till it rises superior to the weakness of humanity, till it can look with a constant eye on suffering, till it can triumph over chance, and change, and time, and death.

Is there one here, my brethren, who hath a spirit meet for such high communion, and who hath not communed in spirit with those sainted men who once trod our streets, and once breathed the air which we breathe, who in the calm and stillness of this school of learning (now granted by a kind providence to us, and by us, if we will, to be used through God's grace, for the strengthening, and purifying of our hearts drank in their intellectual and spiritual life, learned the true faith of Christ, learned that in that faith are hid all the best treasures of true knowledge, and learned that therefore for that faith, as it was their duty, so it was to become their firm, deliberate, and constant resolve to die? Is there one here who hath not in spirit followed our holy martyrs to the stake? Does not our heart go with Bradford when sending his exhortations to those whom he loved and to whom he had preached the word of God? Did he not tell them that it was one of his express purposes that they might hear of his sealing his doctrine with his blood, and assure them that if they are constant in the faith, his spirit will rejoice with them and for them in the trials that await them? Do we not hear Ridley utter his passionate farewell to this his cherished seat, and, while he calls on the walls and trees of his college to bear witness to his diligent study of God's word, express his thankfulness for the profit which he had thus felt all his lifetime ever after, his confidence that he should carry

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the sweet savour thereof to heaven, and his passionate and earnest prayer, that a hearty zeal for God's word may ever abide in that, his chosen and cherished home, so long as the world shall endure?

Yes! though dead, these holy men yet speak. Their spirit breathes around and within the Christian in suffering and sorrow. They speak to the prisoner in the dungeon and to the victim on the scaffold. Ask not if they did this to be known. They knew that their Christian courage would be known, and their Christian example followed. They say in a voice that will be heard, 'Christ our Saviour hath been to us a comforter in life ' and death. He bad us bear our cross for His sake, but 'He hath borne it for us. He hath comforted us with 'the glad thoughts that these our sufferings will be profitable to Him and to His, and that in ages yet 'to come, the suffering Christian will through grace 'be encouraged and enabled to suffer more boldly and more patiently when he thinks of us.'

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And what is the practical inference to be drawn from these considerations? For you, my younger brethren, it is no unimportant inference, for you, whọ are now deeply occupied in a struggle for distinction here. The time is shortly to come when you are to enter on that wide and busy and toilsome scene, to the preparation for which so many years of human life are bestowed. You are to chuse the principles which are to guide you through it, to guide you through it either in doubt and disquiet of spirit, or in calm and unhesitating confidence and peace. Do not, I beseech you, set forth on that pilgrimage with so perilous an error as

the supposition, that the excitements, which may be necessary or useful to spur the informed character to the exertion by which it is to be formed, are to be taken as the guide of life. Listen not even to that lofty voice which would persuade you that the love of fame, even if not a legitimate, is not a guilty motive to action, that the thirst for praise, is an infirmity of noble minds, and the last which they lay aside. It is an infirmity which if uncontrouled by the Gospel, will, like every form of selfishness, degrade a noble to a base mind, keep it under the low and enslaving thraldom of a deference to public opinion, and finally introduce it to fraud and imposture.

Lay aside then, I beseech you, the thirst for human praise. Be assured that the one only principle of action which will neither mislead you in your days of happiness, nor fail you in your days of trial, which alone will give you a permanent and enduring impulse towards lofty and noble actions, towards the display of all those qualities which make men worthy to be loved and had in honour, and give them the love and honour of which they are worthy, is the hearty desire to direct all your actions to the glory of God. Pray to God the giver of all good, to form and nourish and strengthen that desire in your hearts, and to make it the guide of your life. If under its guidance you are pursuing a course of glorious and Christian exertion, for God's glory and man's good, then fearlessly indulge in the grateful anticipation that you may be remembered with love and gratitude by them who come after, that they who may never see you may bless

your name, and be cheered by your example to deeds like yours, that when your bodies are buried in peace, and you have accomplished your earthly and arduous warfare, your names may live for evermore.

Or if His wisdom shall place you in a lowly condition, yet rejoice that His grace will enable you every day to follow Mary in spirit, and every day to work in a spirit which, whether it may gain everlasting remembrance or not, hath been pronounced by your Saviour to be worthy of it when he said, 'Wheresoever 'this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, 'there shall also this, which this woman hath done, 'be told for a memorial of her.'

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SERMON VI.

THE DUTY OF OPPOSING EVIL.

1 CORINTH. XVI. 13, 14.

Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong. Let all your things be done with Charity.

I PURPOSE not, my brethren, this day to undertake so needless a task as to set before a Christian audience, the necessity of charity to the Christian character. I purpose not to undertake so impossible a task, as worthily to commend the dignity and excellence of this Christian grace. A needlesss task, beyond all doubt, it must be, to show to Christian men their great need of that which is the sum and substance of Christianity as a rule of life, without which Christianity, as a rule of life, would be a sound without a meaning, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before God.' And an impossible task it would indeed be, worthily to commend that heavenly grace, in the exercise of which the Son of Man left the glory in which He had been from everlasting; which, embodied in Him, in Him found its worthy and