of your own impurity; and stifling there for ever? Has the vision of remaining as you are at your worst, ever appalled you-your worst passions, your worst vices, rampant, raging, with no hope of taming them, no hope of even a gleam of a brighter world, a better life, for ever and ever? If that vision has ever crossed you, I need not talk to you about the horrors of the pit. Some of you may never have known it. But have you never looked into a face which but masked a pit of foulness and wretchedness; the presentment of a spirit whose every diviner power and passion had been wrested to the uses, prostituted to the pleasures of sin—a soul whose love was all dead, whose light was all dark, whose joy was all quenched in the languor of satiety, whose hope was all buried in the murky midnight of despair-a man who has lived his life of crime or pleasure at a desperate pace, and who has come quickly to the goal of mental, moral, and spiritual death-in the early morning of an eternal existence, a bankrupt; stripped, beggared, blasé; whining for death, for there is nothing to live for; whining at death, for there is nothing to die for. Horror of horrors! What is that awful shuddering gloom into which the soul is plunged when the thread of a wasted life is severed, and it drops out of the homes of the living into-the pit ?

I have seen such faces, and need none to explain to me these words. Picture Judas in the moment when the agony of life had become intolerable. Picture to yourselves his face as he stands there, the cord tightening about his neck, quivering on the edge of eternity, dropping down into his own place—the pit. "Hear, ye despisers, and tremble," "lest ye also come into that place of torment.' But God can deliver :-" He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profited me not; He will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light." The confession of penitence in the uttermost extremity of guilt and sorrow, if any of you have reached it, shows that the pulses of the child's heart are not yet dead within. The Father, taking His penitent to His bosom, even in that extremity, can quicken, renew, and save. A new heart He can give, a new life— the soul made anew after the image of the Saviour, to be born at length, through all the anguish and travail of the present discipline, glorious in His likeness, into the sunlight of the eternal world. For

2. "His life shall see the light." The light in which it was born to live, the light of the face of God. Light-the light of God-is to life what sun-warmth is to flowsrs. It draws forth their

beauty and fragrance; it clothes them with their dress of glory. No fairer image is there of the joy, the bliss, the glory of a soul new born with a life which is one with Christ's; one with all that is living, beautiful, blessed, victorious, radiant, in the universe; conscious now that it has in itself, through Christ, not a pit of horrible darkness, but a fountain of living, exhaustless force-a power to be, a power to be good, a power to be blessed, for ever and ever. From the very verge of the pit of darkness, where itself and all its hope were wellnigh buried, it springs as to heaven's gate, and sings pæans with the angels, "Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever." It is the everlasting song. The soul caught the first note when the word, " Father, I have sinned," was faltering on its stammering tongue. Its life is thenceforth a battle-march; a hymn of victory, whose theme is the redeeming love and power of the Lamb. The world of light is its home, of which nor death, nor hell, can rob it; and there— and 'tis but a filmy veil between-" they need no candle, neither light of the sun, for the Lord God giveth them light, and the days of their mourning are ended."

Who, then, will cast aside his rags, fling down his husks, and cry, Father, I have sinned against

heaven and in thy sight, and I am no more worthy to be called thy Son." Who will burst now from the bondage of death and escape into the realm of the light for ever? Ho! ye that have lien among the pots, who have wallowed in the dust and filth of the sty of sin, come forth! come forth! into the sunlight of the love of God. Touched, kindled, by that golden glory, your life shall soar and shine, as a "dove whose wings are of silver and her feathers of yellow gold." Your life shall see the light. A glory shall gild its path, even through this weary wilderness of discipline. The light shall shine with more radiant splendour, as your pathway nears the bourne of immortality. With the step and the shout of the victor you shall pass the portal, and all the glory of the heavenly light shall burst upon your sight.

"The world recedes : it disappears:

Heaven opens on mine eyes, my ears
With sounds seraphic ring!

Lend, lend your wings; I mount, I fly ;
O grave, where is thy victory?

O death, where is thy sting?"

Sermon VII.

She loved much: She had much forgiven.

"And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at His feet behind Him weeping, and began to wash His feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed His feet, and anointed them with the ointment. .. Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much. And He said unto the woman, Thy faith bath saved thee; go in peace."-LUKE vii. 37, 38, 47, 50.

HIS banquet of the Pharisee occupied, probably, a later portion of the day on which our Lord had delivered one of His most remarkable and impressive discourses. His