ways. For our
Sanctification, it receives Christ in His inward power, by the Holy
Ghost. But faith is just faith, to the end.

(_e_) "We are not _forced_ to receive salvation." Most true. "He
enforceth not the will." But do not forget on the other hand to magnify
the necessity of grace, "preventing grace," [Act. x.] that is to say,
God Himself "working in us _to will_" to receive our salvation. The two
sides of truth are both divine. [Phil. ii. 13.] Do not neglect either,
whether you can harmonize them or not here below.

* * * * *

END OF THE LECTURE.

Such are some specimens of a Saturday morning's talk in our library.
They are taken, just as they come, from notes constructed after the
study of a set of some twenty sermons, written, and then commented upon,
without the slightest thought that any public or permanent use would be
made of the materials thus given. But perhaps the remarks may be in
point to some of my readers all the more because of the unstudied nature
of the materials.

Let me say, before I quite leave this part of my subject, that adverse
criticism was by no means my only work this morning in the lecture-room.
It was my happiness, on the other hand, to commend thankfully many a
clear setting of living truth, and many a sentence of forcible point and
of true beauty, happy omens for future years, in which, if it please
God, "the torch shall be carried on," bright and clear, when we elders
shall be heard no more.[34]

[34] Ungracious as it may seem, I must betray one less pleasant
confidence of such occasions. Sometimes I have had to note in sermon
MSS. a strange neglect of punctuation, and, here and there, a little
aberration from received usages of spelling! No Clergyman ought to think
such matters beneath his notice. His people, some, if not many of them,
will from time to time receive letters or other written messages from
him; these ought to be unmistakably the writing of the educated
gentleman. Is it too much to say also that _the handwriting_ ought to be
clear and easy? It is distressing, certainly to one who has many letters
to read daily, to see how _rare_ such handwriting is now.

"MY CASES OF OLD SERMONS."

But now let me return from this discursive report of a sermon-lecture to
some more central thoughts about the Preaching of the Word. Sacred,
solemn theme! I was made to realize its character in a peculiar way
quite lately, when reading a heart-searchi