to nature, though there be as to degree. In both there is the same fallen heart, though in the child not as yet developed. We bless God for children, for without them this world would more resemble the pit than it does. They do help to keep the hearts of men and women from growing prematurely old, from being hardened like the rock. Still we know that folly is bound up in the heart of every child, that opportunity will bring it out, that years will ripen it into the moral madness of the man, Prov. xxii. 15; Ecc. ix. 3. It is just as difficult for us to renew the heart of an infant as an aged withered soul, and quite as easy for Omnipotence to regenerate the sinner of a hundred years old as the babe of yesterday. In both alike it is divine power that is required, and we are glad the human soul is so precious that God will let none touch it but Himself. Let us no longer then allow the "dark and turbid stream to flow hopelessly past," on account of the seeming impossibility of purifying the waters. We say "purifying the waters," instead of "turning them into another channel," because the illustration employed by Mr Keddie is extremely delusive. A dark and turbid stream would still be dark and turbid in whatever channel it ran, whether north, south, east, or west. Again he says, "begin with the current of life when it is flowing fresh and young from the fountain." What fountain? No other than the heart. What sort of fountain is it? Unless renewed, it is only a fountain of evil, and the stream will be no better than it source. The current of childhood needs the purification of the Holy Ghost. Still further, his idea seems to be that the dark and turbid stream of the parents can flow in a channel of its own, apart from that in which the current of their children run, when the truth is, that the parents, by the evil communication of their example, daily mingle their contaminating waters with those not so turbid, which issue from their offspring's heart. It is thirteen years since Mr Keddie delivered that address. Tens of thousands who were then in the Sabbath schools, have grown up to be men and women. Is there now a mighty stream of righteousness "flowing on to the ocean of a peaceful eternity?" Glasgow is worse now than then. Many hundreds of our female scholars have been debauched, hundreds of them become the mothers of illegitimate children, and not a few of both sexes have passed through our prisons. If society then is ever to be reformed, the church must listen to the voice of Jesus Christ. She must obey the reiterated command-"Feed my sheep." Her evangelistic machinery on behalf of the home heathen must comprise these three branches-1st. Sabbath schools for the young. 2d. Advanced classes for adults from 16 to 24 years. 3d. Volunteer missionaries for the parents. The men of matured experience must be enlisted in this last. The organization for these volunteer missionaries will be exactly similar to our present one for

Sabbath school teachers. Each congregation will have its own society, and there will be a general Union with the necessary number of branches.

Dr Chalmers, when in Glasgow, had these three branches of home mission work, and though his missionary volunteers were but his elders, he succeeded in accomplishing untold good, but the greater part of that good was swallowed up by the public houses. He was quite aware of this himself, of how his every effort to raise the working classes was counteracted by the publicans. His own testimony is "The public house is the most deleterious, and by far the most abundant source of pauperism." Society, since the days of his labours in St John's Parish, has happily seen the evil in its magnitude, and the appropriate remedy. These whisky shops shall be shut in spite of all the yells about tyranny, which interested men may raise. Which is the best for the city-tyranny with pauperism, crime, and general demoralization, such as we have at present under the reign of the publicans; or tyranny without annoyance, without unnecessary taxes, without corruption of public morals, which is the tyranny we now propose to establish, by letting the poor, equally with the rich, drink nowhere but at home? The liquor traffic alone is tyranny, it dooms the innocent with the guilty, it loads the deserving with taxation to feed the pauper and the criminal, it contaminates the public morality, it poisons and hardens the soul of childhood, it endangers the life and property of the citizens; therefore, it shall be suppressed.

We want 6000 missionary volunteers, but where are we to get them? The greater part of those in the church willing to work are already engaged in some scheme or other; very often their labour being bucket in hand, carrying out the desolating waters that flood the unroofed social edifice. Very wise work indeed, and likely in that way to have a speedy termination! We know it will be very easy to get 1400 preventive police, and as easy to get a large number of light troops to leave tracts, and invite the people to district meetings; but where to get two or three thousand men possessing common sense, and gracious sense, we really do not know. The whole difficulty will be in filling up the training division. It must be composed of men who have themselves been trained by the Holy Ghost, who, having long and deeply felt and groaned over the perversity of their own heart, can patiently bear with the weakness and waywardness of others; who, knowing that away from God, the fountain of living waters, there is no peace nor joy on earth, can gently, lovingly, entreat their fellowmen to become reconciled to God. Men who can sit down by the fireside of the poor, and converse with the freedom of an old acquaintance; who, while not prying into the social condition of the families under their charge, will offer such advice and aid as prudent observation may suggest; and above all, men who so frequently breathe heavenwards in prayer, and smile

in the face of a God of love who smiles back to them in return, that there will not be the slightest stiffness nor constraint in their religious advice, that when they pray in starting family worship in the homes of the poor, the auditors will be convinced the suppliant has the spirit of adoption, is a son rejoicing in the presence of a father beloved. When was it that much people were added to the Lord in the primitive church? When they were spoken to by men full of faith, and of the Holy Ghost, Acts xi. 24. Full of the Holy Ghost, means full of joy, Acts xiii. 52. This fulness of joy will be the strength of the training division, Neh. viii. 10, and it will convince our home heathen that there is a mysterious something in true religion, that is noble, holy, sublime; that there is a joy that is not of earth, a peace that is from heaven above.

Where are we to get a sufficient number of men of matured Christian experience for the training division? We say it in sadness, yet not without hope for the future, that the majority of the members, and even of the office-bearers of the church, are as yet not converted. There has been for many years past such an indiscriminate admission into the church-ministers have been so anxious to have well-filled churches, and men so desirous of the badge of respectability which church membership affords, that Zion is crowded with those who have a name to live, while they are dead. The contributions for missionary and other objects, is no proof of spiritual life. A few give out of love to God; a second class, from intellectual conviction that gospel ordinances must be supported; a third class, merely because others give; and a fourth to be seen and known of men. As a gentleman said once to us when giving his subscription-"Now, see that it be well advertised."

In judging of the members of the church, and of the Christianity of our day, we never look for perfection; for this is not to be found on earth. Every true believer has two natures his own, which Paul most truly describes as being a law, Rom. vii. 21, it having the uniform tendency and strength of a material law; and its opponent, which is that of grace. Having thus two active natures, we never expect perfect consistency or harmony in a Christian's life. We always look for the double utterance-the voice of his own indwelling, inherent corruption, and the voice of grace. But when from close examination of a man or woman's life for several years, we observe nothing but the motions of the flesh, we are inclined to doubt the presence of the spirit. We say several years, because the person may be a backslider, and so scarcely to be distinguished from one that is spiritually dead. And we are certain that backsliding is of much more frequent occurrence, than ministers are apt to suppose. Even in the case of a backslider, a minute inspection would enable us to discover his state. He feels he is away from home, he knows it is not now with him as once it

was, and while he cannot look God in the face, he sighs for liberty from the thraldom of his wayward heart. In looking for the workings of grace we watch only its distinctive, its peculiar manifestations, not those appearances which unrenewed human nature can easily put on. Thus, we would place far more confidence on observing a man a few times casting his eye upwards with a subdued holy smile of love, and whispering to one that was near, than to hear him praying a hundred times in an assembly. We attach more weight to prayer in private than in public; to battling with indwelling corruption, than merely sighing over it; to love of the brethren, than flaming zeal against vice; to a humble spirit, than a great profession of unworthiness. Watching for utterances that can come only from spiritual life, we say in sorrow, yet we cannot but say it, for it is the truth, that the majority of the members of the church are destitute of a regenerated heart. Some men spoken of as saints in the "Life of Dr Chalmers," we found, from many years' close observation, to have only the single nature; there were no actions, no expressions, no looks, no tones, that indicated they had ever been born again.

Let us apply a single test to the Christianity of the present day. A true believer, when in a healthy condition, when the attraction of grace is strong from above, keeps the Sabbath day holy in the strictest sense of the word; holy, not in actions only, but in words and thoughts. He strenuously casts out every thought referring to his worldly business, or the passing news of the day. As we before remarked, the commands of God are but the indication of the disposition and tendency of grace, and grace finds its sweetest joy in obeying this command-"Not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words on my holy day," Isa. lviii. 13. A spiritually-minded Christian does not keep the Sabbath holy from the conviction that this is his duty. If Jesus bound us to himself by convictions merely, not one in a million of us would follow him. It is because grace is uneasy, is restless, dissatisfied, pained, when the Sabbath is not hallowed; and swims in holy serenity, when it rejoices before its Father in heaven-comes near to his very side, and takes hold of his hand-that a believer strives to hallow the

sacred day. David beautifully describes the working of a gracious heart, when he says, "Come ye before Him and rejoice," Ps. c. 2. Feeling the warm sunshine of the Father's love, the heart endeavours to cast out the world on the Sabbath day, for thoughts of the world are an interruption of its joy. Often with great difficulty can it manage to escape and be at rest, but it is always pained when the fallen nature, the law in the members, struggles after vanity and folly, and brings the poor heart down again to the dust. Now, what we maintain is, that this longing to escape from earth on the Sabbath, if we may judge from the incessant worldly spirit and conversation of the members, and

even office-bearers of the church, is a branch of Christian experience to which the majority of them are utter strangers. When listening to a sermon, it is nourishment for his soul the true Christian desires; whatever is nutriment to grace is seized upon with avidity by the spiritual appetite. Merely rhetorical or logical beauty he passes over, even though he be a man of capacious intellect and refined taste; for it is fruit, not leaves, he is in search of. The weakest messenger can carry to him the bread and water of life, as well as the strongest; he has not itching ears, nor deserts his own church when his favourite minister is absent. He has no faith in the power of a popular preacher over his heart, but looks only to Jesus for more and more grace, and to the Holy Spirit to blow with the warm south wind of his joy, that the garden of his heart may send forth the sweet fragrance of gratitude and love, Cant. iv. 16. If a believer in this health condition were to give expression to his feelings in the company of many other members of the church, who can criticise the sermon down to syllables, and make every possible use of it but personal application; were he to say, "Jesus has given us manna to-day," every eye would be turned on him with surprise, the majority would regard him as an oddity, a singular or halfcracked person, or a red hot hypocrite. Since this is the condition of the church, where are we to get two or three thousand matured Christians for our home mission work? We have purposely placed the standard of qualification at its proper height, only that we may keep the mark in view. None of us are perfect, none of us are duly qualified, but our Master sendeth no one a warfare on his own charges, 1 Cor. ix. 7; he giveth liberally and upbraideth not, Jam. i. 5. When Dr Chalmers commenced his evangelistic labours in the Parish of St John's, he did not find tools prepared to his hand, any more than we will find them now. He was determined, however, that all his session would take part in the work. One of the elders begged to decline on the score of inability, he thought he was quite unfit to be a missionary to the poor, he had not speech nor courage to lead devotion in their homes. But the doctor would take no denial. "Can you read your Bible, Mr ?" said he to the elder.

The reply was "Yes." "Well, then, go through all the houses in your district, sit down and read the Bible to the people, and by and bye you will find you can pray too." Thus driven into the vineyard, he regularly visited all the families in his district once in every month for many years, and much oftener when sickness required his presence. As the doctor had predicted, he speedily found the ability to pray as well as to read. We do not then expect picked men; we will most thankfully receive all who volunteer. There is not one in the city so qualified as he will be after he has for sometime been engaged in the work. Our most able ministers, even Dr Chalmers himself, were but feeble in