be clean; yet therein lies a very important truth.  In ancient medical phraseology, herbs possessed of healing natures were called simples:  in God’s laboratory, all things that heal are simple—­all natural enjoyments—­all the deepest—­are simple too.  At night, man fills his banquet-hall with the glare of splendour which fevers as well as fires the heart; and at the very same hour, as if by intended contrast, the quiet stars of God steal forth, shedding, together with the deepest feeling, the profoundest sense of calm.  One from whose knowledge of the sources of natural feeling there lies almost no appeal, has said that to him,

    “The meanest flower that blows can give
     Thoughts that too often lie too deep for tears.”

This is exceedingly remarkable in the life of Christ.  No contrast is more striking than that presented by the thought, that that deep and beautiful Life was spent in the midst of mad Jerusalem.  Remember the Son of man standing quietly in the porches of Bethesda, when the streets all around were filled with the revelry of innumerable multitudes, who had come to be present at the annual feast.  Remember Him pausing to weep over his country’s doomed metropolis, unexcited, while the giddy crowd around Him were shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David!” Remember Him in Pilate’s judgment-hall, meek, self-possessed, standing in the serenity of Truth, while all around Him was agitation—­hesitation in the breast of Pilate, hatred in the bosom of the Pharisees, and consternation in the heart of the disciples.

And this in truth, is what we want:  we want the vision of a calmer and simpler Beauty, to tranquillize us in the midst of artificial tastes—­we want the draught of a purer spring to cool the flame of our excited life;—­we want in other words, the Spirit of the Life of Christ, simple, natural, with power to calm and soothe the feelings which it rouses:  the fulness of the Spirit which can never intoxicate!

 X.

 Preached August 11, 1850.

 PURITY.

   “Unto the pure all things are pure:  but unto them that are defiled
    and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and
    conscience is defiled.”—­Titus i. 15.

For the evils of this world there are two classes of remedies—­one is the world’s, the other is God’s.  The world proposes to remedy evil by adjusting the circumstances of this life to man’s desires.  The world says, give us a perfect set of circumstances, and then we shall have a set of perfect men.  This principle lies at the root of the system called Socialism.  Socialism proceeds on the principle that all moral and even physical evil arises from unjust laws.  If the cause be remedied, the effect will be good.  But Christianity throws aside all that as merely chimerical.  It proves that the fault is not in outward circumstances, but in ourselves.  Like the wise physician, who, instead of busying himself