up a kind of piety more perilous and burdensome than was necessary, will be his fields of victory, and his course of life will be just as much happier as it is more consciously heroic. He has something great to live for, nay, something worthy even to die for, if he must,-that which makes it glorious to live and not less glorious to die

This war too is one, my brethren, as I verily believe, that, in all that is bitterest and most painful, may be effectually carried and ended without waiting for the end of your life. The bitterness and painfulness are, in fact, nowhere, except in the losing or apparently losing experiences of which I have been speaking, and these may assuredly be surmounted. There is a standing above all sense of loss, a peace of God that can not be shaken, a first love made second and final, into which you may come soon, if you are faithful, and in which you may abide. The doctrine of Wesley and his followers may be exaggerated, or partially misconceived; I think it is. They appear to hold that there is a kind of second conversion, higher than the first, which they imagine is complete sanctification. But it is, if I am right, neither more nor less than the point of the first love reached again, with the advantage of much wisdom or self-understanding brought back with it. The disciple is, for that reason, stronger, wider in volume, more able to abide or stand fast. But, if he is not strong enough, he will very certainly take another circuit, and perhaps another. Enough that there is hope, that there is a state of profound liberty, assurance, and peace, which you may attain to, and in which you may abide. Indeed, the original love itself was but a foretaste in feeling, cf that which you may achieve in wisdom; and you are to set that mark

your eye, expecting to emerge again, or to climb patiently up into a state of purity and fellowship closely resembled to that.

If, then, you have now become entangled, discouraged, darkened, if you seem to have quite given over,-blame yourself, not in your infirmity, but only in your sin. See, if possible, exactly what and where your blame is, and let your repentances and confessions exactly cover it. Probably you did not fall consentingly, but you seem to have been thrown by your own distracted, half illuminated mind. You struggled hard, and with so great self-exertion, not unlikely, that you fell out of faith, and were even floored by your struggles themselves. You fanned the love so violently that you rather blew out than kindled the flame. The harder you lifted, the deeper in mire you sunk. At last, you gave over with a sigh, and fell back as one quite spent. And now, it may be that you even look upon the whole subject of spiritual religion with a kind of dread. It wears a painful and distasteful look. And yet there is one bright spot in the retrospect; viz., the gentle, ingenuous, heavenly feeling, the peace, the cleanness, the fullness of heart, the liberty in God and his love, the luminous, inward glory; and, if you could see nothing else but this, how attractive the remembered blessedness would be; the more attractive for the emptiness you have since experienced, and the general distaste of the world, which so often afflicts you. Nay, with all the disrespect you may possibly put on this former experience, it is precisely this and the opening of your higher nature in it, that makes a great part of the distaste you now suffer toward the world. What a call then have you in this joy

262 PROBLEM OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE.

remembered! And God indorses it, offering to seal all this upon you, and more. He blames you not for any thing unavoidable, he only blames you for your letting go of Him, and your final surrender of the struggle. This he waits to forgive. He will do more, he will even make what is blameable in your sad loss and defection turn to your account. Can you ask encouragement to a new effort better than this? Come back then, O, thou prodigal, to thy father! Quit thy sad folly and emptiness, thy reproaches of soul, thy diseased longings, and thy restless sighs. Return again to thy God, and give thyself to him, in a final and last sacrifice. Ask the restored revelation. Conquer again, as Christ will help you, the original love, in that to abide and rest.

1 JOHN, iii. 3.-"And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure.”

THIS hope, as the apostle is speaking, is a hope to be with Christ; and as Christ is, in highest verity, the manifestation of God who is infinite purity, it is a hope to be concomitant with purity, the purity of Christ and of God; which again is but a hope of being entered into, and perfectly answerable to, the purity of God. And then it follows, yet again, that every man that hath this hope in him will be purifying himself here on earth, even according to the purity of Christ with whom he hopes to be.

Accordingly the subject raised for our consideration is purity of soul, as the aim of spiritual redemption, and the legitimate issue of Christian experience. Let us see-

I. If we can form a fit conception of what purity is. If we refer to examples, it is the character of angels and of God-the simplicity, the unstained excellence, the undimmed radiance, the spotless beauty. Or it is God as represented here on earth, in the sinless and perfect life of Christ; his superiority to sense and passion and the opinions of the world, his simple devotion to truth, his unambitious goodness, his holy, harmless, undefiled life, as being with, yet separate from sinners.

If we go to analogy, purity is, in character, what trans

parency is in the crystal. It is water flowing, unmixed and clear, from the mountain spring. Or it is the white of snow. Or it is the clear open heaven, through which the sparkling stars appear, hidden by no mist of obstruction. Or it is the pure light itself in which they shine. A pure character is that, in mind and feeling and spirit of life, which all these clear, untarnished symbols of nature, image, in their lower and merely sensible sphere, to our outward eye.

Or if we describe purity by reference to contrasts, then it is a character opposite to all sin, and so to most of what we see in the corrupted character of mankind. It is innocent, just as man is not. It is incorrupt as opposed to passion, self-seeking, foul imaginations, base desires, enslaved affections, a bad conscience and turbid currents of thought. It is the innocence of infancy without the stain-that inno cence matured into the spotless, positive and eternally esablished holiness of a responsible manhood. It is man lifted up out of the mires of sin, washed as a spirit into the clean white love and righteousness of his redeemer, and so purged of himself as to be man, without any thing of the sordid and defiled character of a sinner.

Or we may set forth the idea of purity, under a reference to the modes of causes. In the natural world, as for example in the heavens, causes act in a manner that is unconfused and regular. All things proceed according to their law. Hence the purity of the firmament. In the world of causes, it is the scientific ideal of purity that events transpire normally, according to the constitutive order and original law of the creation. But as soon as a soul transgresses, it breaks out of order, and its whole internal working becomes mixed, confused, tumultuous,