a system in intellectual and moral harmony, emanating from one God and directed to one great end, bear directly on the spiritual interests of his hearers.

And when the minister of Jesus Christ comes to apply his themes to various distinct classes among his hearers, either in public discourse or in private and personal conference, it is an intimate acquaintance with the various workings of the heart in spiritual concerns that is to furnish him with a knowledge of the various doubts, and difficulties, and evasions, and excuses which hinder personal religion, and with the most apt reasonings and persuasions for gaining the heart fully to Christ.

These qualifications, so important to success, are not necessarily low or stationary. The minister of Christ may place his standard high and be constantly growing in these qualifications, if watchful, and diligent, and prayerful. That the Spirit of grace, and wisdom, and power may ever rest upon the watchmen of Zion, brethren, it is yours, as having an interest and responsibility in the same cause, ever to encourage them by your assistance, ever to seek help for them in your prayers.

From this subject I remark, in the last place, we learn the way of rendering the office of the ministry a blessed privilege to him who sustains it and to them who receive its labors.

If the minister of Christ will enter with all his heart into the work of the Lord, and present the instructions and calls of the Gospel in all their power to the hearts of his fellow Christians and fellow sinners; and if they, on their part, will receive the Word as the Word of God which worketh effectually in them that believe, the sweet and fragrant name of Christ shall fill our sanctuaries with the tears of penitence, the joys of forgiveness, the songs of salvation.

Go back to the scene in the synagogue at Iconium when Paul and Barnabus so spake that a great multitude of the Jews and Greeks. believed. Did not a thrill of benevolent joy come over the hearts of those Apostles that day when they were honored by their Lord with success in his work? And did not many erring souls date that day their birth into the holy and happy kingdom of God? What joy began in that synagogue! How has it been enlarging and increasing ever since! And when shall that time in eternity ever come in which Paul and Barnabas, and those redeemed from Iconium shall not thank the Savior for the blessed privilege of the Word of God spoken and heard that day?

Well: these same scenes may be enacted now. The same Jesus is on the throne; the same Gospel is in the World; the same Spirit wields it as his conquering sword. And ministers now, as they did then, may meet their fellow-men, dispensing to them the Gospel of - salvation with their hearts bent on success; and hearers now can, as

they did then, hearken to the voice of Jesus Christ, and turn and live. These were uot the miracles of the apostolic age; they were the common triumphs of the Spirit and Gospel of Christ, which are yet to fill the earth with greater victories than all Pentecostal and apostolic triumphs. This, then, is the very way, and the only way, to render that gift of the ministry of his Word which on his ascension he left here among the rebellious, a source of joy and blessedness to him that takes it and to them that hear its dispensations.

And should it not be enough to know that there is a clear and plain way in which the preached Gospel may become the means of your redemption? Seeing that the Gospel proclaims a heavenly rest which the returning sinner may seek, and as that promise is left among us here, cling to it as your life. Give up the world and sin, and lay all your hopes for strength on that promise. Fear lest any of you should seem to come short of it. For this same Gospel was preached in other ages as well as now. And while some have believed the good tidings, and living in the joy and obedience of the faith have entered into their eternal rest, multitudes, wherever it has been preached, have refused to believe. The Word did not profit them, not being mixed with faith. They could not enter into rest because of unbelief. They refused, though the Holy Spirit said to-day if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts. They have gone down to their graves, poor outcast sinners and wanderers from mercy. God has uttered over them his irrevocable oath, and sworn in his wrath they shall not enter into my rest. They have passed away into the world of perdition never to return. And now from the oath of God, from their graves, from their bed of torment in hell, comes up to your ears the voice of despairing agony and warning that you hearken to the calls of Christ and live.

SERMON XIII.*

BY REV. O. B. BIDWELL, NEW-YORK.

A MEMBER OF THE THIRD PRESBYTERY OF NEW-YORK.

CHRIST THE ONLY SURE FOUNDATION.

"For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ."-1 COR. 3: 11.

THE word foundation properly signifies the base of an edifice. It is the groundwork on which the building stands; the underlay of brick or stone on which the whole superstructure rests securely. It is commonly laid in solid masonry of imperishable materials, and hence the term instantly raises the idea of permanence, stability, and strength.

Every building must have a good foundation, or the whole structure is in danger. A temple built upon a crumbling, unsolid basis, would constantly be liable to be overthrown. However massive its columns. or graceful its spires; however costly its materials or imposing its architecture; however beautiful its proportions or ornamental its finish, unless the ground-work has been laid deep and strong, it might, the very next hour, become a heap of ruins. The settling of a corner-stone; the undermining rains; the heaving frost, or the yielding earth, might, in a moment, change the fair and costly fabric into a picture of desolation.

All mankind are builders, some of one thing and some of another. The ministers of God are building up his Church. Good men are building up society. Sabbath-school teachers are building up the principles of the young. And all men are building up characters for time, and hopes and characters for eternity; some upon vague theory; some upon the sands of human reason; some upon their boasted morality; some upon smooth, delusive doctrines that only beguile to ruin, and some upon the crumbling principles of infidelity and atheism. These shall all be shaken as by an earthquake in the last great day of trial. Such refuges of lies shall be swept away like chaff before the storm, or sand in the mountain torrent, leaving no sure standing-place for those who trusted in them.

But, thanks be to God, there is a foundation on which we may build and feel secure; a Rock which no disturbing elements can move, no changes or commotions can effect, no rain of sin can undermine, no earthquake shock can ever shake in pieces. That Rock is Christ. He is the "Rock of Ages," on which his Church is built; He is the foundation of all the hopes and comfort of his people. He is the only ground of pardon and salvation to sinful men. He is the only sure resting-place for all believers.

*NOTE-The true number of discourses published in the NATIONAL PREACHER from its commencement (907) to this date, is placed upon the title-page of this number, A DOUBLE index, general and topical, has been published for convenient reference, filling some thirty-four pages in all, -[EDITOR NATIONAL PREACHER ]

The figure presented in the text is one which Paul borrowed from architecture, and by a striking metaphor which he often used calls the Church God's building, and Christ the foundation on which it stands. And the meaning plainly is, that no true Church can be reared which does not embrace and hold the essential doctrines respecting him; those which pertain to his incarnation, his divine nature, his instruction, his example, his atonement, his resurrection and ascension; that it is by him only that men can be saved, and where he is wanting in his true character all is wanting. Without him for a foundation all is unsatisfactory, uncertain, and deceptive as the "baseless fabric of a vision." Living without him for a Savior is living as if he had never died, and dying without him to rest upon is taking the infidel's "leap in the dark!" We are driven away from all mere human creeds, and vain theories, and speculations, and false philosophy to this only Rock of strength and security that shall never be overthrown. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

I. There can be no other foundation so precious and costly.

It is an expensive piece of work, infinitely beyond the power of man. How vain and puerile do the efforts of the creature appear in anything when compared with those of his Creator; much more in a work like this.

When man attempts to devise means for his own atonement, as he sometimes does, how utterly worthless and despicable are his most costly sacrifices; his good works all defiled with selfishness and sin; his merits are those of a condemned criminal; his gold and silver are base metal, and all the precious things he can heap together do not belong to him but to his Maker. He is a bankrupt seeking to concel an infinite debt, yet poor as Lazarus he has nothing to pay. Who then would trust his soul on such a foundation? The first blaze of Sinai's lightning would destroy it. and the first roll of Sinai's thunder would melt his heart within him.!

But no terrors of the law will ever reach the poor sinner who rests his soul on Christ and his atonement. Jesus has paid his debt for him, and laid a firm foundation for pardon in his own most precious blood. Here is a ground of hope and a Rock of deliverance, compared with which all that man can do would be unstable as the drifting sand or the floating vapours of the morning.

All human substitutions sink into utter insignificance and worthlessness when compared with this costly sacrifice of Christ. It is not formed of those rare and gorgeous materials which John saw laid in the walls of the New Jerusalem! It cannot be compared with diamonds. The rarest jewels are of no account. Man knoweth not the price thereof, neither is it to be found among the treasures of earth. It cannot be valued with the precious Onyx or the Sapphire. The Topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with the gold of Ophir.

Let the monarchs of the world unite their treasures of gold and silver, and impoverish their kingdoms to make one vast offering, how utterly inadequate would it be to purchase salvation for one of the meanest of their subjects, or procure the pardon of a single sin!

Herodotus relates a story of one of the Lydian princes who made a most costly offering to the temple of Delphi. This offering embraced a vast number of couches decked with gold and silver, goblets of gold, vestments of purple, and precious things to an incredible amount. All these were consumed together in one immense sacrificial pile to propitiate a heathen deity. And the melted gold ran down in such a stream that a massive lion was cast from the precious metal.

And what did all this do for the poor deluded king? Did it purchase salvation for him? Did it bring peace of conscience? Did it cheer him with any bright hope of heaven? Did it move his deity to compassion? Did it avail anything at all with that dumb idol? No more would it have availed anything if he had offered it to God as a sacrifice for sin !

There is nothing but the precious blood of Christ which flowed down on Calvary that can atone for sin. A sacrifice of all the material wealth of the universe would avail nothing. The death of all the angels as a sacrifice for an atonement would avail nothing. The only begotten Son of God is the priceless sacrifice that can avail. His infinite merits, his mysterious sufferings and death alone constitute a foundation where believers may build their hopes, and chant their praises, and renew their graces, and rest with unshaken confidence in their great Redeemer.

The figure presented in the text as applied to Christ is elsewhere employed in the Scriptures with peculiar emphasis and beauty. Seven hundred yoars before the incarnation, Isaiah wrote of him in the language of inspiration: "Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone, a sure foundation." Perhaps no other figure could have been more striking to Oriental minds, accustomed as they were to magnificent temples in which the "corner-stone was held in high esteem. In all the ancient public buildings great importance was attached to it, and no temple was complete without it. It was carved with great skill in costly marble, and laid with imposing ceremony in the most conspieuous and honorable position. Hence the beauty of the figure, shadowing forth the relation which Christ sustains to his Church, the dignity of his office, and the superior excellence of his person.

In Paul's epistle to the Ephesians we find the same imagery employed to express the relation of Christ to his people: "Built upon the foundation of apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God through the Spirit."

The allusion here is obviously to the temple of Diana at Ephesus,