seditions, heresies'--i.e., factions in Church or State--'envyings, murders, and such like.'

Thus men put themselves under the law. Not under Moses' law, of course, but under some law or other.

For why has law been invented? Why is it needed, with all its expense? Law is meant to prevent, if possible, men harming each other by their own selfishness, by those lusts of the flesh which tempt every man to seek his own happiness, careless of his neighbour's happiness, interest, morals; by all the passions which make men their own tormentors, and which make the history of every nation too often a history of crime, and folly, and faction, and war, sad and shameful to read; all those passions of which St. Paul says once and for ever, that those who do such things 'shall not inherit the kingdom of God.'

These are the sad consequences of giving way to the flesh, the selfish animal nature within us: and most miserable would man be if that were all he had to look to. Miserable, were there not a kingdom of God, into which he could enter all day long, and be at peace; and a Spirit of God, who would raise him up to the spiritual life of love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; and a Son of God, the King of that kingdom, the Giver of that Spirit, who cries for ever to every one of us--'Come unto Me, ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke on you, and learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly of heart; and ye shall find rest unto your souls.'

Love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance; these are the fruits of the Spirit: the spirit of unselfishness; the spirit of charity; the spirit of justice; the spirit of purity; the Spirit of God. Against them there is no law. He who is guided by this Spirit, and he only, may do what he would; for he will wish to do nought but what is right. He is not under the law, but under grace; and full of grace will he be in all his words and works. He has entered into the kingdom of God, and is living therein as God's subject, obeying the royal law of liberty--'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.'

'The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would,' says St. Paul.

My friends, this is the battle of life.

In every one of us, more or less, this battle is going on; a battle between the flesh and the Spirit, between the animal nature and the divine grace. In every one of us, I say, who is not like the heathen, dead in trespasses and sins; in every one of us who has a conscience, excusing or else accusing us. There are those--a very few, I hope--who are sunk below that state; who have lost their sense of right and wrong; who only care to fulfil the lusts of the flesh in pleasure, ease, and vanity. There are those in whom the voice of conscience is lead for a while, silenced by self-conceit; who say in their prosperity, like the foolish Laodiceans, 'I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing,' and know not that in fact and reality, and in the sight of God, they are 'wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.'

Happy, happy for any and all of us,--if ever we fall into that dream of pride and false security,--to be awakened again, however painful the awakening may be! Happy for every man that the battle between the Spirit and the flesh should begin in him again and again, as long as his flesh is not subdued to his spirit. If he be wrong, the greatest blessing which can happen to him is, that he should find himself in the wrong. If he have been deceiving himself, the greatest blessing is, that God should anoint his eyes that he may see--see himself as he is; see his own inbred corruption; see the sin which doth so easily beset him, whatever it may be. Whatever anguish of mind it may cost him, it is a light price to pay for the inestimable treasure which true repentance and amendment brings; the fine gold of solid self-knowledge, tried in the fire of bitter experience; the white raiment of a pure and simple heart; the eye- salve of honest self-condemnation and noble shame. If he have but these--and these God will give him, in answer to prayer, the prayer of a broken and a contrite heart--then he will be able to carry on the battle against the corrupt flesh, with its affections and lusts, in hope. In the assured hope of final victory. 'For greater is He that is with us, than he that is against us? He that is against us is our self, our selfish self; our animal nature; and He that is with us is God; God and none other: and who can pluck us out of His hand?

My friends, the bread and the wine on that table are God's own sign to us that He will not leave us to be, like the savage, the slaves of our own animal natures; that He will feed not merely our bodies with animal, but our souls with spiritual food; giving us strength to rise above our selfish selves; and so subdue the flesh to the Spirit, that at last, however long and weary the fight, however sore wounded and often worsted we may be, we shall conquer in the battle of life.

SERMON VIII. FREE GRACE (Preached before the Queen at Windsor, March 12, 1865.)

ISAIAH iv. 1.

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.

Every one who knows his Bible as he should, knows well this noble chapter. It seems to be one of the separate poems or hymns of which the Book of Isaiah is composed. It is certainly one of the most beautiful of them, and also one of the deepest. So beautiful is it, that the good men of old who translated the Bible into English, could not help catching the spirit of the words as they went on with their work, and making the chapter almost a hymn in English, as it is a hymn in Hebrew. Even the very sound of the words, as we listen to them, is a song in itself; and there is perhaps no more perfect piece of writing in the English language, than the greater part of this chapter.

This may not seem a very important matter; and yet those good men of old must have felt that there was something in this chapter which went home especially to their hearts, and would go home to the hearts of us for whose sake they translated it.

And those good men judged rightly. The care which they bestowed on Isaiah's words has not been in vain. The noble sound of the text has caught many a man's ears, in order that the noble meaning of the text might touch his heart, and bring him back again to God, to seek Him while He may be found, and call on Him while He is near; that so the wicked might forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return to God, for He will have compassion, and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon; and that he might find that God's thoughts are not as man's thoughts, nor His ways as man's ways, saith the Lord; for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His ways and thoughts higher than ours.

Yes--I believe that the beauty of this chapter has made many a man listen to it, who had perhaps never cared to listen to any good before; and learn a precious lesson from it, which he could learn nowhere save in the Bible.

For this text is one of those which have been called the Evangelical Prophecies, in which the prophet rises far above Moses' old law, and the letter of it, which, as St. Paul says, is a letter which killeth; and the spirit of it, which is a spirit which, as St. Paul says, gendereth to bondage and slavish dread of God: an utterance in which the prophet sees by faith the Lord Jesus Christ and His free grace revealed--dimly, of course, and in a figure--but still revealed by the Spirit of God, who spake by the prophets. As St. Paul says, Moses' law made nothing perfect, and therefore had to be disannulled for its unprofitableness and weakness, and a better hope brought in, by which we draw near to God. And here, in this text, we see the better hope coming in, and as it were dawning upon men--the dawn of the Sun of Righteousness, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was to rise afterwards, to be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel.

And what was this better hope? One, St. Paul says, by which we could draw nigh to God; come near to Him; as to a Father, a Saviour, a Comforter, a liege lord--not a tyrant who holds us against our will as his slaves, but a liege lord who holds us with our will as His tenants, His vassals, His liege men, as the good old English words were; one who will take His vassals into His counsel, and inform them with His Spirit, and teach them His mind, that they may do His will and copy His example, and be treated by Him as His friends--in spite of the infinite difference of rank between them and Him, which they must never forget.

But though the difference of rank be infinite and boundless--for it is the difference between sinful man and God perfect for ever--yet still man can now draw near to God. He is not commanded to stand afar off in fear and trembling, as the old Jews were at Sinai. We have not come, says St. Paul, to a mount which burned with fire, and blackness, and darkness, and storm, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which those who heard entreated that they should not be spoken to them any more: for they could not endure that which was commanded: but we are come to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the Church of the first-born which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling.

We are come to God, the Judge of all, and to Christ--not bidden to stand afar off from them. That is the point to which I wish you to attend. For this agrees with the words of the text, 'Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.'

This message it is, which made this chapter precious in the eyes of the good men of old. This message it is, which has made it precious, in all times, to thousands of troubled, hard-worked, weary, afflicted hearts. This is what has made it precious to thousands who were wearied with the burden of their sins, and longed to be made righteous and good; and knew bitterly well that they could not make themselves good, but that God alone could do that; and so longed to come to God, that they might be made good: but did not know whether they might come or not; or whether, if they came, God would receive them, and help them, and convert them. This message it is, which has made the text an evangelical prophecy, to be fulfilled only in Christ--a message which tells men of a God who says, Come. Of a God whom Moses' law, saying merely, 'Thou shalt not,' did not reveal to us, divine and admirable as it was, and is, and ever will be. Of a God whom natural religion, such as even the heathen, St. Paul says, may gain from studying God's works in this wonderful world around us-