used for his purposes; dependants upon his hourly providence and care; objects of his constant compassion and unceasing bounty. What! does our Father thus condescend to bless and pity men! Does He stoop from the throne of his glory to minister to their necessities, to further their happiness, to treat the meanest, yea, the guiltiest, among them as an object of his compassion;-and can we do otherwise than share in these emotions of our Benefactor? than sympathize as He sympathizes, and forbear as He forbears, and forgive as He forgives, and be bounteous as He is bounteous? What even if towards ourselves their ignorance or guilt would make them unacceptable? Is it not enough that they are his?—and if we cannot love, and bear with, and pardon, for their own sakes; can we not for his who made them and compassionates them?

Brethren is your heavenly Father dear to you indeed? Do you love Him who first loved you? Then, most surely, there is no one connected with Him, however remotely, however undeservedly, however alien to yourself, but you will feel his claim upon you;-nay, will behold him brightened and softened with something of the radiance of your Father's glowing compassion, and will invest him, therefore, with

How

something of your feeling to your benefactor, before all thought or preference of claim. refreshing is it to exercise our affection indirectly, as well as directly; to some third party, some intervening link between our friend and us, as well as immediately to himself. And how grateful therefore to the heart, to remember God in the lowest of his creatures, and "for the Father's sake the children love."

But still more do our hearts expand, if these other objects, besides being connected with our first and dearest one, are connected further with our own feelings towards that first and dearest ; -if they share with us the emotions which have been excited in our bosom, and can heighten those emotions by their sympathy.

To be mutually admirers of the same object; to be mutually indebted to the same kindness; to have the same taste even, with respect to the same thing;-this has been found a bond of union and affection ever strong. Men actuated by the same spirit, devoted to the same pursuit, how closely do they assimilate, how do their minds run into each other, and the feelings of the one are cherished and enlarged by being

shared with the feelings of the other.

And what, then, is the affection of the Chris

tian mind to those who in the highest and most blessed sense of the word,-the sense, too, in which St. John chiefly uses it in this Epistle, are his brethren!-who are connected with him, not only as belonging to the same Father, as his creatures, but as animated with the same spirit towards that Father, as his children!-who have felt the pressure of the same need, are objects of the same favour and complacency, partakers of the same Spirit, filled with the same gratitude and love!

And such is the experience, Brethren, of every one who is a Christian indeed; in heart and life, as well as in outward profession and in name. He has known, as we have, what it is to feel himself a sinner;-to discover his own depravity, and guilt, and helplessnessto be humbled into deepest penitence, to cry with all the pressing earnestness of deep necessity, "What shall I do to be saved!"

He too, even as ourselves, has become an object of the divine favour; an object, not of pity only and most true compassion, as all wretchedness is pitied by a God of mercy, but of complacency, of pleasure, as those alone can be whose hearts are purified from guilt and reconciled to God by faith in Christ. God, even that God who has been good to us, and smiled

on us, God has lifted up on him the light of his countenance; has received him graciously, has blotted out all his sins, has made him his child indeed, by adoption and grace; has chosen him into his family, and blessed him with his love. And we who love the Father, can we do otherwise than love the child?-we who know what it is to cry Abba Father, does not our heart respond towards him from whom the same blest appellation issues? Do we not feel as would an exile in a distant land, who hears again the sound of his own dear native language; who weeps for joy, and embraces the speaker as his brother?

But more than this. He too, even as ourselves, has been made partaker of the Divine Spirit. On him, as on our hearts, there has descended that wondrous gift of God, which is at once the token of his love, the pledge of our inheritance, and the means of our intercourse with Him. From the same fountain of spiritual joy he has drunk, and in him, as in us, is there a well of water springing up to everlasting life. And can the kindred streams be kept from union? Shall we obtain hereby an intercourse with the common source, and not also an intercourse with one another? It is the earnest prayer of Jesus that this intimate

union, this melting of all in one, may take place in his people: "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us." Does the simple fact of being partakers of the same life, animated by one and the same spirit, produce in all the members of the body that mysterious sympathy, that "whether one member suffer all the members suffer with it, or one member be honoured all the members rejoice with it;" -and shall not our participation of one and the same divine life, the animation of our souls by one and the same divine spirit, conjoin us in "the unity of the Spirit, and the bond of peace?" Nay, is not this the very argument of Paul with which he presses mutual love on his Ephesian converts?" with all lowliness and meekness, with long suffering, forbearing one another in love, because there is one body,"

the body of Christ into which you are inserted as spiritual members,-" and one Spirit," -the Spirit of God which flows down to you through Christ, your head," even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord; one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all." What is my God and Father “in and through" possessing and pervading --- my