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.'

And what is the practical inference to be drawn from these considerations? For you, my younger brethren, it is no unimportant inference, for you, who 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 life. your 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

its proper seat and throne; and to which, there embodied, every Christian heart in every age has looked as its bright exemplar, directed thither by the voice of Apostles, and Evangelists, and Saints, and Martyrs. Nay! though I had the tongue of men and of angels, how could the tongue of men or of angels set forth the excellence of charity, in words that go more to the heart and dwell there more abidingly than those marvellous words of the great Apostle, which we have heard this day1. Who does not listen when he commends to every heart the heavenly grace that beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things,' when he teaches us that it is a more excellent way, a more desirable possession than those miraculous gifts which were bestowed on the infant church, more precious than prophecy, more enduring than knowledge? How often, when we obey the godly motions of the Spirit of the Father and the Son in our heart, and by His gentle guidance are led along the Christian path that leads to peace, do we hear these words sounding in our ears, and feel them strengthening our feeble desires? How often, alas! when we have resisted God's Spirit, does their gentle language reprove us for every breach of charity in word, or thought, or deed.

If these precious words of the Apostle are not only engraven, as they ought to be, on our memories, but if, by prayer for the help of God's Spirit, these dictates of His heavenly wisdom are grafted in our hearts, we shall be provided with an effectual safeguard 1 Quinquagesima Sunday.