means used for its accomplishment legitimate and laudable; and the design anticipated is realised. Yet now, in this life, one end acquired must be regarded as the point at which to commence another course of action, or, rather, the natural and necessary continuance, with enlarged facilities, of action and preparation unceasing, till death, perfectly and perpetually terminates probationary existence. We see to-day but one of the many landmarks on the receding shores of time, the haven is far away. As travellers over some wide domain, you now step on higher ground, where the horizon widens to your view; the end is not yet, the home to which you aspire is beyond.

As soldiers pledged for a long campaign, you enter the borders of the wide-spread realms which you have to subjugate, and the advantage now won is to arouse your energies, to fire your souls, to nerve you for the coming struggles. You fight for an immortal crown. "Let not him that putteth on his harness boast." Rejoice with trembling. Stand to your arms, the foe is nigh. Stand fast -quit yourselves like men. The victor in the past, if overcome in the future, falls with greater fall than if victory had never crowned his brow.

You will be expected to do more successful battle than before with the powers of darkness, in rescuing immortal souls from the grasp of the destroyer. By all means seek to save some. Rest not without being triumphant in the name and cause of him who endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the Majesty on high; and who now, as ye gird yourselves for the conflict, says, "To him that overcometh will I give to sit with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne."

Your militant life passes not away with the admonitions and gratulations of this day. Probation and conflict are continuous and cumulative till death. Each wondrous spirit, living in a house of clay, ranking amongst the thirteen hundred millions of the human race, now living amid the busy scenes of this ruined world, is responsible and probationary, so long as he remains a sojourner on earth; responsible to himself, responsible to his fellows, responsible to the creation and to God.

My dear brethren, yours, as ministers of the gospel of Christ, is the highest condition of responsibility which man can possibly occupy. Your own conscience, vows, resolutions, desires, aspirations, devotions, all hold you in the indestructible bonds of accountableness. Individually, ever be able to say, My own conscience bears me testimony that with all possible earnestness and humility I have diligently and devoutly sought to keep my vows, and if I have failed, the blame is not attachable to unfaithfulness, but to inability to scale the lofty eminence of wisdom, dignity, power, and

success, which, in the name of Christ, for the glory of God, and the salvation of men, I attempted. But rest assured that there is little fear of any man seriously failing, in any consistent ministeri l work, when God has called and consecrated him to the work. In the strength of that one great and only Master, who once perished on the cross, but who now, enthroned in heaven, crowned with glory and honour, is made head over all things for his church, resolutely and thoroughly be faithful to your own conscience, convictions, and determinations, and he will cause you to triumph. Always be able to give a good account of yourselves to yourselves.

You are responsible to your fellows, to surrounding men. It is not proclaimed in your ears that you are responsible to some shortsighted, conceited, simple individual, who dares arrogantly to assume that his opinion is the high decision of humanity. No! But society will hold you responsible. Men will expect you to be thoroughly what this day so distinctly and well you declare yourselves to be. No man can possibly attain a position in which he can consistently assume that the high decisions of the race are things of nought to him; his fellows will weigh him in the balances. Especially will they attempt to weigh you in your position. It is not assumed that of necessity their pronouncings will be infallible. It is not here to be proclaimed that "the voice of the people is the voice of God;" yet men expect, aye, demand that you should be faithful. Be unfaithful, and in the issue the malediction of your fellows will fall on your dishonoured heads; it will wither your stricken and agonized hearts. You are not expected to seek to please men; you serve the Lord Christ; but rest assured that humanity execrates an unfaithful minister of Christ; even wicked men loathe him. It is not desirable you should think that if you do well all men will applaud you. A prudent man will not covet human applause. Some, who think themselves something, will censure you will censure the best of men. At times, the wise the prudent, the perfect, may censure you, or altogether misunderstand and condemn you, but be faithful to God amongst men, and he will bring it to pass that ultimately men will honour and reward

you.

As recognized ministers, you are responsible to the Primitive Methodist connexion, amongst whose societies, congregations, schools, and families, you are to discharge the high and solemn duties of your vocation. Your probation is very far from terminated after the Conference sanctions the recommendation of the district meeting for your reception into the annual list.

In the high and resolute exercise of your individual willinghood, you have avowed full and faithful allegiance to our connexional constitution and procedure. Assuredly, if you behave with the consistency befitting your position throughout every subsequent period

of your career, till your redeemed and triumphant spirits enter the abodes of the spirits of the just made perfect, you will hold yourselves responsible to the arrangements and decisions of the church to which this day, in the vigour of your manhood, you have avowed yourselves for life the willing and delighted servants. Deliberately and prayerfully you accept your present position; ardently you have desired this public recognition; carefully, laboriously, you have struggled to the solid rock on which you now stand. You are a spectacle to the Christian church which has taken you by the hand, through whose instrumentalities, under the Divine blessing, you have been brought to Jesus, gathered into the family of God, led on from step to step, till, with your fathers and brethren, you stand fellow-helpers to the truth. You can have no wider sphere of usefulness; our field is the world. You can have no loftier position on which to stand; we are ambassadors for Christ. If. you can see light in God's light, you will say the ends of the world are come on us. Each will feel and say, I am in my proper place; this people shall be my people. One thing I do,—I will delight in and be faithful to my trust.

You are accountable to God. You are his servant, minister, ambassador, messenger, steward. A faithful ambassador is health. To God

It is required of a steward that a man be found faithful. you will have to render an account. You have declared your solemn conviction that God has called you to this great work. "Woe is me if I preach not the Gospel." "To me is this grace given that I should preach the unsearchable riches of Christ, that I may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus." Look forward to that last solemn decisive day, when, in the midst of a congregated universe, before the great white throne, your account must be rendered to him before whose face the heavens shall flee away. Resolve by the grace of God so to perform the wondrous and gracious duties assigned to you, that at last you may hear the Judge of all say, "Well done, ye good and faithful servants, enter ye into the joy of your Lord." "Be faithful," and when the Chief Shepherd appears he will bestow on you a crown of glory that fadeth not away."

Now you are esteemed by your brethren as fellow-labourers in the vineyard of the Lord. But it is not expected that you fully comprehend your position. It is only proper to assume that only one mind has comprehended your work in all the immense entirety of its grand and everlasting range and tendency; God only knows it to perfection. It is without limits. There is not any fear that you will ever have nothing to do. You need never be without work.

You are to be continuous students of the Book-the Bible. Therein is more than a life's work. The contents of that Book

are your life and the length of your days. It contains your written instructions from the seat of universal empire. A fragmentary knowledge of its contents is easily and quickly obtainable; to master its detail and grasp its limitless import, so as to deal with it in harmony with the high claims of your position as ambassadors from God to your fellow-men, will engage more than the labours of the few years you have to live. To study it simply to acquire the requisite material for your ordinary ministrations would task all your powers, but that were an unworthy procedure. It is the message of life and peace to yourself, a guilty sinner and rebel; and, experiencing its redeeming power and reconciling grace, prayerfully and industriously study it; the word of truth and peace given to you by your reconciled Sovereign and loving Father to tell to your former associates in prodigality and ruin, so that they also may be redeemed. Let your aim be high and your industry constant. Use all human aid that may come within the range of your opportu nities. I will not attempt detailed instructions, but say, shrink not from attempting the mastery of the literature and history of the Bible; you may not attain perfection, but the issue will be accumulated wisdom and power. At very least resolve to understand the import of each book, chapter, and verse; you may never perfectly achieve that which you dare to assay, but you will become scribes well instructed in the words of God. Depend on the aid of the Holy Spirit in all your studies and in all your labours; allow the might and majesty of the Word of God to master and assimilate you, and you will become mighty in the Scriptures. The life of the living and indestructible oracles will quicken you, and you will be made instrumental in quickening men dead in trespasses and in sins. Seek to be filled with the Spirit which inspired the Book, and you will become more and more like him whose words you study and love; you will become wise, true, merciful, holy; you will make men wise. Being the children of the truth, valiant for the truth in the earth, you will instrumentally sanctify men through the truth of God; you will be the light of the world; you will shine as brightness; you will win souls, turn many to righteousness, convert sinners, save souls from death, build up the church, feed the church; you will become workmen that need not to be ashamed. Do pay prayerful and laborious attention to the study of the Bible; master the grand theological doctrines of the Bible; an elementary system is soon acquired, but do not forget that the reality is illimitable. The system expands wide as the measureless realities of infinity. Shrink not from the task because of its vastness; a child may lay hold of its primal distinctions, a novice may detail its first principles, but the loftiest intellect may never reach its perfection. Give attention to doctrine; master well your text book, the Rev. R. Watson's

"Institutes," and the mastery thereof will urge you on in the limitless career that is before you.

You are to be indefatigable preachers of the glorious Gospel of the blessed God-proclaimers of the glad tidings. You are to preach Christ and him crucified. We preach Christ. You are to determine to know nothing among men, save Christ and him crucified. There is no higher theme. You cannot move in a wider sphere. There is no other position lofty as yours. The Gospel which we preach was the burden of prophecy. It abrogates yet perfects the ancient ritualisms; it was the hope of the patriarchs; it is the centre of the ages. Around it the life and dignity of humanity revolve. It is the wisdom of God-his manifold wisdom; it is the power of God-the exceeding greatness of his strength; it is the righteousness of God-his righteousness made manifest; it is the truth of God-his truth, in perfect and unassailable majesty, exercised to guilty man through the redeeming intervention of him who is the truth, the true God and eternal life; it is the glory of God-the grand demonstration to heaven and earth, and all creation, that God is love; it never grows old, it is always young; it never grows weak, it is always strong; it never exhausts, it is always full; it proclaims salvation to every man.

You are preachers of the Gospel of Christ; not philosophical savans. Ye are ministers of Christ. Such position is highly compatible with the loftiest philosophical tendencies and position, for the Gospel is the divine philosophy-the manifold wisdom of God; and the more wisdom you possess the better; the more you love all wisdom the better will you be adapted for the high and prudent discharge of your pre-eminent duties.

You are preachers of the Gospel; not abstract intellectual cultivators. You are not sent forth to herald the cry, "The schoolmaster is abroad." The story you tell is to assail, penetrate, subdue, captivate, renovate the heart of man. Your message is the grand product of the one infinite intellect-God. He devised it. When it accomplishes his purposes of mercy in the human heart, it illuminates, invigorates, sanctifies the intellect. It is perfectly adapted to the perpetual and universal progression of intellectual culture. It is far, far in advance of the widest phases of intellectual development; it has opened out the pathways through which mind is making its proud and pre-eminent advances; it aroused and animated the cry, "The schoolmaster is abroad." Under the influences of Christianity, the world is casting aside ignorance and superstition, and aspiring to the lofty eminences of knowledge and righteousness, which the Gospel of God reveals. You must possess and produce intellectual culture. Life must be one unbroken career of thought and accumulation. You may meddle with all wisdom; but your highest and only wisdom is to