Is not this, brethren, the experience of many of you? You do not, of course, ever expect open visions, perceptions with natural eyes and ears of a spiritually manifested Saviour; but do you not often fail to obtain what you think (and rightly) you ought to aim at obtaining, a real, though spiritual, a convincing, constraining, sanctifying, and cheering manifestation of CHRIST? Do you not often, do you not almost always find just that wanting, which should make religion real? “Oh!” you exclaim, “would that when I kneel down in church, to make solemn confessions, to utter supplications, to pray for pardon, for favour, for grace—oh! that such a vision of CHRIST were afforded me, that I were possessed with such feeling of His presence, as would prevent my turning away so readily from the solemnity, to see who is coming into church, to admire or criticise the dress or appearance of those beside me, to remember the worldliness of yesterday, to anticipate the worldliness of to-morrow. Oh! that when I sit with open Bible before me, and slight and slur over its difficult parts, and give little heed to the personal application of its histories, and treat albut with indifference its exhortations, its warnings, its promises, its threats—Oh! that some voice would recall me from my wandering, and dispel my irreverence, and concentrate my devout attention with its heard command, ‘Thus, saith the LORD, Hear what the Spirit saith.’ Oh! that when I go about the world, and neglect my religious duty here, and transgress it there, yielding readily to temptation, hankering after, following worldliness, led by the persuasions, awed by the frowns, constrained by the demands of the world, oh! that CHRIST would stand at least before my spiritual vision, and utter to the ears of my soul, ‘Forbear. Take up thy cross. Follow me.’ Oh, that He would do all this for others too: for those whom I love, who go farther out of the way, for the carnal, for the godless, for the souls that are carelessly, that are deliberately perishing! Oh! that for His own honour’s sake He would openly show Himself and dispute—with the Devil, with Mammon, with Pleasure, with Folly—the possession of the souls which He has purchased for Himself! Why does He not give some proof, why does He not exercise some persuasion which must be felt, which could not be disregarded? Oh! that He would rend the heavens and come down; that He would cheer the saint; that He would confound and convert the sinner by His manifested presence.” It is thus, if I mistake not, that we sometimes think and wish. But, brethren, the words which prompted Judas to speak, reprove our thoughts. They show us that it is not by oversight, by defect, by mismanagement, by any failure to accomplish what was intended, but by deliberate design, by exact fulfilment of what GOD proposed, that the real, the strong influences of Christianity are not brought to bear upon men generally.