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things now are, not only business but pleasure itself is often a weariness: we cannot take part in either without the tone of our minds being too often either hardened or irritated; the peace of the Spirit is not with us when the work of the day is over. It is useless, and not altogether true, to say, that the fault of this is in others: others may be faulty, and, doubtless, are so ;-but how little would their faults affect us, if they were met by nothing bad within our own bosoms! For even supposing our charity to be ever so lively,—if we felt even as Christ felt for the evil of others, and for the ruin which they were bringing on themselves by it, and if we were wearied by it as he was, when he cried, “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, how long shall I suffer you?"-yet still, this sorrow and this weariness are not inconsistent with that peace of the spirit which Christ gives, and which he himself declared to be far different from that which "the world giveth." It would be a sorrow and a weariness that would rather turn us more heartily to God, than a restlessness which makes us shrink from him. It would only make us long the more for that rest that remaineth for the people of God,

and not drive us back to wander after our own ways in this world's wilderness.

Such, then, is Christ's daily lesson to us: not to be idle or slothful in our work; and to sanctify it by doing it as to him, and not as to man. Not to be idle,—as those who have mere bodily faculties, who live only to eat, and drink, and sleep; not to be too busily and carefully engaged in our own labour, and still less for its own sake, as those who lived only for themselves, and for this world, and to whom God, and Christ, and eternal life, had never been made known. Let us work earnestly, for so did Christ; but let us work also as doing God's will, and for the improvement of our own souls, or else our work will not be such as He will acknowledge at his coming.

SERMON XXV.

MARK vi. 31.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.

I AM now come to the conclusion of the subject which I have been dwelling on in my four last sermons. I said, that in the verse from which my present text is taken, there were three things deserving of our separate attention :-first of all, Christ's constant diligence and activity; "they had no leisure so much as to eat;" secondly, The nature of that employment: intercourse with other men, for the purpose of doing them good, in body or soul: and, thirdly, his thinking it right, from time to time, to have intervals of rest :-" Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." And, with respect to this latter point, I said that we knew from other places, how our Lord employed these periods of

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rest; and that although, as partaking of the bodily weaknesses of our nature, he may be supposed to have needed rest as we do, in its common and simplest sense, yet his conduct teaches us what further use may be made of such seasons, and how they may be improved to fit us for a renewal of work afterwards, by strengthening us, not only in body but in soul.

It is this last part of the subject which I have reserved for this present occasion; and I confess that I did so purposely, because it suits our present circumstances so exactly, for just at this time there is one of these periods of rest going to commence for us; and we may well consider how we may turn it to some account. Six weeks, even to the youngest of us, are a longer term than we can afford to waste; they are a period, whose influence upon the character cannot go altogether for nothing. When I speak of not affording to waste them, I do not mean that we are wasting them if we are not going on in our common employments: but we are wasting them utterly if we think that we have nothing else to do in them than to enjoy ourselves to the utmost; if we fancy that we can safely dismiss all thoughts of duty, all

recollection of the past, all regard for the future, and live as if all things around us would stand still while we were slumbering. Let us see how we may so sanctify the rest that is now coming to us, as that Christ may acknowledge it to be fit for his disciples; how we may so pass it, as to make it no less useful to us, in the highest sense, than any of our hardest hours of labour.

First, I will say plainly, that the period on which we are going to enter, is intended for our rest, in the simplest sense; it is meant as a relief and relaxation from our common labour. According, then, to the degree of exertion that we may have

our greater or less title to it;

made here, is

for it is absurd to talk of rest where there has been no labour to call for it. In this sense, to those who have been idle here, it is like a pleasure which they have no right to; a reward which they have not earned; and which they are doubly bound to use well when they have got it, as their having it at all seems more than they deserve. I mean, that when a boy feels that he has been idle here, he must feel that it is foolish for him to talk about its being fair for him to enjoy himself when he is at home; he must know, that, as a mere matter of

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