hie responsibility rightly met. So BOule are quickened, and death is startled into life. So the messages of revelation are spread with their sterner significance, and the tender words of Jesus are multiplied. So hearts that have been touched themselves, and souls that own to the earnest of salvation within them, illustrate the one compassion left to them whea, other means having failed and the right moment of rebuke baviag arrived, they utter forth the burden with which they are charged. Aud Stephen now spoke before men many times himself in number, and in repute and worldly estimation- many of them-far placed above himself; yet he assumes the tone and place of authority, and plainly speaks the words of authority. Moreover, the character of that authority is that which beyond a doubt is most offensive to others. It deals in censure, reflects on the motives and conduct of men, and of a long line of their ancestors as well ; and yet, provided his indictment is true and not slanderous, Stephen is right. Let alone the fact that be is fired with the light and the fervent flames of the Holy Spirit, he is fr,ht on the broadest ground of humanity, on the simplest principles of Christianity, in the name of truth, and in that service so often forgotten, the kind and faithful service of fellow-man. It is by no means a frequent thing to find the man who is ready to sacri- fice himself in order to say and do those thiags of truth which have for their present reward loss even of life to him, but for their remoter fruit the highest benefit of man- kind. 4. But lastly, none who are believers in great lendiag doctrines of the Christian religion, and in particular in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the force and the prin- ciple of life in that dispensation, will for a moment doubt that, in the last anr,lysis, his authority is the beginning and the end of the rightful exercise of moral and spiritual rebuke. He :finds the right for all those whom he moves in his own sovereign right. And bis light, knowledge, and impulse conferred, submit to no limit except that which is self-imposed. His uncreate freedom, which so often blesses men to make them even sons of God, will yield none of its right, nor be robbed of its prerogative. When resisted, slighted, "grieved," it freely reproves through human lip; or when on the point of being "quenched" for any, it comes freely to rebuke, as now though by human lips only in words and suggestions, which "cut to the heart " men to whose heart nothing but the qualities of hardness and resistance seemed left. The rebuke of God's Spirit, albeit coming forth only from man's lips, can no more be restrained than the scathing lightning can be stopped in its mid-career. The rebuke of God's Spirit carries legiti- mately the credentials of its right in its might. And Christian rebuke, in the highest sense, postulates just this authority, ought to postulate it, and needs no other. IJ. THE ILL WORK THAT 00:MEB OF JUST REBUKE DETERMINEDLY REFUSED. 1. It certainly does not necessarily lose aught of its power to pain. " When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart." That certainly means pain, whatever the character of the pain. 2. The character of that pain is inevitably all-malignant. It is not of the pa.in that, sudden and sharp, lends itself also to the salutary use of calling attention to symptoms of inmost danger. It is a foregone conclusion that it shall not have any beneficial operation of this sort, and in this sad sense too to be forewarned proves to be forearmed, namely, against what might be the best of friends. It is left to such pain to work all it can, according to its own evil pleasure, purposed in its own self, without a single redeeming feature. 3. It stirs up anger's muddiest depths. It excites anger to the turn of insanity. Anger rages first, then raves. What else is said, what less is true, when it is testified that" they gnashed on him with their teeth." Anger so mastered them that it would not let them heed or even hear its own best. Mentor,-" Be ye angry, and sin not." This anger is all sin. It is sin in its cause- lessness ; it is sin in its excess; it is sin in its character of a demonstration of oppo- sition so unequal as against one undefended man ; it is sia against conscience and agaiast that Spirit whose mightiest office is to touch livingly the conscience; it is sin in its blind, tumultuous desperation of conduct. 4. According to the intriasic serious- ness or otherwise of the individual occasion, the inevitable tendency of the determined refusal to hear rebuke is either to that stricken heart and conscieace that are equive.- len~ to moral paralysis, or to an activity equally_frnntic and disast_ro~s. The revenge which rebuke, unheeded, though it be just, takes 1s found to vary w1thm many degrees. Sometimes its work is slow and secret, sometimes it is even " open beforehand " in foe force of its demonstratione, and these " go before to judgment." It can scarcely be otherwise now. The present instance is typiaj, When arrived a\ 11 certain point, 401'!!, • HI THE AOTS OF THE APOSTLES. (cm, VIL 1-60,
human nature seems to have it in it, rapidly indeed, "to fill up the mea.euree of its Iniquities." "How much better" is reproof listened to than rebuke resontedl nut if instead we have resented reproof, then how much better is it to listen to rebuke, to kiss the rod that smites, and, though it smite severely, while still there is left us time to pray, "0 Lord, rebuke me not in thine anger, neither chasten me in thy hot displea.- sure ! " For pRin and anger in concert know no compassion, and show mercy least of all and last of all to those who oourt their company and soou find themselves their driven 11laves. Ill is the promise of fair entrance to haven for the vessel that is tossed in storms of anger, lashed by those blasts of pain, which a.re the avengings of an insulted, an aggravated, and disobeyed conscience.-B,