uplifting now-a-days is not to be wrought by the stern prophet of wrath, moving amongst men with the austerity as well as with the inspiration of the wilderness, but by the mild and earnest seer who comes, like the Son of Man, "eating and drinking," of genial soul, and blithe companionship, and divinest pity; who counsels without haughtiness, and reproves without scorn; and who bears about with him the reverent consciousness that he deals with the majesty of man. Neither the individual nor the aggregate can be lectured out of vice nor scolded into virtue. There is a relic of humanness, after all, lingering in every heart, like a dear gage of affection, stealthily treasured amid divorce and estrangement, and the far wards where it is locked up from men, can be opened only by the living sympathy of love. Society is like the prodigal, whom corrective processes failed to reform, and whom gaol discipline only tended to harden, aud whom enforced exile only rendered more audacious in his crime; but adown whose bronzed cheek a tear stole in a far off land at some stray thought of home, and whose heart of adamant was broken by the sudden memory of some dead mother's prayer. Let us recognize this truth in all our endeavours for the benefit of men. It is quite possible to combine inflexibility of adhesion to the right with forbearing tenderness towards the wrong doer. Speak the truth, by all means: let it fall upon the hearts of men with all the imparted energy by which the Spirit gives it power; but speak the truth in love, and, perchance, it may subdue them by its winsome beauty, and prompt their acknowledgment that it is altogether lovely. Such an one, holding truth in the heart, speaking it lovingly from the lip, exhibiting its power in the beneficent workings of the life, such an one will be the chief benefactor of his species; though eloquence may pour no eulogy on his merits, and though the common annals of fame may pass him by.

Such a one in his teachings will be equally remote from lax indifferentism and from cynical theology. He will not dare a hair's-breadth deviation from the Bible; but he will not graft upon it his own moroseness, nor mutilate it into his own deformity. Such an one will not complain that he has no neighbours. He will find neighbours, aye, even in the heart of London. He will be a kind husband and a tender father; but his hearth-stone will not bound his sympathy. He will be a patriot; he will be a philanthropist. His love, central in his home and in his country, will roll its far ripples upon all men. He will see in the poorest man a brother, and in the worst man a nature of divine endowment, now sunk in darkness, which he is to labour to illumine and to save. Such an one will not call earth a howling wilderness. He will not slander this dear old world because some six thousand years ago an injury befell it, which disfigured it sadly, and has embittered its subsequent history. Against that which did the wrong he will cherish intensest hatred— he will purge it from himself-he will root it out of others, if he can. He will love the world as a theatre for the display of noble energies, of rich benevolence, of manly strength, of godlike pity; and he will work in it with an honest heart and loving purpose, until the finger beckons him into the wealthier heaven.

The new

Young men, the age of chivalry is not over. crusade has already begun. The weapons are not shaped by mortal skill, nor is the battle with garments rolled in blood. Strong-souled, earnest men-knights, of the true order of Jesus, are leagued in solemn covenant, and are already in the field. "Theirs are the red colours, and for a scutcheon they have the holy lamb and golden shield." "Good-will to man" is their inspiring banner-text. "Faith working by love" is broidered on their housings. Not to prance in the tilt-yard, amidst the sheen of bright lances and bright eyes,

don they their armour. They have too serious work on
hand to flaunt in a mimic pageant, or to furnish a holiday
review. They have caught the spirit of their Master. As
with eyes dimmed by their own sympathy, He looked upon
the fated Jerusalem, they have learnt to look upon a fallen but
ransomed race. They war for its rescue from the inexorable
bondage of wrong. Ignorance, improvidence, intemperance,
indifference, infidelity; these are the giants which they set
lance in rest to slay. I would fain, like another Peter the
Hermit, summon you into the ranks of these loving and
valiant heroes. The band will admit you all. In this, the
holier chivalry, the churl's blood is no bar to honour. The
highest distinctions are as open to the peasant's offspring as
to the scion of the Plantagenets and Howards. Go, then,
where glory waits you. The field is the world. Go where
the abjects wander, and gather them into the fold of the
sanctuary. Go to the lazarettos where the moral lepers
herd, and tell them of the healing balm. Go to the squalid
haunts of crime, and float a gospel-message upon the feculent
air. Go wherever there are ignorant to be instructed, and
timid to be cheered, and helpless to be succoured, and stricken
to be blessed, and erring to be reclaimed. Go wherever
faith can see, or hope can breathe, or love can work, or
Go and win the
courage can venture.
spiritual knighthood there.

"Oh! who would not a champion be,
In this the lordlier chivalry?
Uprouse ye now, brave brother band,
With honest heart and working hand.
We are but few, toil-tried, but true,
And hearts beat high to dare and do;
Oh! there be those that ache to see
The day-dawn of our victory!

Eyes full of heart-break with us plead,
And watchers weep, and martyrs bleed;

spurs of your

Work, brothers, work! work, hand and brain,
We'll win the golden age again.

And love's millennial morn shall rise,
In happy hearts and blessed eyes;
We will, we will, brave champions be,
In this, the lordlier chivalry."

It remains only that we present Bunyan before you as a CONFESSOR FOR THE TRUTH. One would anticipate that a character like his would be sustained in its bravery during the hour of trial, and that, like Luther, whom in many points he greatly resembled, he would witness a good confession before the enemies of the Cross of Christ. A warrant was issued for his apprehension in the dreary month of November. The intention of the magistrate was whispered about beforehand, and Bunyan's friends, alarmed for his safety, urged him to forego his announced purpose to preach. Nature pleaded hard for compliance, and urged the claims of a beloved wife and four children, one of them blind. Prudence suggested that, escaping now, he might steal other opportunities for the preaching of the truth. He took counsel of God in prayer, and then came to his decision. "If I should now run, and make an escape, it will be of a very ill savour in the country; what will my weak and newly converted brethren think of it? If God, of His mercy, should choose me to go upon the forlorn hope, if I should fly, the world may take occasion at my cowardliness to blaspheme the Gospel." At Samsell, in Bedfordshire, the people assembled; there were about forty persons present. Some of the timid sort advised, even then, that the meeting should be dismissed. Bravely, he replied, "No, by no means! I will not stir, neither will I have the meeting dismissed. Come, be of good cheer, let us not be daunted; our cause is good! we need not be ashamed of it; to preach God's word is so good a work, that we shall be well rewarded if we suffer for that." Accordingly he was cast into prison. After seven weeks' imprisonment the session was

held at Bedford, and Bunyan was arraigned at the bar. This was his sentence: "You must be had back again to prison, and there lie for three months following; and then if you do not submit to go to church to hear divine service, you must be banished the realm; and after that, if you should be found in the realm, without the special licence of the King, you must stretch by the neck for it, I tell you plainly." So spake the rude and arbitrary Justice Kelynge, who, like Scroggs and Jeffreys, enjoys the distinction, rare among English judges, of being in infamy immortal. Bunyan answered, inspired with Lutheran and Pauline courage, "I am at a point with you; if I were out of prison to-day, I would preach the Gospel again to-morrow, by the help of God." His spirit blenched not with the lapse of time, though he lay twelve years in that foul dungeon, the discovery of whose abominations, a century afterwards, first started John Howard in his "circumnavigation of charity." Towards the close of his imprisonment, we hear the dauntless beatings of the hero-heart: "I have determined the Almighty God being my help and my shield-yet to suffer, if frail life might continue so long, even until the moss shall grow over my eye-brows, rather than violate my faith and my principles." Oh, rare John Bunyan! thy "frail life" has become immortal; the world will not let thee die. Thou art shrined in the loving memory of thousands, while thy judges and persecutors are forgotten, or remembered only with ridicule and shame. "The righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance, but the memory of the wicked shall rot."

Our lot is cast in gentler times than these. No indictments are preferred against us now for "devilish and pernicious abstinence from church-going." Felons are not now let loose in honour of a monarch's coronation, while men of God are hailed to closer durance. Phoenix-like, out