the soul from the thraldom of sin-the fuel which feeds the fires of hell,-it leads it to the all-cleansing fountain of the Redeemer's blood, and washes it thoroughly from all sin's defilement, and makes it pure and spotlessly white. This is the perfection of bliss. Holiness is happiness. A holy soul cannot be unhappy, put it where you will. No! though you should kindle around it the fires of the pit, the sources of its joy would not be reached. It would

still be bathing in an ocean of bliss. It would everywhere behold the smiling face of a reconciled God.

All the duties, too, connected with a belief and profession of the gospel, however undesirable and irksome they may appear to the ungodly, are nevertheless, when performed aright, so many perennial springs of pure and ennobling enjoyments. The gospel's "ways are pleasant, and all her paths are peace." The gospel is especially for the poor: O what a change it brings over their prospects. But we have not yet seen the end. Let the pearly gates of the heavenly city be opened. Who are they "arrayed in white robes, with palms in their hands, and standing about the throne of God, and the Lamb?" They are the poor of this world, "who once were mourning here below," and have come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple, and he that sitteth upon the throne shall dwell among them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun light upon them or any heat. For the Lamb, which is in the midst of the throne, shall feed them, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. All these blessings are eternal in their duration. This gives them their highest value, and leaves nothing more to be needed by the boundless desires of the immortal spirit. Take away eternity from the blessings of the gospel, and, ineffably precious as they are, they would not satisfy the soul of man. Immortal in itself, it demands that its possessions, to be truly valuable, must bear the stamp of immortality. This demand is fully met in the gospel of the grace of God. Its blessings are not only eternal, but they will be for ever augmenting. They are perennial streams, which continually widen and deepen as they flow on. The crowns will grow brighter, the white robes more glittering, the harps will send out louder and sweeter tones, the beatific vision will become more and more ecstatic, while the long and the equal cycles of eternity roll. O ye poor and despised, envy no more the rich, but lift up your heads and reach forth your hands to the glorious prize which your Redeemer has purchased for you. And ye rich and great! turn off your eyes from beholding vanities. Humble yourselves and become poor in spirit, that ye may share with the "poor of this world, but rich in faith," the unsearchable riches of the heavenly inheritance.