of all manner of love and goodness, are all the things which God has provided for us!-our health, our strength of body, our faculties of mind, our families, our friends, our occupation, our education, the means of grace continually offered to us, the peace we live in, the orderly society, the quiet presence of law and established rights among us-all the things by which we are surrounded, which make life enjoyable and safe. Compare our state with that of millions of others in less favoured lands, exposed to the ravages of war, insecure against violence and wrong, in the midst of poverty and extreme ignorance, liable to terrible sicknesses and the like—will not the Lord, think you, call us to account for those good things which He has thus freely given to us? Does He not intend us to be better, more thankful, holier for all this? And if we are not the better and holier for it, must we not be the worse?

O brethren, believe me, God is most merciful, most loving, most tender to us; but He requires, He absolutely requires, that we should repent of our sins, and in His grace and strength obey His laws. He is very tender, very longsuffering; but His tenderness and longsuffering design to lead us to repentance. Do you think He will be tender and loving for ever, if we will not turn and give up our hearts to Him? Do you think that He will go on forbearing and forgiving without end,

if we go on sinning, and forgetting, and dishonouring Him continually? It cannot be. Even mercy itself is wearied out at last by unrepentance, and the end comes often suddenly and unexpectedly, while the sinner is presuming that he will have plenty of time yet to repent and amend, and that he need not think of God and religion yet awhile. Believe me that all the blessings which you enjoy, your bodily senses, your mental powers, everything which God has given you, is intended to help to turn you to God, not-God forbid to be turned into helps of evil and occasions of sin.

You must be holy if you would be saved. You must turn away from sin and repent of it heartily, if you desire to be received by Christ when He comes to judge the world.

Most melancholy would it be if the Lord, who has given us all these things, should sigh in tender sorrow over any of us, and speak as it were in words, and say, "Did I not give thee many blessings? I gave thee eyes to see, ears to hear, a tongue to speak. I gave thee health, youth, and strength. I gave thee understanding and memory. I placed thee in a fair home, and among friends. I had thee baptized in my faith. I had thee taught. I set my servant near thee, and bade him. preach to thee the way of faith and repentance. What could I have done for thee more? But thou didst love

to see sights of evil, and to hear all sorts of tales of sin, and to speak words of various kinds of wickedness. Alas for thee! I bore with thee many years. I caused thee to hear many words of kindly truth and exhortation. But it did no good: thou wouldest have none of my love, nor show any of the obedience I required. Better had it been for thee if thou hadst never been born, or if thou hadst been born blind, or deaf, or dumb, or deficient in mind and intelligence, than that thou shouldest have made so sad a wreck of all thy blessings, and sinned, and sinned, and sinned without repentance unto the end."

Brethren, think of these things betimes. The night cometh, when no man can work. Now we can repent of sin, and by God's grace turn all the good things which God has given us into the blessings which He designed them to be.

To-morrow it may be too late!

The Widow of Nain

ST. LUKE vii.

II. And it came to pass the day after that Jesus went into a city called Nain; and many of His disciples went with Him, and much people.

12. Now, when He was come nigh unto the gate of the city, behold there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow; and much people of the city was with her.

THIS

HIS narrative, brethren, tells us of one of those precious incidents which bring God into the midst of us, and into the very heart of our common life of joys and sorrows.

very

We all know and believe that the great God of Heaven and earth is near us at all times, that He knows and allows all the things that happen to us, that He sees and takes note of all our thoughts, as well as of our words spoken and our deeds done,-we all know that, no doubt; and I trust we think of it often, and, by His grace come to live in the perpetual consciousness of it, feeling, as it were, His eye upon us,

K

looking us through and through, at every moment of our lives.

But though we know all this, it comes less home to our feeling, and seems to strike our imagination less forcibly than to read how Jesus Christ, God, the Eternal Son of God, Immanuel, moved among men, felt as a man their sorrows, felt as a man their temptations or sufferings, mingled in the very same scenes as those which we see, God indeed, but Man also: true Man in the true weakness of man's body, and the true sympathies of a man's soul, though Himself the Eternal Son of the Most High God, by Whom Heaven and earth were made.

It comes, I say, less home to our feelings to know of the Almighty God invisible, and known only by our faith, than to think of God shedding human tears of private love to witness the deep grief of the sisters of Lazarus His friend,-of God weeping with the bitter tears of patriotic or public love over the doomed city of Jerusalem,—of God, sitting among His faithful disciples, and bidding them as His last command to continue to eat that bread and drink that cup of life in remembrance of Him,-of God, stretching out His loving arms of mercy upon the Cross, and drawing all men visibly unto Him, by giving His life to be a sacrifice for their sins; or, to come closer to the particular narrative of the