Preaching has its greatest power when it rests on great realities. If you have to go far off to find a God, your faith must be weak. If a man has not a proof of God in his own soul, in his own conscience, I am afraid you can not convince him of God by any of your logical argument. He is more apt to be convinced of God by the touch of God's light that falls glittering upon the insect's wing.

Do you want proof of immortality? If you do not feel it; if your heart and consciousness do not tell you of it; if some great fact of life has not brought it to you some great loss, the open grave of some friend, or the consciousness of some limitation against which you chafe and beat-if that does not bring immortality home to you, you will never be convinced of it; you won't be convinced of the truth of Jesus Christ by historical arguments-by evidences like those in the large volumes of Dr. Lardner. If the truth of Christ is spontaneous in your soul, if you have a sense of such love as Christ gives you, and no lack of living water to your thirsty spirits, there is proof of Christ. Does not your own consciousness say, O, I need such a manifestation as that love in the face of Jesus Christ! O, I need such love as that to inspire me with the hope of my rising above sense and sin! I need such an assurance of God's pardoning mercy as that which beams upon me from the cross? If you do not feel the need of it in your soul and in your own life, you won't feel it from any theological arguments. Ah,

my friends, it is in little wayside realities that we come upon great truths; we descend through Jacob's well to eternal depths, and in a draught of water we learn the need and efficacy of divine truth.

Finally, I want you to consider the woman's opportunity in the instance before us. It was a two-fold opportunity. First, the opportunity of ministration. I have already illustrated this in speaking of opportunities in general-that there are occasions for one to do a great deed sometimes; but in thousands of instances in life our opportunities are in the common affairs of the world. She had the opportunity of ministering to the necessities of Jesus Christ. She did not know that he was the Messiah she was looking for, who was to tell her all things. She only saw the humble traveler sitting upon Jacob's well. She knew not the great privilege that she had. My friends, how many of you would gladly avail yourselves of a similar opportunity-how many here would be glad of an opportunity to minister to Jesus Christ in person! How many would crowd to do what they could for him for the sake of reputation, if for nothing else!

No, we can not now minister to Jesus Christ. He needs not our human help any more. No more is he incased in the necessities of the flesh; no more does he need anything that human hands and human ministrations can do for him. But what is that most sublime and wonderful doctrine of Jesus, That inasmuch as ye did it unto the least one of his brethren, ye did it unto

him? There is the great law that is laid down for us. With every needy man, with every weak, dependent claimant by the wayside, Christ comes to us again as he came to the woman of Samaria and asks for our ministration, and often in ministering to them we "entertain angels unawares." Do you know what you do when you minister in unselfish love? Do you know what good you may awaken, what flagging powers you may restore, what courage inspire? O, manifold, more than men stop to think of, are the occasions in this life for ministration. But remember, whenever they are called for, whenever they are given, it is to Christ, and that you have an opportunity like that which the woman had at Jacob's well. Remember, when humanity is rejected or despised, because it appears in degraded shape, with some contemptible associations— that whenever you desecrate this great humanity for which Christ poured out his blood, you desecrate him. I do not know a grander truth in the Gospel than this broad doctrine of Christ's 'oneness with humanity. As we help and comfort humanity, so do we minister to Christ; as we despise and abuse it, so do we reject him. The great platform of the Gospel is love for humanity, comfort for humanity, and whichever way your effort or influence is given, you either minister or withhold that ministration.

The second opportunity was for reception. This is the exact point which Jesus urges in the text, "If thou knewest the gift of God," by which I understand the

opportunity which this woman had. It is interpreted differently. Some say that it meant the person of Christ; some the gift of the Holy Spirit symbolized by the water. It was all involved in the fact of opportunity. "O how would you improve it if you knew what opportunity you had!" I think that one evil is that we do not know our wants, and therefore we do not know our opportunities. Man thinks he wants this thing and that thing. He thinks he wants wealth, pleasure-some earthly thing. If he gets it, he finds himself mistaken. If he does not get it, he suffers tantalizing want. He does not know that he is thirsting for the living water, and the great trouble is that he does not know what he wants. We do not know ourselves as we should. Sin is not only a sin, but it is an error. Sin is a tremendous error. It is a mistake to be a sinner; it is a great mistake to forget God and Christ; it is a mistake to turn away from him as he sits by the wayside offering us living water. But it is guilty ignorance, not excusable, for a man ought to know himself. He is looking out of himself to other things-looking for some earthly object that perishes in the using. O man, go down into your heart to-day. Look into your soul-look into your own spirit, and know what is within you, and see your real wants; then you will recognize the humblest of opportunities. Then the Sabbath assembly will not be dull to you; then you will see Christ by the wayside, and gladly open your souls to receive the living water.

THE BLESSING OF THE MERCIFUL.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy,-Matt. v. 7.

I

REMIND you that, in these discourses on the Beatitudes, I am speaking of them as great spiritual laws, the blessing not being attached as an arbitrary appendix to some quality of mind or action, but being unfolded in the very action or disposition itself. It is in the nature of things that "the meek" should “inherit the earth;" that "the pure in heart" should "see God;" that "the merciful" should "obtain mercy."

Let us in the first place ask, who are the merciful? To what disposition of mind, or mode of action, does this beatitude belong? The merciful are all the truly sympathetic, the loving, the helpful. Now, my friends, let us not conceive this quality of mercy as something that we are rarely called upon to exercise, or as something required only in peculiar and exceptional conditions. We are so accustomed to associate mercy with some official station, with some prerogative of executive or sovereign power, that we may forget how often it is demanded of all men, in almost every relation of life; that as we are all weak enough, in one