world you seem to be. You have had desires and movings of your heart after God at times. You would have been ashamed to mention them to your ungodly companions. You were amazed that they ever came upon you; and so am I. Man, may it not be because you come of a good stock. There is something in that. Matthew came of a godly stock. There is something in belonging to a praying father; there is something in coming of a godly ancestry. So there are thrummings, and throbbings, and tremblings of spiritual desire in the hearts of young fellows down there that we give no credit for. But Christ knows them-He works upon them, counts upon them, speaks to them. In an acceptable hour and calculated moment, He uses them to work His eternal purpose. Detaching a man for a moment, by their means, from his worldly surroundings, He isolates him, and shoots this spiritual power of the Gospel call into him. May it be so to-day! I cannot tell what is to beI cannot tell how He will come with the word. All I have got to do is to call you; and all you have got to do is to obey. With God be the rest. But be sure that the eternal morning will discover to us that there was no jarring or dislocation; but that, contrariwise, our life began to take on order, and purpose, and blessedness when the Gospel came to us, seemingly without calculation, and asked us immediately to yield to its claims.

So "he left all, rose up, and followed Him." First the heart, and then the body. The "leaving all" was first a mental thing; the swift sweep of the eye round the office and forward into future preferments, &c.: that was mental, spiritual, moral, invisible, unseen. The rising up was physical. That was a small thing. The big item is, "He forsook all;" by the sudden movement of his soul, assisted

by Divine grace, he threw himself clear. Like your Davenport Brothers, roped and roped until it would seem that they would never get extricated; but a sudden twist and jerk, and lo! the ropes fall from off them, and they walk out clear. So with grace. Try it, man. Do not give in. Do not say, "It is too late, I am hemmed in and tied up." Give a wriggle, give a twist, and the devil's “green withes will snap from thine arms as from Samson's, long ago. Greater is He that is for thee than all those things that can be against you. Walk out-Christ's redeemed, disenthralled, enfranchised freeman walk out.

up your mind; then rise; take the first step.

Make

Our time is gone and our subject is not done. That is a common experience in Regent Square. The 29th verse, "And Levi made Him a great feast in his own house." This is how the Gospel keeps on. When Christ got Matthew, He got him altogether. Matthew had been a bold man before; he had absolutely and openly broken with the religion of his fathers, with all national and ecclesiastical sentiments and feeling, and became a tax-gatherer. And now, when he becomes a Christian, was he going to sneak along through byways and alleys? Not he. Matthew made him a great feast, and got all his publican friends, and all the riff-raff down town, to come in, so that Christ got a big introduction.

When Christ opened the door in Matthew's heart, He opened a far wider door than the eye of sense could see. Matthew was worth the calling. See what a world was behind him! It led Christ into wonderful company. I do not dwell upon that. Here you have a man taking leave of the world joyously; with a true merriment and heartiness he held this "carnival," this farewell to the world and the flesh. Here is your Salvation Army man snapping his fingers

and shouting "Hallelujah!" I never find fault with men for that. A Hallelujah is justified any day in the week and in any place under the sun if it comes from the heart. It is justifiable and always in order to say, "Hallelujah! 'Tis a fine thing to be saved." That is Matthew. He made Him a great feast.

We come to some of you and ask you, "Have you come to Christ?" And you pull a long face, and the light goes out of your eye, and your very being almost collapses, as if it were a dreadful business. Oh, it is a good thing, if it is true. If you had gone to Matthew and said, "What is this I hear—have you given up the tax business?" he would have said, Hallelujah! I have done with it. Man, come in to-night and have a bit of supper; Jesus is coming. Won't you come and see Him?"

66

Ah! where are these converts to-day? I wonder whether I am one myself. "Levi made Him a great feast in his own house and there was a great company of publicans and others that sat down with Him." God speed the Gospel on the old lines. First of all, sitting here to-day, let all of us bid good-bye to the world, the devil, the flesh, and then don't go about hanging your head as if you had done something dreadful. True religion means joy; true religion means not giving up; true religion means entering into great possession. Matthew would have told you, if you had met him afterwards, he would have said, "It was the grandest thing that ever I did; and the more I thought over it, the less became the difficulties and the greater became the pleasures. When I held that feast in my own house, it was just because my heart was dancing, because it was so big and full, and I could not contain, and I felt I must do something extraordinary to commemorate my new

departure." Oh, my Christian brothers and sisters, let us go home and make Christ a feast in our own houses because we are saved. Let us introduce Christ at our own table, to our set and connection. When you get them in, round about your table, testify for your Jesus. There make it plain and apparent that you have followed the Master, and that this house, and this table, and all that is on it, and round about it, have changed owners-not my own, but Christ's. Rejoice with me!

"Write the day of your conversion,
Festive in your coming years."

And why? "For whom Christ calls, them He also justifies; and whom He justifies, them He also sanctifies; and whom He sanctifies, them He also glorifies." This "publican” is in heaven. It is all on the right side. The balance is all our way. Therefore let us rejoice; yea, again I say, let us rejoice. Christ hath set us free. Free to serve. We have not given up so much as we have received. "How blessed," might Matthew have said, if he had only known our Christian hymn

Henderson & Spalding, Printers, 3 & 5, Marylebone Lane, London, W.

Amen.

Published on Thursday 95th Santauhan 1000 4-. Tin Man 1.24

THE DEAR-BOUGHT DRAUGHT.

A Sermon

PREACHED AT REGENT SQUARE CHURCH,

ON SABBATH MORNING, SEPTEMBER 28TH, 1890, BY THE

REV. JOHN MCNEILL.

TEXT.-2 Samuel xxiii., from verses 13 to 17.

I KNOW, Christian friends, that while I read this incident, so familiar to all of us, your heart, without preface or study, your spiritual fancy or imagination, feels "there is something there." We have an instinctive, indefinable, but very real feeling and notion in our minds that this is one of the places where David is a man after God's own heart; because a man after what is deepest and truest in our own heart as well; that here there is a mysterious mingling of the human and the Divine, the ordinary and the extraordinary. This subject well deserves study; here we shall very likely find that the Spirit of God is lifting up David before us that He may teach us something about that which is evidently looking up at us—something about Life, and Love, and Sacrifice. May the Spirit, indeed, bring Vol. II.-No. 21.