As to the treatise itself, thou wilt find it a persuasive to open thy heart to Christ. Thy soul, reader, is a magnificent structure built by Christ; such stately rooms as thy understanding, will, conscience and affections, are too good for any other to inhabit.

Does not your heart often grow heavy as you remember that, in this city of London, there are vast masses of people who never go to hear the Word of God at all? In some parts of the metropolis, you might go through street after street, and scarcely find a Christian family, or you might find large families without a single member attending the means of grace. The irreligion and indifference of the people are perfectly appalling.

ELUCIDATION Because God is who He is and because man is the work of His hands, the will of God must be the foundation of moral obligation. "All things were created by him, and for him" (Col. 1:16). "Thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Rev. 4:11). But God is not only our Creator. He is also our Ruler and Governor, and His rights over us are made known by His will, by His expressed will. Man is bound to do what God commands and to abstain from what He forbids, simply because He commands and forbids. Beyond that there is no reason. Direct reference to the divine will is essential to any moral virtue. When an action is done regardless of God's will, no honor is shown Him and no virtue pertains to it. Such is the clear and definite teaching of Holy Writ; it knows no foundation of right or wrong, no obligation, except the will of the Most High. It therefore follows that the will of God revealed is the rule of duty.

Written during the Great Plague of London

It is not a breaking forth of some inward distemper, which is our sicknesses itself, but it is rather the effect of it. The discernable spots on the infected, are not the plague—but the signs of the plague. In this way are we to account the most grievous things that come on us—as the manifestations and fruits of something worse within us

I know of nothing in which I could hold up Pilate as an example to you, save in this one thing; he placed the Name of Jesus on the cross. Writing these words with his own hand, he refused to alter them: "Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews" must stand over the cross, whether the high priests rage or submit. The vacillating governor for once stuck to the truth, and would not be driven from it

Sermon Preached in Australia in 1927 Now very likely, the sermon tonight will make some of my hearers angry: probably they are the ones who most need the rebuke of the text. When a servant of God wields the sword of the Spirit, if he does his work faithfully and effectively, then some of his hearers are bound to get cut and wounded: and, my friends, that is always God's way. God always wounds before He heals. And I want to remind you at the outset that this text is no invention of mine. These are the words of One who never wounded unnecessarily, but they are also the words of the True and Faithful Witness who never hesitated to preach the whole truth of God, whether men would receive it or whether they would reject it. I know it is not a pleasant thing to be called a fool, especially if we have a high regard for ourselves and rate our own wisdom and orthodoxy very highly-it wounds our pride. But we need to be wounded, all of us. We need to be humbled; we need to be rebuked; we need to have that word from the lips of Christ which is as a two-edged sword.

How dreadful it must have been to have lived in Paris when all the foundations of society were loosed; when religion was debased into the worship of the goddess of reason; when virtue was regarded as vice, and vice as virtue! Ere it comes to that dreadful pass, be it ours to cry out unto the Lord, "It is time for Thee to work."