be as in the outer darkness, while the guests were feasting in the illumined chamber, here too to be shunned by those who had been friends and brothers. This save their souls. It counts no perils too great, no sufferings too distressing, no sacrifices too exacting, in order to redeem immortal spirits from ignorance, selfishness, world would have been the Chris-liness, guilt, misery, hell.. THE PLACE WHERE GOD IS NOT. tian's thoughts as to excommunication in the apostolic age. But beyond all this, the Apostle found a deeper gulf and a more terrible sentence. To be anathema from Christ, cut off for ever from that eternal life which he had known as the truest and high-presence. (Psa. cxxxix.) His est blessedness, sentenced for ever to that outer darkness, the wailing and gnashing of teeth this was what he prayed for, if it might have for its result the salvation of his brethren." Gospel love involves selfabnegation. Self sinks as love rises. Christ is the highest example. He loved us, and He gave Himself for us. Here is the cause and the effect. Love is the high priest of the soul; it offers the whole self. III. ITS SOUL-SAVING AIM. Why did Paul wish to sacrifice himself? What was the grand object he had in view? The spiritual salvation of his countrymen. The vicarious love of the Gospel endures and craves sufferings, not merely or mainly to serve men materially and temporarily, but chiefly spi ritually and eternally; to "God is not in all his thoughts." -Psa. x. 4. GOD is everywhere. Heaven and earth are full of his presence suns immensity. And yet the text tells us where He is not, and that is in the thoughts of wicked men. "God is not in all their thoughts." (1.) This is a patent fact. The millions live from day to day, and year to year, and scarcely think of God. (2.) This is an astounding fact. It is unnatural, impious, and calamitous. Let us inquire for a moment into the reason. Why is God not in the thoughts of men ? I. NEGATIVELY. (1.) It is not because there can be any doubt in the human mind as to the importance of thinking about the Creator. All men must feel that the greatest Being ought to be thought upon most. There is no subject of thought so quickening, spiritualising, ennobling, and beatifying as God. (2.) It is not because there is any want of the means of reminding men of God. All life is full of mementoes. All that is seen, or heard, or felt, is full of Him. (3.) It is not because of the unbroken regularity of the material world. It is true that Nature proceeds on her march without any deviation from her wonted path. "All things continue as they were from the beginning," &c. But this cannot be pleaded as a sufficient cause. Nature in heaven has an unbroken uniformity. Yet all minds there are full of God. Nature to the Jews in the desert, under Moses, and to the Jews in Palestine, under Christ, had striking miraculous interpositions, and yet the millions there did not think of God. (4.) Not because man has no consciousness of restraint in action. Man has the power of selfmotion. He moves when soever and whithersoever he pleases, without any feeling of pressure from God. He does not feel the Divine finger checking or propelling him. But this is no just cause, for all holy souls are equally free from any consciousness of Divine pressure. II. POSITIVELY. Why, then, do men exclude God from their thoughts? Here is the answer. They do "not like to retain God in their know ledge." The cause is in the heart. There are two things in the heart that exclude thoughts of Him. (1.) Fear. The guilty conscience assures the transgressor that he has offended his Maker, and that he justly deserves his everlasting displeasure. Thought recoils from the terrible. Fear repels thought. (2.) Dislike. If we fear a being we are sure to dislike him. Our imaginations invest him with unloveable and hideous attributes. Those whom we dislike we exclude as much as possible from our thoughts. The subject teaches us First: The appalling wickedness of men. What can give us a more astonishing view of man's depravity than the fact that he excludes from his thoughts his Creator, Preserver, and Redeemer, the greatest, best, and the most loving of beings? The only place from which man can exclude his Maker is his thought; and he avails himself of this terrible power. If he could banish the Eternal from his universe he would. Learn Secondly: The necessity of Christianity. What system can bring God into the world's thoughts? No system that does not remove from the human breast all dread and dislike of the Eternal. Christianity is the only system on MAN'S PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY. "For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire," &c. &c. But ye are come to Mount Sion," &c. &c.-Heb. xii. 18-24. Or all the facts in the history of man, none so important as that which concerns his spiritual locus standi. His physical standing-his relation to the material world-is important. His social standing -his relation to his fellow men-is more so. His intellectual standing-his relation to the great world of truth is perhaps more so. But his spiritual standing-his relation to God and the spiritual universe-is infinitely_more important than all. If his standing place is wrong here, he is wrong everywhere. If a planet is right in relation to the sun, it will be right in relation to the whole system, and the reverse. We infer from this passage not come unto the mount that might be touched." Sinai, a rugged, palpable mountain, was the emblem of that religion to which the Jew was brought. Judaism was a religion as palpable by its many ceremonies as was Sinai. But that to which we are come " in Christianity, is something that "cannot be touched the impalpable, the spiritual, the eternal. "Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem." Christian men have to do with things unseen, not with things that are seen, &c. II. THAT MAN'S PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY IS RELATED TO THE ATTRACTIVE RATHER THAN THE TERRIBLE. Mount Sinai is here described as a terrible thing. It burned with fire; there was blackness, and darkness, and tempest; there were trumpets and voices that echoed wrath. No beast could touch it without instant death, and so terrible was the sight that Moses said, "I exceedingly fear and quake.' "The religion of the Jews was a terrible religion; it was full of maledictions and judgments-not so the Christian religion. Mount Sion and the city of the living God are free from clouds and thunders. They are invested "Ye are in charms, and inspire hope, I. THAT MAN'S PLACE IN CHRISTIANITY IS RELATED SPIRITUAL Take "Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me: for Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry. And Tychicus have I sent to Ephesus. The cloak that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and the books, but especially the parchments. Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil: the Lord reward him according to his works: of whom be thou ware also; for he hath greatly with stood our words. At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge. Notwithstanding the Lord stood with me, and strengthened me."-2 Tim. iv. 9-17. PAUL'S nature was strongly and tenderly affectionate. Many of the passages in his letters to various churches, and the whole of his relationship to Timothy, strikingly prove this. He had by nature the capacity, and by character the right, of possessing many companions. This paragraph from a letter of his to his beloved Timothy, reminds us of some of his experiences as to companionships. This record of his feelings assures us, I. HUMAN COMPANIONSHIPS ARE VERY NECESSARY. The ear thirsts for a friend's voice; the heart hungers for a friend's love. Occasional solitude is a blessing; constant solitariness would be a soulcrushing curse. All men, therefore, seek companionships. So even does Paul, intellectual and moral giant though he be. Hence how he eagerly does entreat Timothy to come to him at “Do thy utmost," &c. once II. HUMAN COMPANIONSHIPS ARE VERY CHANGING. All the men whose names are here mentioned by Paul had been in the inner or outer circles of Paul's companion ship; but how scattered and separated his companions are at the time he writes! Of the eight here brought before us, only one was with Paul. Some had gone to -- service to the cause of Christ, so he welcomes him to his companionship. (3.) Timothy was coming to him. He could serve Paul by bringing the 66 cloak," the "book," the far-off places-Thessalonica, 'parchments." Such-like serEphesus, &c. Others-Demas vice no candid man will affect and Alexander, wherever their to despise. But far higher joy bodies were were leagues would Timothy's companiondistant from Paul in spirit. ship yield. He was Paul's Such is but an instance of the son in the Gospel. No ties changes continually trans- are more tender, sacred, piring in companionships. lasting, than those of such Such changes are caused by relationship. distance, death, depravity. III. HUMAN COMPANIONSHIPS ARE OFTEN GREAT BLES SINGS. (1.) Luke was with Paul. This must have been a deep joy to the aged prisoner. For Luke, his future biographer, was so intimately familiar with his life, that he could keenly sympathize with him; and, better still, he was so intimately familiar with the Saviour's life, as one of his biographers, that his memories must have been the richest converse to which Paul could have listened. Besides, Luke was a cultured man-a physician; and to an educated man like Paul, this must have greatly enhanced his worth as a companion. (2.) Mark was to be brought to him. There had been a time when Paul had differed with Barnabas concerning Mark, but now Paul saw reason to believe that he would be of IV. HUMAN COMPANION SHIPS SOMETIMES PROVE GREAT AFFLICTIONS. It must have been on a tear-blotted leaf that Paul wrote "Demas hath forsaken me," &c. Those tears fell because sin had caused the separation. Alexander, too, once in the Church with Paul, grieved him now by becoming a false witness against him. So is it always. Men suffer most when "wounded in the house of their friends." V. HUMAN COMPANIONSHIPS MUST SOMETIMES FAIL Us. Paul, waiting now the second stage of his Roman trial, had only one old companion, Luke, with him, Worse still, at the first stage "no man stood by him, but all forsook him." There are often in men's lives crises when old companions forsake them. They are sometimes scared by poverty, failure, shame. But |