the world, have all witnessed, and many of them died to witness, that whole counsel of God, in doctrine, Sacrament, and Church order, which Christ left behind Him for our salvation. These ancient Churches, which the sober piety of generation after generation has built, repaired, renewed from time to time in their strength and beauty, from that unknown Christian man who laid the first stone of God's house in the parish of Brighstone, to the good man whose loving and ungrudging liberality and devotion brought it into its present state of soundness and beauty, in whose place I this day stand-all these witnessed in their own days, yea and they witness still in their works, and yonder graveyard where they lie, and the sober legends of Holy Scripture which are engraved, some still legible and fresh, the tokens of recent grief and faith; some well nigh or quite worn out by age, commemorating names now forgotten and unknown, but all of men and women still alive in the paradise of God-all these, I say, witnessed in their own days, with an endless succession of faithful Christian witness, to the truth of the whole counsel of God, in doctrine, as I said, in Sacrament, and in Church order and discipline, as handed down by the Lord Himself in His Church, which He founded upon His own most precious Sacrifice. Do not be so blind as to think otherwise; do not be so mistaken as to think that these men

who try to win you away from the Church of Christ are in possession of a truth greater, holier, more saving than has saved our forefathers of a hundred generations.

Oh! my brethren, I feel earnest and eager, from the bottom of my heart, to speak to you faithfully, affectionately, and truly on this great matter. It is more serious than many think. The Lord, in the last words that He spoke before He suffered, prayed to the Father most earnestly for Unity, that His Church might be One,

Is

One with Him, even as He is One with the Father. it not a grievous thing to divide that Unity? to tear the Sacred Coat which is woven from the top throughout, and which even the murderers would not rend? Is it not a sad offence against His dying love and prayer to separate from one another, and holding part of what He said to neglect the rest. Is Christ divided?

That Christ is the

Let me not be misunderstood. only way, the only truth, the only life, I believe in my heart of hearts, and so long as God gives me mind to think and life to speak, I will hold it earnestly, and preach it with all my power. So also that He alone is the Door into the sheepfold,-so also that God so loveth the world that He gave His only begotten Son, to the end, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,-so also that if we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved.

They are true, precious, blessed words. I embrace them, every one who is Christian must embrace them with all his heart:-but he must also embrace and obediently follow all these other words which by the same Spirit were written, and which bid us be baptized for the remission of sins, find the food of life in the Lord's Body and Blood, listen to the Church if we would not be as heathen men and publicans, abide in the blessed Vine, if we would not be cast forth as fruitless branches to be burned. I would to God that men might by His grace listen and take heed; and as I verily believe that, with much faith and love, many do hold fast a part of the blessed revealed truth, so they would not be so wilful or so blind as to reject the rest; that so by the grace of God we might all live on earth in the unity of faith and brotherhood in Christ, and when this earth is over, find ourselves united for ever in the glorious kingdom of Christ, being acknowledged as His in His awful coming.

The Ruler of the Sea

ST. MATTHEW viii.

27. But the men marvelled saying, What manner of man is this that even the winds and the sea obey Him?

E are still in the Epiphany season; and Sunday

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after Sunday further manifestations of the Lord's Divine power and greatness are put before us in the Gospels of the day.

To-day, indeed, being the Feast of the Purification, a special Gospel and Epistle are appointed, and I might have dwelt, not without good reason, on that subject. For the Purification of the Blessed Virgin-Mother, after the birth of her Divine Son, is the model and pattern. after which our own wives and mothers present themselves in the Church of God after the great pain and peril of childbirth, to give thanks to God in the presence of all His people for the great mercy vouchsafed to them in their time of trouble and distress. And the purity of that Blessed Mother and her unspeakable

happiness in her heavenly Infant, are a very touching lesson of chastity and motherly love: when the chaste and happy mother can return her honest thanks without any conscience of sin, and present her new-born child to God as an offering of her unmixed joy and thankfulness.

But I rather prefer to-day to choose the Epiphany subject, which you will find in the Gospel for the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany.

As the first Sunday after the Epiphany shewed us the Lord among the doctors at twelve years old; and the second Sunday shewed us His power in changing the water into wine; and the third Sunday shewed us how His touch cleansed the leper, and restored the paralytic; so the Gospel of the fourth Sunday shews us His power in two other signal ways: first, as commanding the sea, when the winds and the waves obeyed Him, and then, as commanding the evil spirits, and bidding them to go forth from the two poor men who dwelt, in a sort of religious madness, possessed with devils, among the tombs.

So, Sunday after Sunday, the various manifestations of the Lord's power are set forth, and we see how He ruled over all things; how the natural productions of the earth, the water and the wine, are His, and He maketh the water to flow, and the vine to root, and bud, and ripen its fruit, to put gladness into the heart of

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