Painful and profoundly instructive as the incident now mentioned is, we have yet more humbling evidence of the danger to which men are exposed by their familiarity with sacred things. In the autobiography of the Rev. Dr. Hamilton of Strathblane, we read, "Many of the ministers of Scotland were genuine Socinians. Many of them were ignorant of theology as a system, and utterly careless about the merits of any creed or confession. They seemed miserable in the discharge of every ministerial duty.... When they preached, their sermons generally turned on honesty, good neighbourhood, and kindness. To deliver a gospel sermon, or preach to the hearts and consciences of dying sinners, was as completely beyond their power, as to speak in the language of angels. And while their discourses were destitute of everything which a dying sinner needs, they were at the same time the most feeble, empty, and insipid things that ever disgraced the venerated name of sermons.... They had no more religion in private than in public. They were loud and obstreperous in declaiming against enthusiasm and fanaticism, faith and religious zeal.... But though frightfully impatient of everything which bore the semblance of seriousness and sober reflection, the elevation of brow, the expansion of feature, the glistening of the eye, the fluency and warmth of speech at convivial parties, showed that their heart and soul were there; and that the pleasures of the table, and the hilarity of the light-hearted and the gay constituted their paradise, and furnished them with the perfection of their joy."[38] It is thus that men are degraded by the perversion of what was meant to ennoble. It is thus that of all the piteous spectacles which our world presents, few are more sad or distressing than that of a godless minister of religion; such a man "Is branded to the last, What atheists call him--a designing knave, A mere church juggler, hypocrite, and slave. * * * * * The sacred function in his hands is made, Sad sacrilege! no function but a trade." --When the standard-bearer falls, who will fight? When the Cross is torn down by those who should point to it, who will believe? THE UNCHANGING WORD.