IN

N delivering the testimony for God given to you and me, it naturally presents itself as a leading interest that we should define our ground, to obtain a distincter view of the place assigned to us in the Christian Church, of the contribution we are appointed to make to the truth and charity of a free Gospel. But to define in Religion, thank God! is difficult a soul in communion with the Infinite can draw around itself no boundary lines. Wherever we can fix a limit we have ceased to be spiritual, and are satisfied with being intellectual, or ethical, or scientific. I cannot therefore define to you our views, but only our attitudes towards God-our position towards, cur expectations from, the infinite

Grace. Every independent witness to God and Christ can fail in the service allotted to him, only by concealing or falsifying the special testimony given to him to bear. We are members one of another, and can combine our individual light into a harmonious body of Truth only by manifestation of it, commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. In full recognition of the fact that Christ is not divided-that we have each and all much to learn from one another-that every Soul, much more every Church, has something to communicate of the Eternal Mind not given to others, we seek only our own assigned duty towards God and His Grace, when we propose for consideration the three following questions:

I. What is our Doctrinal Position in relation to the Christian Church?

II. What is our Devotional Character in relation to the sources of Devotion possessed by the Christian Church?

III. And what modification do our Doctrinal or Devotional characteristics introduce into the more private and personal portions of our Church administration, into our pastoral relations?

I. Religion is the personal communion of a living soul with a living God. A spirit in conscious communication with a fountain Spirit,-consciously fed

from an invisible Source, and that Source a living Being,-knowing that it has nothing of its own, but receives everything,-that it originates nothing,that its goodness, its pity, its purity, its compassion, its faith, its hope, its aspirings after the Perfect, and absolute confidence in it as a condition that is more and more to be reached, are not self-produced, but all breathed into us by another Spirit,-knowing that if we close, or interrupt, our personal intercourse with that Spirit the sap of Life is withdrawn, and we become dried and withered beings, going aimless through this world, trustful in nothing, and attaching no significance to our own existence, for our existence has no permanent significance unless there is an eternal Spirit sustaining us from Himself, seeking every open inlet in our Nature to pour in more and more of the Perfectness that belongs to Him,-a spirit living in this knowledge, or in this faith when conscious knowledge fails, is a spirit in the state of Religion. Religious Life is life drawn from the Fountain of life, giving absolute faith as long as we abide in it, because our confidence is not in our own measures of it, but in the fulness and the willingness of Him who imparts it to us.

I confess, however, that this word RELIGION has almost ceased to be significant of any living reality, that I never would employ it if the language

afforded me any other single word expressive of the soul's life in God,--and that the frequent use of it by an individual or a Church I should take as an unfavourable sign of their personal relations with a personal Spirit. The word (whether it meant divine obligation, or a gathering up, and dwelling upon, our spiritual relations) ought now to signify the binding power of an organic connection with the Source of life, as the branch is bound into the tree by the living nourishment that flows from it, and would wither and fall off if that was interrupted; but to this idea of actual and personal communion. I fear the word Religion has come to hold very much the same relation that the word NATURE does to GOD, substituting something else for it, obscuring or obliterating the living Power. By Religion I fear is now practically understood something that men are bound to believe, or something they are bound to do, or some principles that ought to regulate and control their conduct, that is, something impersonal whether of truth or of obligation,—and not simply a living condition of soul, sympathy, and fellowship, that binds them into the life of God, and through the flowings of personal intercourse makes them partakers of His fulness. As long as we contemplate Truth only as a system of Doctrine, or Duty only as a system of Laws and Principles, we are in communication only with what is impersonal

and formal, which may have no power at all to recommend itself to our affections, or to kindle vital energy in us; but if through the life of Prayer we are in communication with the Spirit of our Father, who is ever gently striving to reveal Himself in us, then we are not dealing with any final or outward measures of Truth and Duty, but with their ever-living Source, and light from the Fount of light is entering into us as we are able to bear it. Of course this representation of Religion proceeds upon the assumed fact, as the finding of our experience, that God does give promptings and communications from Himself to the soul and conscience that are daily turned to Him, waiting to receive,— communications not in the forms of intellectual Truth, but in new quickenings of the spirit, in the sense of a life stirring in us that is not our own, in the consciousness of a Goodness and a Holiness moving us forwards and never suffering us to stay and rest content with what we are, as though our Nature could ever be a measure for itself,-and in the consequent convictions of deep peace, that we are not our own, nor in our own keeping, but if we will believe it, the children of a Spirit from whom comes all that we have or are, whose Light we are receiving, whose Promptings we are obeying, whose Promises we are trusting, whose Love we are feeling, and who, as the underlying Spring of whatever stirs