your duty by him, by an attempt to admonish and reclaim him. We have set before us to-day what the Church is, and what the characteristics of its members are,--a peculiar love founded on their common hope of heaven, and their attachment to a common Savior, sympathy with each other in joy and sorrow, and a common interest and proper admonition when going astray. God grant that all of us may rightly understand and may strive to live up to these things, so that the Church may answer its high and holy purpose, the salvation of men's souls through faith in Christ, to whom in all matter be glory and honor forever. Amen. ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law.--_Rom. 3, 28._ Whoever has read his Bible with attention must have observed that there are some passages which, at first view, appear hard to reconcile. Take, for instance, the passage before us. St. Paul here says "that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the Law," and to confirm his assertion produces the example of Abraham. "Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness." St. James in his letter, the second chapter, produces the same example, that of Abraham, and draws from it a conclusion directly contradictory. He says: "Ye see, then, that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only." Can any two opinions be more opposite in appearance? And as may be expected, all manner of conjectures have been presented. I will not tire you with a tenth part of these interpretations. Only two shall I mention as a specimen. A writer of great eminence, recognizing the difficulty in its full strength, allows that it is not only hard, but impossible to reconcile the two apostles, and concludes that, since it is impossible to hold both their sentiments, we must abide by him who wrote the last. Accordingly, he gives up the doctrine of faith without works, supposing that St. Paul wrote with carelessness of expression, and that St. James wrote after him to clear up what Paul had obscurely or inaccurately expressed. Again we would note that our great Reformer, Dr. Martin Luther, having felt the power of St. Paul's doctrine in his own soul, that he would have defied an angel from heaven to oppose it, when his adversaries pressed him with the passage from St. James, styled it an epistle of straw, because, in his opinion, it did not urge Christ sufficiently strong. But what of an explanation of these apparently so contradictory passages?