not a child-like simplicity of heart have guarded thee yet longer from sinking into the sins and the corruption of the time? No, it was not that the temptations were not too great, but thine own faith was too small.

With the humbled and rescued Peter, Christ now enters the ship where the other disciples are. The wind lulls, the waves cease to roar; upon the peaceful surface of the sea the boat glides softly and swiftly to the opposite shore.

Yes, it is He alone who, as He can control and rule in the raging sea of the troubled time, can also quiet the very storm itself of the spiritual life. Upon His Gospel and its divine power, rests all hope for the future. If rescue does not come from hence, there is no rescue for us at all. If faith does not again wax mighty in this disordered time--a faith which can quench the consuming fire of selfish passion, and teach us to honor the will and the word of God above everything else, then truly there is no help. By whatever other methods men may seek to heal their wounds, if these methods are not penetrated by the power of faith, it is all idle delusion, and can only serve to bring about the deceptive appearance of a cure, while the poison of the wound corrodes more and more fatally within. Were our hopes resting only on such means of human strength and prudence, oh then, indeed, should we be obliged to prepare ourselves for the approaching death-night of a melancholy bewilderment, and utter dissolution of all human relations; and, with a bleeding heart, we must look upon the dark future of the rising generation.

But does not the morning dawn upon the sea of Gennesareth, which bears that vessel with Christ and his disciples? Comforting picture of our time! Yes, it is the grey of morning, which appears, however, to fearful, anxious souls, as the twilight of evening. We are not approaching the night, but the day-a more beautiful day-where living faith and true piety shall again thoroughly penetrate the life of the nations; where, after having once and again "hewn themselves out broken cisterns which hold no water," they shall, with deeper longing, betake themselves

again to the fountain from which stream forth the waters of everlasting life.

And does it not begin to break forth? Do you not see the lofty One, walking in calm majesty over the lifted waves, which are forced to crouch at his feet? Do not the rays of the morning red shine before Him, and proclaim the advancing conquest of his heavenly light over the earthly darkness? Has not his Father given Him a great multitude as his portion, and the strong as his spoil? Has He not become too powerful for thousands who once withstood Him; and has he not overcome them by his love, so that they now lie at his feet, and know no higher glory than that of being His possession? Ah, will not many among us, who now withstand Him, one day also bow their knees before Him, and say: "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life, and we believe and are sure that Thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God !" Yes, as there in the vessel, when He entered it and all became still, the men fall before Him and exclaim, "Of a truth, Thou art the Son of God, so will we worshipfully bow before Him, who is in the midst of us, where two or three are gathered in His name."

Of a truth, Thou art the Son of God, O Lord, and thy Father hath given all things into thy hand-hath called the whole human race to become thy possession. And Thou dost pity all, and art willing to be the helper of all in the necessities of their earthly life, and dost kindly call every one of us to Thee, as Thou didst call Peter. Oh that we may willingly obey the call of Thy love, and faithfully continue in Thy holy communion. Then will the storm and the billows not terrify us. We see Thee walking upon the boisterous sea of our agitated time. We follow Thee with confident courage, and if we sink, and cry in distress, "Lord, help us !" then dost Thou reach forth Thy hand to us, thou faithful Saviour, and dost rescue us, and strengthen us for new conflicts, until with Thee we reach the safe shore of everlasting peace, when for us the day breaks to which no night again succeeds. Amen.

DISCOURSE XXI.

THE RELATION OF RELIGION TO BUSINESS.*

Ir is an old and famous maxim, my beloved friends, that the middle way is the best; a maxim to which the highest value is wont to be ascribed, not only in the business of life, in the education of youth, and in the government of nations, but in reference to the study of external truth. Nevertheless, neither the antiquity nor the wide-spread authority of this principle can blind us to the mournful errors into which it misleads us, when we come to make it universally applicable. To be sure, it commends itself to us as an easy and convenient procedure, in the strife of opposite views and aims, if nothing farther were needful for us, in order to hit upon the truth, but each time to seek out that which lies in the middle, between the contending antagonisms. But how does the ease and simplicity of this procedure help us, if its result is still so unsafe? For can we conceal from ourselves the fact, that among men not always one one-sided principle contends with another, but just as frequently truth with error, good with evil? When the word of eternal truththe Gospel of Christ-was still obliged to contend with heathen delusion, which withstood its progress, into what dark, bottomless depths of error must those have fallen, who sought to gain a middle ground between the contending powers, who ventured

* A friend and admirer of Prof. Müller, not connected with the preparation of this volume, kindly furnished the translation of this and the following discourses.

upon the mad attempt to harmonize and reconcile the Gospel with Idolatry! And if we to-day, as at all times of the Christian Church, see on the one side, enthusiastic zeal for the kingdom of God, for truth and righteousness, on the other, cold indifference, or even embittered hostility, woe to us, if we think that we must place ourselves in the middle, between the antagouistic sentiments and endeavors. For that crushing word of Christ strikes us : Alas, that you are neither cold nor hot ! "Because thou art lukewarm, and art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth."

But however insufficient that principle is found to be, when it will exalt itself as a universal rule for ascertaining right and truth, still there lies indisputably at the bottom of it a great truth. For how do those errors commonly arise, which, with destructive violence, take a deep hold of the whole life, and by their appearance of truth, draw countless numbers after them? Is it not in this way, that some one-sided notion of the objects of our knowledge passes itself as complete, and excludes every other; that an isolated thought which has its truth in its connection with others, in its definite place in a great circle of thoughts, breaks loose from this connection, in order that it may alone rule the soul, so that, despising every limit, with vehemence it pursues the single tendency to the extremest point? Thus, it happens, that we see, everywhere in the world, antagonistic one-sided combatants in strife with one another-opinions, feelings, spiritual tendencies, of which the one is just as far aside from the right and the true as the other. Here the Gospel points us to the true medium; but not in this way, that out of the antagonistic deviations, and their comparison and mutual approximation, we can calculate out the evangelical truth which is between them, but so that we must have first found this truth, in order to recognize these deviations as such, and rightly to estimate them. Therefore, if we trust with sincere confidence, to the guidance of the Gospel, it leads us upon the narrow but safe path, between and through the seductive by-paths at the

right and the left. It makes known to us the convincing truth of the Christian faith, as the medium between unbelief and superstition; it guides us on to the mild earnestness of Christian holiness, as the medium between a light, frivolous, worldly temper, and a dark, world-despising severity. And as in the general course of life, so the more our heart is penetrated by the power of the divine word, the more we live and move in it, so much the more does the Gospel manifest itself in the special relations of life, so that the Gospel everywhere places its true adherents in the middle between antagonistic errors. May our meditation to-day, from a particular point of view, contribute to strengthen and confirm us anew in this conviction.

"Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha, received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word: But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? Bid her, therefore, that she help me. And Jesus answered, and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful, and troubled about many things. But one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her."-LUKE X. 38-42.

It is a very simple event which the Evangelist narrates to us in our text, so simple that one might almost doubt whether it were worthy to be preserved among so weighty discourses and transactions. What passes between the sisters, in a similar way often occurs in domestic life. The thought, too, which the Lord expresses in connection, in its great simplicity, appears to us to offer no material for varied discussion. But as nothing is of trifling value to Christian souls, which affords them a glance into the mind of their Lord, as in nearness to the Son of God the apparently insignificant becomes significant, so, then, are here very important lessons which our text presents to us, in the conduct of the sisters, in the discourse of the Lord, as in His previous silence-instructions upon THE TRUE RELATION OF THE

ASPIRATION AFTER HEAVENLY THINGS TO OUR EARTHLY BUSINESS.

These instructions, let us then, in this hour consecrated to devotion, farther consider with one another; and follow the