Merits above their own,

have some atonement, some merit to counterbalance his defects, some deserving to put against his ill desert. And where can you find this merit? It is not in the nature of things that the same man should be criminal, and yet meritorious—that is an idea quite out of court, and out of all philosophy. Where, then, is the merit to be found? Rome tells you that there are men and women who had merit enough, not only for themselves, but a surplus for others, by works of supererogation, and that you may gain some aid from that. But alas! what a treasure for a man to trust to! and enough for other men! Would you feel rich if that were all your share of merit before God. You turn your eye to Christ; you find that he fulfilled all righteousness; without spot, without blame, perfect and irreproachable, separate from sinners took he upon himself our sin, and bare it in his own body on the tree. All this merit then is thine, for Christ is thine. If thou makest Christ thy treasure and thy own, his merit belongs to thee; he gives it to thee, and thou claimest from the justice of the Eternal the pardon of thy past sins, on account of the merit and sacrifice of his own Son. This merit is wealth. It is sufficient to cover all your sin committed in your unconverted state, to blot out all the iniquity of your past life. He is set forth a propitiation for the remission of sins that are past, by faith in his blood.

Then actually possessing Christ, you find this treasure day by day. It is not that after you have once come to him you find your own merit sufficient for you; but you find that even in your renewed and christian life, there are daily short comings, admixtures of evil, lapses, faults, backslidings; and oh! where shall you find rest and refuge when once more you look up to the justice of the Eternal? Day by day the merit of your Redeemer avails for you.

You find his blood continually speaking peace, and whenever you come to God through it, there is no condemnation to you who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. And though you feel the struggle of the flesh and of the world, though you feel your short comings and defects, yet, possessed of him, you can say, "If when we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled we shall be saved through his life." And this sense of past reconciliation and of present salvation through the merit of the Lamb, does make a man's spirit wonderfully wealthy. There are no riches for the human heart at all to be compared with peace.

Besides riches of merit in Christ, you find riches of sanctification, riches of goodness. He renews the heart into which he is received by faith, alters the temper and disposition, brings the image of God where previously there had been only the image of the evil one, and enables the man that had heretofore been the slave of sin and error, to walk, working good works, doing good to himself, to his family, to his neighbours, to the church, doing good to the bodies and souls of men, working works of righteousness, works of charity, works of zeal. Now a man may say that is not wealth: that to make a man good is not to make him rich. Well, in one sense it is not. It is not the same kind of wealth that money is, but it is another kind of wealth. I admit at once that money is wealth, that earthly possessions are wealth; but I say again that goodness is wealth. The two kinds of wealth differ, but I will readily enter into a comparision with any one of the value of the two. Money, earthly treasure, is wealth in this respect: it gives a man a certain inward satisfaction, he knows that he has something, and there is in that very much for the human mind. The human mind

does like the feeling, "I have; I possess"; and undoubtedly earthly property will in that respect give a man a certain satisfaction. But even in that respect compare it with goodness; compare it with the image of God in a man's heart and life; and I say, unquestionably, though the satisfaction is different, the advantage is altogether on the side of goodness. The satisfaction of the man that feels "I have," as applied to earthly good, refers to something outside him, something in his ledger, something in his bank, something in his fields, something in his houses, something for his children. But a man's ledger may be rich, and yet his own heart very poor; a man's bank may be well stored, and yet his own affections wretchedly ill at ease; a man's houses may be many, and yet his heart satisfactions very few. A man may have a great deal outside him that he calls wealth, but I do tell you after all (though I would not underrate that wealth on that account) that that is far grander, far better, far sublimer, which is not outside the man, but insidethat wealth which is in the very soul of him, enters into him, and makes him greater, purer, brighter, loftier, and better; brings him into the neighbourhood of holy spirits, and even to the threshold of a better world. The satisfaction of that wealth as to the bare inward feeling of possession and of riches, is inestimably greater.

Then worldly property is of value inasmuch as it brings us the esteem of men. They look upon us in a very different light if they know we have abundance, from what they do if they know that we have nothing, and that is extremely grateful to the human mind. Well, I admit that goodness will never get you the same kind of esteem that riches will; but it will get you esteem, though of another kind. If you have Christ living in you, and your whole existence shows forth the image of Christ, a man will

feel towards you a respect that he will never feel towards wealth. The question is, which of the two kinds of respect would you rather have? Would you rather be such a man that when your neighbour meets you in the streets he will take off his hat, or, without thinking of that, will say, after you had passed by, "I wish I was like him?" Which of the two feelings would you rather have in a man's mind towards you that if he was going to give a feast you would be one of the first he would send for, or if he were going to die you would be the man he would like to have about him? The es

teem that goodness gets is incalculably superior to the esteem that wealth gets. It is not so noisy, it is not so showy; but it is far deeper and more enduring.

Then again wealth is valuable because it will procure you many things that you could not get without it. That is true, and many of those things goodness will not always help you to procure. Goodness will be to every man a help towards securing every comfort, but a man may have all that Christ will give him of holiness, and yet be so poor that he will only just have enough to live on, and not be able to get the comforts and conveniences which wealth undoubtedly can bring. Here, then, there appears to be a point of clear advantage in favour of wealth; but then goodness is never meant to be a man's whole provision for this world. Every gift that the Lord gives to man is in itself valuable. But suppose that a man has only goodness, and another man has only wealth-that the one has nothing but Christ, and the other nothing but money-which of the two can look round and feel that he has the most? The one man can procure himself a comfortable house, and comfortable furniture, protection from cold and rain and snow and hunger; he can say to

himself, "I shall never starve, and my children will never starve." But the other can say that too. He can say, "I shall never want;" but the other can say that too. There is, however, this difference: the man that has all the wealth cannot say, "I shall never dread poverty," because he knows that though wealth can protect from poverty, it cannot protect from the fear of it, and that the man who has abundance in his right hand may have a poor, craving, anxious heart, causing him to fear that, after all, before he comes to the end of life, he may really be in want. Now the other man who has nothing but Christ, does not feel that he is safe from being a poor man, but he feels he is safe from the dread of poverty: he feels that whatever may happen the Lord will provide, "the Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want;" he feels that day by day his portion will be given, with as much of this world's good as is convenient for him: and then crowns and thrones and everlasting life beyond.

Now in this sense compare

Then riches are valuable as something to rely upon for the future. A man likes to feel that he has something laid up for the time to come. Christ to wealth. I do not underrate the value of that gift of Providence by which a man may say, "I need never want, and my children need never want." It is a great blessing, and the man who receives it ought to be most grateful to God. But after all, is this riches that you can lay your hand upon, and say, "You stand by me, and I will stand by you, and nothing can part us." Men call it their substance. Is that really substance that a man feels it would be blasphemy to lean upon for certain happiness for a single week? that it would be blasphemy to turn round, and say, "Now for seven full days, no power in the universe can part between you and me; thou art my substance; thou shalt stand by me; nothing