myself, I had forgotten all about my soul.”  The Christian is not concerned about his own happiness; he has not time to consider himself; he has not time to put that selfish question which the disciples put to their Lord, when they were but half baptized with His spirit, “Lo, we have left all and followed Thee, what shall we have therefore?”

In conclusion we observe, there are two things which are to be learned from this passage.  The first is this, that happiness is not our end and aim.  It has been said, and has since been repeated as frequently as if it were an indisputable axiom, that “Happiness is our being’s end and aim.”  Brethren, happiness is not our being’s end and aim.  The Christian’s aim is perfection, not happiness, and every one of the sons of God must have something of that spirit which marked their Master; that holy sadness, that peculiar unrest, that high and lofty melancholy which belongs to a spirit which strives after heights to which it can never attain.

The second thing we have to learn is this, that on this earth there can be no rest for man.  By rest we mean the attainment of a state beyond which there can be no change.  Politically, morally, spiritually, there can be no rest for man here.  In one country alone has that system been fully carried out which, conservative of the past, excludes all desire of progress and improvement for the future:  but it is not to China that we should look for the perfection of human society.  There is one ecclesiastical system which carries out the same spirit, looking rather to the Church of the past than to the Church of the future; but it is not in the Romish that we shall find the model of a Christian Church.  In Paradise it may have been right to be at rest, to desire no change, but ever since the Fall every system that tends to check the onward progress of mankind is fatally, radically, curelessly wrong.  The motto on every Christian banner is “Forwards.”  There is no resting in the present, no satisfaction in the past.

The last thing we learn from this is the impossibility of obtaining that of which some men speak—­the satisfaction of a good conscience.  Some men write and speak as if the difference between the Christian and the worldly man was this, that in the one conscience is a self-reproaching hell, and in the other a self-congratulating heaven.  Oh, brethren, is this the fact?  Think you that the Christian goes home at night counting up the noble deeds done during the day, saying to himself, “Well done, good and faithful servant?” Brethren, that habit of looking forwards to the future prevents all pride and self-righteousness, and makes our best and only rest and satisfaction to consist in contemplating the future which is bringing us nearer and nearer home.  Our motto, therefore, must be that striking one of the Apostle Paul, “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before, I press towards the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

 XIII.