of God and His attributes? As the eye beholds this light, does the soul in the same manner and with the same vividness perceive the Great God, Who is present in this hall in all His glory and majesty? Do we see Him as clearly as we see each other? I admit you all believe in His existence; I admit you know that He liveth everywhere, and always, and that He is amongst us Bow as a holy, righteous, and all-seeing God. But such knowledge is not faith; it cannot save you from You have known Him with the intellect; but do you see Him with the soul, do you feel Him with the heart? Ay, that is the question we have to decide. If you are sincerely anxious for salvation, you cannot rest satisfied with mere abstract ideas of God. You must have that vivid faith which realizes the presence of the living and personal God.

sin.

You may employ all available means of spiritual culture, but they are unprofitable without this vivid faith in God. For that is the key without which you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. You may go to church regularly, and hear most instructive and impressive sermons; all the external appendages of divine service may be admirably calculated to impress the mind with solemnity and holiness but these cannot stir up men of little faith. The preacher may descant in giowing and thrilling: language on God's justice, and holiness and love: he may repeatedly point to Him as a living Witness present in the midst of the congregation; but they look about with vacant eyes and empty hearts, and see nothing but vacancy and emptiness outside; they find no God in God's house, and return home as sinful and woridly-mind as when they entered the church. But if you have faith, you will be enabled to convert empty space into the constant

abode of a dear and personal God, and carry His holy presence about you as a light in your paths; you will move and breathe in an atmosphere full of divine presence, and be above the malaria and miasmata of the world. It cannot be denied that the atmosphere which encompasses our daily life is saturated with various evil influences which tend to darken, depress, and defile the heart, and abounds with temptations which constantly inflame our carnal propensities, and make us forgetful of God; it is therefore essential to our safety that we should move in an altogether different, a purer and holier atmosphere. Faith alone can help us to do this, by preserving us always in God's company, and making Him unto us a shining light, and "a very present help in trouble." Through faith we not only realize the Unseen Spirit, but dwell in Him, fear Him as an ever-present Witness and Governor, and love Him as a Father who never forsaketh us; and, in short, feel Him, in all places, and at all times, in our uprising and down-sitting, as an encompassing presence not to be put by. Such realization of divine presence alone can effectually guard us against sin and temptation, and enable us to inhale purity as freely, easily, and naturally as we now inhale impurity in the atmosphere of the world. Do not preach to me dogmas and traditions; talk not of saving my soul by mere theological arguments and inferences. These I do not want; I want the living God, that I may dwell in Him, away from the bustle of the world, secure from its allurements. Nothing short of this can satisfy me,-save me, That I may become godly, I must first feel my God to be the greatest and the dearest reality-a reality dearer than father and mother and friend, "dearer than son, dearer than wealth, and dearer than anything else." If our love of man and

and

wealth is based on nothing short of an immediate perception of their charming reality, why shall we allow our love of our Heavenly Father, and of the riches of His grace, to rest on weaker and lower testimony than that of direct realization ?

In the same manner must we deal with the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. I am aware you intellectually believe this doctrine; but such belief is not faith. You must learn to realize the next world through faith, and so hold it vividly before you as a real sphere of existence that it may influence your lives, and form a mighty motive to virtue and righteousness. Faith is, as I have said, "the evidence of things not seen;" it is also, as regards the life to come, "the substance of things hoped for." It is the substratum, firm and immovable as a rock, upon which our hopes of a blessed eternity rest. Without it you may accept immortality as a dogma, and rest satisfied with a mere logical inference based on the common-place arguments of theology and ethics; but such intellectual belief is not only unable to deter you effectually from sin, but is itself liable to be overpowered by doubts and temptations. Whereas those who have deep faith in immortality live for it, and are above doubts and misgivings.

You must also have faith in Truth if you desire to be regenerated. Nothing is so common now-a-days as to hear the educated Natives of this country advocate eloquently the cause of truth, duty, and reformation. And yet how few there are among them who really feel these in their hearts, who have sincere faith in what they declare to be right! It is one thing to be able intellectually to discriminate right from wrong; it is a different thing to realize and feel the distinction so as to follow the one and abjure the

other at all hazards. It is one thing to expose and protest against the errors and abominations which afflict the country; it is quite another thing practically to eradicate them in the face of opposition. The hour of trial has proved that the zeal which educated Indians exhibit in the cause of truth is generally of the former kind, and that their eloquent patriotism is mere vapoury sentimentalism. How many intellectual giants of our schools and colleges have been converted in after life into moral pigmies, under the overpowering weight of trials, and how strikingly has their boasted sense of truth melted away into nothingness! How many young men, who figured conspicuously in the envied heights of intellectual eminence, adorned with university distinctions, are now sunk in the depth of moral imbecility, falsehood, and worldliness! To what are we to attribute such anomalies and inconsistencies? Solely to want of faith in truth. Granted, you are intelligent enough to understand what is right, and that you have already accepted truth, and eschewed falsehood intellectually; but you lack, my friends, that strong and deep faith in truth, without which you cannot discharge your duties with conscious fidelity and live in purity. If you had it, you would stand firm and undaunted in the midst of awful trials, and never defile yourselves with falsehood through fear of man, or love of gold. Already, I believe, the mind has done its work by pointing out what is truth; now you must quicken the heart into the love of truth, and bestir the will to conscientious action. Let your hearts be attached and wedded to that truth which the mind has accepted, and you will never forsake it. You would much rather deny self and brave death than deny truth. You will learn to honour truth above the riches and pleasures of the world, and intrepidly sacrifice

them, if need be, for its sake. You will not fear man's face, for truth will then be dearer to you than life itself. In the matter of your country's reformation, you at present busily employ yourselves in calculations of temporal loss and gain, and should the result of your arithmetic be that what you know to be right would, if performed, be disadvantageous in the long run, and that the opposition you would excite would be too much for you to withstand, you forthwith decide-it ought not to be done; and you knowingly prefer falsehood and evil. This must be the case, my brethren, so long as you have no faith in truth, and cannot, therefore, realize its power. For verily God's truth is mighty, and will prevail, though all the world were to rise in arms against it. If you remember this, you will no longer seek strength in number, or wait for combination and organization; you will not seek to fortify your position with wealth or political influence. But the very truth you advocate will prove your shield and buckler, and with its aid you will fearlessly wage war with all manner of moral and social evil rampant in the land. As soon as you hear God's command, you will boldly advance with the banners of truth in the face of the direst opposition, perfectly confident of success. Those mountain-like impediments and difficulties in your way, from which you now so timidly recoil, will yield to the heavenly power of "if ye faith in truth. For be sure, your have faith as a grain of mustard-seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." And thus, where thousands of you have hitherto failed, despite the advantages and resources of scholarship and wealth, a handful of faithful believers, albeit ignorant and poor, will