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 I'll K A ell Ell A I INK 
 
 NATIONAL SCOTCH CHUKCH, 
 
 SAINT MATTHEW'S, HALIFAX, 
 
 u> IIIK MIPRMM. liK 
 
 'V\U\ FIRST srNDAV OF !«««}. 
 
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 Hv KKV. (iKOKlii: M. (iKAKT. A. M. 
 
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 HALIFAX. N. S. 
 J'lMMKI) in .lAMKS HOWKS ^v; SONS. 
 
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 NATIONAL LIBRARY 
 BIBLIOTHtoUE NATIONALE 
 
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 PUKACHEU AT TlIK 
 
 NATIONAi SCOTCH CKUKCM 
 
 MATTHEW'S, HALIFAX, 
 
 ON THE MORMNU OK 
 
 UST !^IJN 
 
 THK ^IRST i^lJNDAY OF l^OH 
 
 
 4v 
 
 / B) BKV. «KOK«K M. «RA5T, 4. M. 
 
 / 
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 / , HALIFAX, N. S. 
 
 PKlNTEl) BY JAMES BOWES & SONS. 
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.\ / • Halifax, 18th January, 1866. 
 
 Sev. and Dear Sir, 
 
 \ We are assured that it would be gratifying to your c;n. 
 grek^tion, and we belteve instructive to young persons of the 
 «mty,,f you^ould aUow the Sermon pre'ached by you on 
 the firsJK^Sunday of this year, to be published. ^ 
 
 ^ With 4 view to this, we now soUcit the favor of a copy of it. 
 
 ^ James McNab, 
 
 ' ' / . Sanford Flemming, 
 
 . William Sdtherland, 
 
 JOHJf DOULL, 
 
 EoBT. Noble, , 
 John W. Young, 
 
 T 4U T> ^ ^^- ^- Allan. 
 
 lo the Eev. George M. Grant. 
 
 f 
 
 Oentlemen^ 
 
 THE MANSE, KALITAX. 
 
 I have much pleasure in acceding to your request! ' 
 
 Believe me. 
 
 Yours, &c., 
 
 • George Monro Grant. 
 To the Honorable James McNab, and others. 
 
 ■■■Jie&^^^i^^-^i^^M^^ 
 
 Xr iaiUke^t, i.^ ^.^ ■^I'iif'^^^ 
 

^txvxott* 
 
 "Slanb fart, Ifcm&n, in % Btatu febmbtt^ t}piii fealt mabe at bn."—aal. v. h 
 
 I. — Liberty, in the lowest sense of the word, ia the 
 possession of our own limbs an J life for our own purposes and 
 use. ,• If others hold us as their propertj^ we p-e called Slavgs. 
 If confined in a prison, for the time being we are slaves. The 
 will of our master, or the walls of the prison, define our 
 movements and the nature and manner of our work. In 
 either case we are said to be deprived of that *ptersonal libertjgj 
 which is our inalienable right, unless *we have used or will 
 certainly use it for the injury of others or of ourselves. Such 
 are its bounds and conditions ; but within that ample room - 
 and verge every man must claim its full exercise ; for though 
 lowest, it is aU the more necessary as thfe base of the pyramid 
 of a perfect human nature and life. ' * 
 
 Men may enjoy 'personal liberty' yet hold it by a precarious 
 tenure. A leUrt de cachet or some more modem form es^res* 
 sive of arbitrary jower^ may consign any citizen to a dungeon,^ 
 or bring him m|e a tribunal to be tried by laws which he ' 
 has had no haul !n makingi^d which he does not recognise, 
 as juist. Such a state is not * politically firee,' although the 
 jails may be empty and oppression never attempted. While 
 in another country citizens are arrested daily by policemen, 
 locked up in prison, tried by rigid process, and sentenced to 
 extreme ^nalties, and yet we may truly boast of it as pos- 
 sessed of absolute political freedom, llie laws are acknow- 
 ledged by all to be just, and to be uniform in thejr application. 
 =M defective,Hhere are free Btf liamlSitB To appeal imto 1^ 
 
V. 
 
 their amendfei'ent. Every good subject l^as .made the laws a 
 » part of himself, feels it no hardship to obey them, and con- 
 demns all unwise tampering with them. Political freedom 
 then, does iSot mean exemption from laws any moi;e than 
 personal freedom. Neither the one ner the other can be 
 enjoyed except throughwilling obedience to Ikws regulative, 
 and superior. Yea, the very essence of the former is that men 
 should surreiider a portion of their natural liberty in order to 
 enjoy the rest of it securely. .^ - ^i • 
 
 And likewise intellectual freedom is not incompatible with 
 thje acknowledgment of necessary conditions, laws and fimits 
 within which alone thinkii^ is safe or even possibly, while 
 intellectual slavery is the accepting of arbitrary restrictibns on 
 thought, or arbitrary limits to inquiry. . And there is no social 
 , freedom wbere a mdn is compelled to hold his peace or to echo 
 the sentiments of the majority under the penalty of tBSt insi- 
 dious social terrorism which is the most dangerous persecution ; 
 -^ while the cynicism that always _ sneers at old and generally 
 received beliefs or forms, and would emancipate us from the 
 legitimate claims of authority, is a burlesque on the liberty of 
 the individu^, and would bring chaos back again. 
 
 Again, we see a man possessed of power and wealth and 
 intellect, free to go where and do or say. what he pleases, and ^ 
 yet we call him a slave, because he is driven hither and tliither 
 like a rudderless bark by appetites and passions that have 
 usurped the mastery over him. Though he yields them a 
 willing obedience, we rightly denoiniiiate him slave. He may 
 be obeying ^e law of his nature, but that law has ;^ot right 
 divine : his nature has been perverted to call good evil and 
 evil good. The whole life of another may be in apparently 
 perfect conformity to the laws of righteousness ; but if do 
 only because ^mnishments deter him from transgression and 
 reward^ ace col^lected with obedience, we do not consider him 
 
 free. ' True , "h e is not ruled bv the basest parts of his 
 
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 n^ure : the calmer, steadier, worthier principle of fielf-love is 
 . his rule of life. Still he is not. the friend, but the slave 'of 
 duty, 'the fear of disgj-ace, the fear of ill-health, the fear of 
 -^, „hell ; the hope bf position, wealth, or of heaven are his onlyv 
 motives to right-doing. .He is hon^t because " honesty is the 
 best policy," His goodness is a refined fap-seeing selfishness. 
 He discharges his religious obligations, as he pays*his debts, — 
 ^' [js the price le must payibr eternal happiness. Ifiuippiness 
 ' were attached to w^-ong-doingj h^ would do wrong. 
 
 • On the other hand; there are men confined to hard monor^ 
 ^tonous ,jd^iJ|». tasks all their life timq,„JM;diling, rejoicingi 
 sorrowing," and, whether they work for themselves ij^for 
 others, we call them free ; not because they enjoy personal, 
 ■ political or mental liberty, but because they accept the rela- _ 
 tionships that surround t^iem as eternally right and good, as 
 what they most.:desire and would not free themselves from if 
 they had the power. 3:hey follow out their own views of 
 what'is hi^est and best,^and those views are J;rue. They are 
 free, though under law and subject^ to what others might 
 consider cruel necesa^ies, privations, and constraints. ^life is 
 ^ an infinite joy to them, dashed betim^ with bitter experiences. 
 
 ^ Man'« birthright is* liberty. His deepest instmcts revolt 
 fr<to every form of slaveiy. We sing with fluked cheeks the 
 «^ songs of "freedom, and the-iiame of Wallace or Sydney stirs 
 our blood like the blast of a tnunpet. We bring garlands to 
 the tombs of those who died rather than submit to chains on 
 j their freebom limbs or tbeir free Fatherland. And more 
 i heroic far are those who* have fought against "the ^serfdom of 
 i the huipan nund, who |iiive not feared the strength of stupidity 
 and ignorance, who through faith in truth have broken the 
 . I bars clamped around thought to its foul dishonor, who from 
 . j love 6£ truth kkve faced the most s,wgeping social hm. And, 
 J ' risi ng i nt o th e realm of the moral, and sp mtua l, **g reater is he 
 ~~' tSat rulett his own spirit thanlxe^t tSeth a city." ~^ 
 
 JIS%-v5-4Pi 
 
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 6 
 
 Yet the world is foU of slavery. Timidity and ambition 
 and mterest aU seek to impose it, and in one way or another 
 It has seized upon and attempted to hold every part of man's 
 nature, and the history of the race is a history of the resulting 
 conflicts and of the mutual successes and failures, slavery 
 alas ! counting most of the successes. A cause equally radical 
 and universal alone can have produced so comprehensive an 
 effect. To know this cause, and to know what and how much 
 freedom is possible to us, we must clearly understand wherein 
 liberty essentially consist^ 
 
 II. All our iUustrations have led us to see that liberty is 
 not incompatible with law, but' rather that it impUes law or 
 right. Suppose then a self-determining power in the wiU, 
 and the idea of liking m weU as law, and we have the 
 characteristics of a free act. For a man may obey law, and 
 not be free : and he may do what he Ukes and not be free. 
 He is free when he delights to foUow the nature God gave 
 him ; when he approves of the law within and gladly obeys 
 it. The brutes indeed obey the laws of their natures ; yet are 
 they not free. For what they do, they must do, as far as we 
 can judge. They possess ia themselves no self-determining 
 power that would enable them to viokte present inclination 
 at the suggestion of other motives and inducements. Hence 
 there is no merit, because no moral element in their stricf 
 adherence -to nature. They are invested neither with the 
 digmty nor the perils of responsibility. 
 
 But with a freedom similar to that which is the perfection 
 of Deity was man endowed when made in His image. His 
 nature was built up of many parts, lower and higher, ruled 
 and ruling, but the whole as a whole tending in its normal 
 exercise to happiness and God. It was constructed with 
 pferenoe to the two worlds to which he was kin, and it was aa 
 -ffefi on dU^matexial^s on the ipiritualnrate, ia^ fir aa !£« "" 
 
^ 'S 
 
 I m 
 
 rn^enal can be free hke the spiritual. FuU and harmonious 
 development of every part of it was necessary to its pex^ction. 
 , Lowest down were die appetites, passions and desires, the due 
 gratification of which was part of the happiness and part of the 
 education mtended for him. Over these as regulatbg prind! 
 . PK were a self-love leading him to seek his r good,rd a 
 rr°^i' ^( ^r'^^'^'^ ^^^^^ ^^ '^ «««k the good of 
 cln i '^'° ^^""^ "^^ '''^''^'' - «>--ence which 
 combmed with judgment took authoritative review of his 
 whole nature «id life, pronounced on everything submitted to 
 t a sentence o? appro^r disapproval, and a freedom of wiU 
 mvntue of which he^uld take one course of conduct or 
 Its opposite. An awfol power that of choosing the evil with . 
 a consmution that inclined him to the good and'made Weel 
 that with the good was obligation and true happiness, but a 
 power essential to the idea.of freedom I 
 
 Did freedom require man thus constituted to cast himself 
 loose from duty, to dethrone the higher parts of his nature and 
 
 ^mZ""^7rl" '^f ^°^''' *" "^y ^P'^ rathe, than 
 se^Iove, and benevolence at the expense of conscience? 
 
 Surely not, but the reverse; for such a freedom would have 
 imphed a positive obligation to sin, and could only end in his 
 tot^ enslavement to those passions that made him "half akin 
 to brute No; it was his to be the mirror on earth of the 
 hfe of God i to be the high-priest of all nature, that it 
 through him might beat time in aU Mts flood of being and 
 storm of action' with the majestic pulses of the univme,-^ 
 
 fl*l / '^.."*'^ ^^'''' ^ ^^ "P'^^ *»^ commeasure per- 
 fert freedom." Tot where do we find our highest idaTof 
 hbe^? m Him who *for His own gW foreoTai:;, 
 whatsoer^ comes to pa«.» But His liberty is not caprfdous- 
 ness ; it M one with immutable law. Hence in feet the 
 
 Q 
 
 B^^* ^>»«fituHon of !.«,„ „^, ,^ Birtop Bufler'. «»«, jjrert 
 
 
 1 1 
 
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n. 
 
 8 
 
 necessity for an atonement when once the constitution of 
 nature has been broken, and the punishment attached to 
 transgression by righteous irrevocable decree is demanded. 
 God was not free to pardon the sinner, although— 
 
 " God is love indeed, 
 And love Creation's final law." 
 
 ' Had He been thus free. He would at once have pardoned the 
 angels who feU. Then would it have been proclaimed to the 
 wide universe that there was no sacredness inl law, yea rather 
 that a bribe was attached to transgression. [And no longer , 
 would eternal processes move on in 'their serene orbits, but 
 confusion would rush in everywhere, and aU would be lost to 
 gratify a selfish^love. Her6 was the problem that had to be 
 solved when -God would be just, and yet the justifier of the 
 ungodly. What must be manifested was not a one-sided 
 unjust love, but a love ia law ; for we need law as much as we 
 need love. And no man can begin to understand the atone- 
 ment of Jesus Christ, untH he appreciates to the fuU this 
 difficulty. 
 
 To resume; man was left "to the freedom of his own 
 will :" and in that was implied the possibility of his violating 
 the constitution that had been given him. The possibility 
 became a terrible fact. And from that day to this man has 
 been struggling for the old freedom which he felt belonged to 
 him by right, but for the most part in every department of his 
 nature he has been struggling in vain. No cry has had such 
 potency with him or such vitality as the cry for "hberty :" but 
 the grej^st enemy he has had to encounter has been himself: 
 hiagtruest longings and efforts too often endell In maddest 
 excess and folly, like "sweet beUs jangled, out of tune and 
 harsh." When Christ came to the world, where was liberty * ' 
 of any kind to be found? Its Jight had led astray, and men 
 had ceased ahnost to hope for.'it or think of it. And even yet 
 -the maases trf" th e I 'ftce we serfe . Foliticariibe^f^ c^MeT^ 
 
 j^?^^^. 
 
 tiSt" 
 
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 9 
 
 to three or four nations. Intellectual an^; moral slavery is 
 . the rule rather than the exception. « The corruption that is 
 in the world through lust" has troubled the once cljgar waters 
 and made them " like the troubled sea' when it cannot rest, 
 whose waters cast up mire and dirt," and they cannot be 
 healed till the prophet of the Lord cast salt from the new 
 cruse into the spring head. 
 
 III. Thus, then, we are brought to ask what is that liberty 
 in which St."Pa^l encourages the vacillating Galatians to 
 stand fast. The old liberty in its essence was that man should 
 follow his exqjiisitely balanced nature, rejoicing in its excel- 
 lence and so perfecting it to all its rightful issues. The new 
 liberty then must, mean the restoration of conscience— the 
 great fly-wheel of the human system— to its place of rightful 
 authority with more than its old sanctions, and the readjust- 
 ment of all our powers with new motives to obedience. All 
 that is implied in conversion from sin to holiness through the 
 Spirit of Christ. There is a wider, nobler liberty than the 
 old, a higher law within which it is to work, and a new pre- 
 serving power in the indwelling of the Spirit which moulds 
 our nature into oneness with the law. We had admitted 
 foreign elements into our constitution which disorganized the 
 whole machinery and destroyed the general balance, insomuch 
 that had it not been for the many practical checks in 
 Providence which prevented the evil from working out its 
 own consequences fully, our debasement would have been 
 more speedV and radical than the darkest description in history 
 shows it to have been. And when once the wrong Vas done, 
 it was from the nature of the case impossible that it could be 
 made right by us. Water may fall below, but cannot rise 
 above its levfel. Our course must have been steadily down- 
 ward if no exkemd force cou ld W brought Ja^tfr^ear upon u»^^ 
 
 Hence the necessity, first for a revelation to show unto us W 
 
 Ifsid^d^ 
 
JB» 
 
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 / 
 
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 10- 
 
 «<d state rad to convince ua that it kd to detth. Bmsnch 
 a^revela^on eould by it,oB do .o.hi,g «cept witn J^ 
 
 AouM be set nght agdn, a new experiment or ..art made, 
 «d a new power added to keep it from faiing. Hia »« 
 
 .^ and dread which sprang from the coasdousnes, of nnpar- 
 «« ont and we feel onrselve, translated into the kingdom of 
 
 hberty of children liring in the Father's honse. KeW 
 etem.^ b^mdary lines within which that Kberty al IZ 
 
 iTl- ;•"*,"*«««- -Ued "the law of J,h^„r" the 
 perfect law of liberty." So that in this highest state of 
 
 ' S-- -"-without law to God, bnttrt;' 
 
 ■ vTf . ^° ■"' "^<' ™M *e law, although we are nof 
 
 bound to it in it, Jewish form. God forWd : ytJJ^Cl 2 
 
 Uw, and.ur.nly claim of right is -^ m'ZZ^^. 
 
 for we seek thy precepts." ^ * 
 
 eaitae of mm s bemg, but heals aU its disease, and h^ow, 
 ^ Its «t.rft.e.,. put, him right not only with hi, gZZ 
 
 muA^ ^. •»■«« f "««« of corrupting the «,ul; but » 
 kte el „r g™- ». -<"3» two kingdom. «e «^n to fe 
 mto e«A „th« and «, make ono. For nature's religion wa, 
 Jwuys tone, rf men h«i only read it aright. It spX m™ 
 T^V^ ever word, could .pe7of freedZ3 U^H 
 of MeversiMe punishment, and sure reward, j of beauty aid 
 «^: o^deathandre^rreetion, of bounty a^S^' 
 
 B^ nr!le°- n- •" T*""""-- thi without dre 
 ttbte. He one i. Ure hvmg key to «,d the Bring commit- 
 «7 o» the other. Dw.,fej-«nd meagn, fa th.ta.L.,eligfar— 
 
 ifetei*ff'.S«fest?:r*'^ 
 
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ri 
 
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 " 11 
 
 who divorces himself from nature,--from the glory of the 
 rising sun, of the groves and hills, of the rain and the resound- 
 ing sea ; or from his own kind, to whom converge all the lines 
 «f nature, in whom we have its representative and mouthpiece. 
 For the whole universe is one : not a great coUocation of bits 
 or spheres of life. There is the one great tree of life, reach- 
 mg unto the heaven of heaveni, its laws uniform, and its life 
 God. And the free, happy soul goes out into aU its Father's 
 broad domain, the religion of love sanctifying his joy in it, and 
 making inquiry without limit safe. And the young man may 
 rejoice in his youth, and let his heart cheer him in the days 
 of his youth; and may walk in the ways of his heart and in 
 the light of his eyes, for heart and eyes and youtheid, and 
 the fulhiess and freshness and light of life are from the 
 Father: and he enjoys all, knowing that he must render 
 account not only hereafter, but now, and to Christ, who has 
 no evil eye nor grudging heart. I mean that the Uberty 
 wherewith Christ makes us free is not confined to our direct 
 relationship with God. He has done more than saved us 
 from our sins and secured heaven for us. He has done what 
 we too often ignore or refuse to give him credit for. He has 
 gained and consecrated this world for us. Eemeipber how 
 much this means; for it takes agreat many kinds of men and 
 of activities to make a world ; but He has anew given 
 ^ominion over it aU to man, over its worl?, recreations and rela- 
 tionships, all to be used with perfect Hberty in their respective 
 places and subordinations. And as a world-historical fact, 
 such has ever been His influenee where He has been received. 
 Whence the elevation of Christendom above a rotten heathen- 
 ism and the stagnation of Mohammedanism J From Him are 
 the peculiar truths that lie at the baais of our social and 
 fiational condition, and aU the, stimulating and leavening 
 
 influences which are »hft liYinir wnrinw nf nUr ^.««««™-Z_Z=— 
 __ ^ ^ ,^ ^ ^ «#«*r MTiiig spnogB oi our improvemeotc — 
 
 and jlhmitable hopes. Thus, from the one truth of the moral 
 
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 12 
 
 self-responsibility of everyman, not only religious but political 
 freedom necessarily results; insomuch that the fact is that 
 until religious freedom was fought out and attained, no one 
 dreamed of such a thing as poKtical freedom. The two bless- 
 ings are indeed one that branches out into two forms according 
 as it deals with man as a citizen of heaven ol- as a citizen of, 
 earth. Or as the great modem advocate of absolutism put* 
 this: « It is the same folly, having changed only its epoch and 
 name."* And as with poUtics so with the whole of our 
 Hfe ijn the flesh. In no case does He put on us a yoke of 
 prescribed outward tasks. If the heart is right, the Ufe wiU 
 not be wrong. In a word, the freedom possessed by <:!hrisf s 
 freemen is expressed in St. Augustine's maxim, " Love God, 
 and do what you please." 
 
 Here, then, is the definition of our liberty. It consists in 
 following our nature, Christ being the lord of our conscience, 
 and in our thus making « the best of both worlds." And here 
 the difficulty presents itself which caused some worthy people 
 to object to the tone of the teaching I addressed to you on last 
 New Year's morning. Their objections, though not very 
 articulately stated, have, I beUeve, been felt none the less, and 
 may, I think, be clearly expressed thus : "Does this view of 
 life you give take sufficient account of man as a sinner, of the 
 utter corruption of our nature, and of the need of conversion ? 
 Is not St. Paul's distinction one between that which is naturtl 
 and that which is spiritual, instead of between the material 
 and spiritual, and does he not enjoin the crucifying of the 
 natural, including under it much that we ordinarily include 
 under the material or sensuous? In short, are we able, 
 according to St. Paul's theory, or is it possible in practice to 
 harmonize the cross with ' the best of both worlds ?' " Such 
 is the position of Puritanism, and doubtless it has " the root of 
 
 =*^Iie Maistre : "Du Pape," p. 22. 
 
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 18 
 
 the matter" in it; but whether it has the whole matter or not 
 is a very different thing. Certainly with such views it is 
 impossible for vien to feel, lliough they may not know how to 
 deny, that religion includes the realm of nature^evelling in its 
 boundless beauty and fqrce and melodies ; or all that robust, 
 cheery, ordinary life that takes pleasure without check of 
 conscience in the good things of the world ; or the play of 
 fancy, or song, or art, or the thousand-and-one visions of 
 delight and objects of desire that spread out in endless succes- 
 sion to an unseen horizon in the spring and summer time of 
 life : and in, consequence, when they do attempt to harmonize 
 the material or imaginative with the spiritual life, the attempts 
 are constrained and awkward, and the success Tjk^yv^h. very 
 poor and perhaps anything but advantageous either'to their 
 lower or higher life. To them, this world can only be 
 ** a city of destruction," from which it is their great duty to 
 escape ; each cup of pleasure an object of dread, lest there be 
 poison at the bottom. And though they know well that other 
 parts of Scripture, and especially the teachings of the Master, 
 express very different ^ews, yet as they cannot harmonize the 
 two they confine themselves to the truths they have most 
 deeply felt. Their theology then, instead of being the science 
 that underlies and overlies all others, and therefore the most 
 interesting of all, seems to the fervent young soul, to whom it 
 may be offered as food, the dryest and most barren of all, being 
 chiefly, as he thinks, a string of scholastic subtletiqs and care- 
 fully worded articles ; and religion an uncomely asceticism, 
 or a strange mysticism; the prize of a favored' few instead of 
 the life of the world. 
 
 Is there not, then, a higher truth in which those different 
 
 theories of life are reconciled without the sacrifice of a single 
 
 drop of evangelical truth ? I believe there is, and that it is 
 
 this : "All things gathered together ijk one, even in Christ.**. 
 
 ~We are Bis, to possess all in Him as an inheritance^ to stand 
 
 
 H 
 
 ■ iilll^MM^^^I 
 
14 
 
 fast in the Ifterty wherewith, He hath made us free. As to 
 those profound truths, brought out more fuUj by St. Paul 
 than hj any ot^er Scripture writer, of the awifel power of the 
 sin that isin ijs, of our need of a new life and of constant 
 watchfulness agmst the corruptions of the old, they are the 
 very essence of ^^1 that is special in Christianity, and must 
 always and ever^here be preached. But what is this new 
 life to be? Certeinly not the suppression or abolition of a 
 single affection of our nature; bpt the restoration of the 
 primeval balance, with new sanctions, and stren^h added and 
 offered. It is indee^ true, as Bishop Butler points out,* that 
 St. Paul uses the word nature in two senses, a good and a bad 
 sense ; and it is^ ^jardy from overlooking that fact that some 
 of the best men who ever lived could find in Christianity only 
 an extreme Puritanism. For he frequently speaks of nature 
 as consisting in those passions which do actually most influ- 
 ence the lives of men: and as those were vicious passions, he 
 spoke of mankind as vicious by nature, as when he says " the 
 Gentiles who were dead in trespasses and ans were by nature 
 the children of wrath." But then eWWhere he speaks of the 
 Gentiles "doing by nature the things contained m the law," 
 and thus being- "a law to themselves," and «hat through the 
 moral government of^ conscience; for they "shew the work 
 of the law written in their hearts, their consciences also bet- 
 ing Witney, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or 
 else excusing one another." Here he refers to the normal 
 constitution of our nature,— the nature that is to be purified 
 and developed, not crucified; and no man i» clearer than he 
 in asserting the rehabilitation of our whole nature in Christ, 
 and the consecration in Him of its lowest and highest spheres 
 of activity, and its right to full txercise in an atmosphere oi 
 perfect freedom. i 
 
 
 :^Mi^hmMvii^9i'§ Semes IJL 
 
15 
 
 v^ Is it said, * such freedom may do for the mature Christian, 
 but it is dangerous to preach it to aU?' I answer, have 
 not I the same right to address all here as €hri8tian8 as St. 
 Paul had to address the members of the Galatian Churches 
 indiscriminately by that holy name ? Have you not aU been 
 baptized into His name, and does not your presence here with 
 the multitude who keep holy day prove that you have no wish 
 to cast off the profession of your allegiance? Neither have 
 you been exconmiunicated, and I have no intention of draw- 
 ing distinctions between some of you as believers and others^ 
 as unbelievers. I take you on your own profession as long ^s 
 your conduct does not openly belie that profession, and I 
 will not usurp Christ's office of deciding which is wheat and 
 which is chaff. Yea, more, I hope and beheve that Christ is 
 in most of your hearts, though many of you are babes when 
 you ought to be strong men. Know well that whatever sor- 
 row for sin, whatever desires aft^r a higher purity and 
 holiness, whatever truth and ju8ti<je, whatever mercy and 
 forbearance are in your hearts, are Cljirist in you ; andrfw^you 
 encourage those, you'jencourage Hinj to dweU in you more 
 richly. For the ideas of power land wisdom, of truth 
 and love, are the highest realitiei ; and what else but 
 those make up our idea of Godhfead. And know also 
 that every part of your nature his been baptized into 
 the name of Christ, and ought l^ot, therefore, to be 
 crushed out or trodden under foot of ^ men. ' Realize, then, 
 intelligently and fearlessly, the UbertyVyou have in Christ, 
 and Uve as the Lord's freemen. Such pr^hing to a Christian 
 congregation is not dangerous, except inVs fax as aU liberty 
 \ is dangerous. And "for aU the evils that ^freedom produce* 
 there is only one cure, and that cure is freedom." For this 
 iMghest freedom is hke all its lower forms— ndt the Kcentious- 
 '^ess that is divorced from law, but is one,w^ Aat l oftiest 
 
 taw wEch :8weeps round God's tlu-one— not a law of com- 
 
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16 
 
 mandments contained in ordin^ces set over against us to 
 excite in us the motions of sin and to cause oflFences to multi- 
 ply; but a law meUowed by the attributes of personaUty 
 consecrated by the death and resurrection of our Lord, and 
 blended with our own holiest endeavors. This is the way : 
 walk ye in it : dnd oh that you would reach forward unto 
 perfection ! 
 
 Youngmen— my brothers— you Christ caUs. J$e trusts you. 
 To you at least faith, trost, purity/ love, constaii^, sacrifice, 
 liberty, are not meaningless words— but the very wine of 
 life. Let us go forward. Giving only one look of regret back 
 on the dead past which ha# been to us too much of an 
 enchanted ground, let us. enter the future with simple faith 
 and earnest resolve. The rivfjr^ has become broader and 
 deeper, and is nearer the great ocean than when we gazed on 
 U from the last hiU-top like this one on which we now stand. 
 Well, it may bear for us a stateUer and more heavily 
 freighted ship. Go forth then to the work given you to do, 
 and in virtue of the liberty wherewith C}mst Ijakbs you free] 
 foUow your nature, and Christ wiU^ifreto each seed "his 
 own body." 
 
 ;• Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 These three alone lead life to Sovereign power." 
 
 Think and examine fearlessly, speak honestly, act fairly, 
 and may God make this imto you 
 
 • A HAPPY NEW TEAR. 
 
 
 
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