brother, you are all wrong and I am right now, and I want you to get right, to get the right thing. The Lord lives, and He is love. Christ has bought forgiveness, and I have found it out. Come along with me, and I will tell you all about it, and I will show you the Gospel feast, and do all that one man can do for another to induce him to accept salvation. Save you I can't, Christ alone can do that." This is what you would be doing, and it is a crying shame that you as a Christian are not doing it. These lepers got so tired of trying to stuff themselves with all the bounty that they found in the camp, that they determined to go and tell others of the plenty that was at their doors and that they were in ignorance of.

But you have not got so far as that yet, not a bit of it. You will come and listen to sermons and take your fill of the good tidings of the Gospel, and that is the end of it.

"Now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household." First these lepers said, "Let us rise up and go to the camp of the Syrians, for why sit we here until we die." And then, after having had their fill of the abundance that was in the deserted camp, they determined to go and tell those poor fearing, starving Israelites that their enemies were all fled from the besieging camp, and there was abundance of all they needed in the camp of their foe, to be had for the taking.

This is what we should do. We should say, "Why sit we here until this abundance of heavenly manna grows rotten and sour about us for the want of eating." Don't let it waste, nor let it spoil, but remember how great a Saviour Christ is, and how great a sinner you are, and how bountifully all this marvellous provision for the poor sinner is just

laid around for you. Go and tell the sinner that there is bread to satisfy his hunger, and water to quench his thirst; that God-not the ogre, the terror, that sinners have thought He was, but God in Christ—is waiting to receive the lost, the worst that ever lived, and they shall be saved. "Thy sins, which are many, are forgiven thee." He will say to thee, "Fury is not in Me," as the old prophet puts it in His name. He will say to thee, “He that believeth hath everlasting life."

May God bless the preaching of the Gospel. May you be brought to Christ, and then go and tell others what a great Saviour you have found. Amen.

Henderson & Spalding, General Printers, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

THE ECLIPSE OF FAITH.

A Sermon

PREACHED AT REGENT SQUARE CHURCH,

BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

"But Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. The other disciples therefore said unto him, We have seen the Lord. But he said unto them, Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails, and put my finger into the print of the nails, and thrust my hand into His side, I will not believe. And after eight days again His disciples were within, and Thomas with them: then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith He to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold My hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into My side and be not faithless, but believing. And Thomas answered and said unto Him, My Lord and my God. Jesus saith unto Him, Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed." JOHN XX. 24-29.

THIS disaster, or well-nigh disaster, this eclipse that came to the faith of Thomas, an eclipse which at one time was total, and alarmingly seemed to be permanent, came about in a very simple way. The Scripture does not enter into any detail as to why Thomas was not there, but it certainly in the forepart of the narrative emphasizes his absence, and in the centre part of the tale, equally emphasizes his presence. "Thomas was not with them when Jesus came. Vol. II.-No. 14.

And again eight days after the disciples were together; and Thomas was with them;" the Holy Spirit wishing to draw our attention surely, somewhat at least, to the fact that it was the absence that caused this eclipse of faith, although afterwards, all thanks to the Lord and little or none to Thomas, the eclipse moved off, and there came the clear shining after the gloom and the rain. And still, dear friends, is it not so that on such a simple thing as being present with our brethren or absent from them, there may come to us a great eclipse of faith, or a vision and revelation of the Lord? Great doors turn often on invisible hinges, and such a great thing as a spiritual catastrophe, or a spiritual revelation that shall tell on ourselves and others for long and long, may depend on such a little thing as Thomas's depended on, his presence with or his absence from the company of those who held his own faith and expectation.

And let me apply this at the very outset, for we all need it. Do not be easily moved aside from the path that leads you into this house, into the fellowship of your brethren here and into the fellowship of that One who is greater than us all greater than the house, and greater than all our ordinances, our invisible but ever-present Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself. I do not know what kept Thomas away, and we must not speak too confidently, but it is worth hanging upon for a minute. Was he not absent, dear brethren and intending fellow-communicants, just because he a little too much gave way to what was a prevailing tendency of his? I think that Thomas's mind worked rather slowly, and his body somewhat corresponded to the operations of his mind. He was not naturally joyous, swift, bright of face, or ready of tongue and hand and foot.

He moved to mental conclusions, and moved his body along with him to definite acts and purposes somewhat irresolutely and slowly.

We do not know much about Thomas, and all that we know comes to us in John's Gospel virtually; but always when he comes before us, he comes somewhat characteristically. It is Thomas who says, when Christ would go to Jerusalem, "Let us also go with Him, that we may die with Him." He seemed inclined to take the heaviest and the darkest view. It was Thomas who, when Christ said, “I am going away, and whither I go ye know, and the way ye know," said, "We know not whither Thou goest, and how can we know the way?" stumbling himself with a too literal apprehension of what Christ said and what Christ meant. And here again it is Thomas characteristically. He is always himself, and out of that characteristic of his came first of all his weakness, and latterly, through the revelation of Christ and the baptism of Christ's own Spirit, the splendid strength which he showed in the end of this simple, homely, and yet heavenly tale of Christ's appearing to His people.

I do not know whether you have ever thought of it just as I have, but the vision is before my mind, for I try to make all these Scripture characters my friends; and surely if our imagination is fitted for "bodying forth the form of things unknown," it cannot be put to a more legitimate exercise than when you try to body forth the form of Thomas.

I have set him before my mind as a solid, somewhat stolid, beetle-browed, low-set man-as we should say across the Border, a rather dour type of man-a man who did not open to you readily, but when once he did open, he let you