faithful worshippers "setting their faces unto “the Lord their God, to seek by prayers and 66 66 supplications that He would hear and for give, hearken and do, for his own sake." 1 What the Israelites learned by their sore affliction, by the overthrow of their Temple, by their exile from their country, that may we in some measure learn through our partial and voluntary separation from those outward forms in which we have been from our youth up accustomed to worship God. May we, as we pass through various countries, and observe their different forms of faith and ritual, neither be tempted to think all forms useless and indifferent; nor yet, on the other hand, be induced to adopt or crave after what to us would be needless and fruitless, if not absolutely harmful. May we be rather led to grasp more firmly those higher truths which we and they alike hold; to look back, as did those scattered Israelites, to "the common rock whence they all were hewn, to the common pit whence they all were digged; "2 to remem 1 Isaiah lxvi. 1, 2. Daniel vi. 10 ; ix. 3. 19. ber that those truths of God and Christ, of life and death, of duty and holiness, which are the most universal, are also the most important. May we, as our recollections of home become more distant, as our means of external worship become less frequent, be driven more and more upon ourselves; turning to God in our private devotions, not the less but the more earnestly, because our public devotions are interrupted and uncertain. May we take care that the inner house of our hearts be pure and clean, with its windows open to the heavenly Jerusalem, in proportion as the outer house of God's worship is removed from us, or closed against us. And if not only the usual means of outer worship, but also the usual means of the inner and higher worship of God in the service of our brethren is of necessity for a time suspended, yet this very suspension may remind us that there is no time or place where the kind word, the thoughtful act, the pure intention, is or can be thrown away. He who went forth before His people through the wilderness, He whose way is in the sea and whose paths are in the great waters, He in whose sight all nations are as the small dust in the balance1, He is with us whithersoever we go, to guide, to judge, and to reward. So travelling, we shall be drawing nearer to our fathers' home; so learning and so enjoying, we shall return with wiser heads, and cleaner hearts, and more active hands, to our accustomed duties; so worshipping, we shall better know how to pray, whether in public or in private, to Him who is worshipped neither at Gerizim nor at Jerusalem, but everywhere, by those who worship Him in spirit and in truth 2, in deed and in heart. 1 Isaiah lxiv. 11; xl. 15. Psalm lxviii. 7; lxxvii. 19. 2 John iv. 21. SERMON II. S. PAUL AT ROME. (PREACHED IN THE ENGLISH CHAPEL AT ROME, T PHIL. I. 9. pray that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment; that ye may approve things that are excellent ; that ye may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ. LET me briefly notice the peculiar claims on our attention possessed by the Epistle to the Philippians, from which the epistle of this morning was taken. I. I will not now dwell on the general interest which attaches to it as the farewell address of a beloved friend and teacher, who is, or appears to be, on the eve of some great change in his life, whether those lesser changes which attend on the partings and separations of those who have been near and dear, or that great change which awaits us all in the hour of death. The expression of such a feeling is common to a great extent to this Epistle, and to those which are addressed to Timotheus. But the peculiarity of the farewell of the Philippians is that it looked forward to a dark future; to a future fraught with that uncertainty and suspense which is much more trying than known or expected evil. A great crisis, but of doubtful issue, was at hand. The trial for which he had been long waiting seemed to be finally approaching. The two years during which he had "lived in his hired house, receiving all that came to him, no man forbidding him," were drawing to an end; whether the result would be death, or further imprisonment, or release, and, if release, whither he should go; whether forwards to the remote West, to the distant and unknown Spain, according to his long-cherished intention, expressed five years before in the Epistle to the Romans, or whether |