you, and the voice of God, if you listen to it, will be so sweet to you, that you will have neither eyes nor ears for the gaudy baubles and shrill decoy-notes of the world. This is the best preparation which a man can have for heaven; if it be not a heaven upon earth. "If a man love me, (says our Saviour) he will keep my words; and my Father will love him; and we will come to him, and make our abode with him." (John xiv. 23.) But where the Father and the Son are, there is heaven.

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SERMON IX.

THE GOSPEL LEAVEN.

MATT. xiii. 33.

The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

THERE are two things we should always keep in mind,-what we ought to be, and what we are. In fixing our eyes on what we ought to be, we see the good we should aim at: in looking at what we are, we see the evil we should get rid of. If we thought only of what we ought to be, we might pass through life without ever finding out our own sinfulness, and might even fall into the mistake of fancying that, because we know and approve what is good and right, we must be good and right ourselves. On the other hand, if we kept our eyes only on what we are, we should grow so accustomed to our sins, and to the sins of those about us, that we should cease to think of the great guilt and

danger of such common every-day matters, and perhaps should get to look upon them almost as things of course. A man may walk with his eyes bent on the ground, till he grows double: a man may live in sin, and hear of sin, and look on sin, till he loses all sense of uprightness. For these reasons the two things-what we ought to be, and what we are-should be often compared together. When this is done, and they are brought before a man, and the difference between them is pointed out to him, when the preacher says to us, "Look here! this glorious pattern of excellence is what God designed you to be; but, alas! that little puny, crooked, stunted thing is what you are,”—the glaring contrast between what we ought to be, and what we are, may awaken even the proudest and the most conceited to a sense of their manifold imperfections, and may move them for very shame to set about amending and improving.

Now what we ought to be, we may learn from the parable which I have chosen for my text. "The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened." You all know what leaven is, or at least you know what yeast is, which is nearly the same thing. You know too that, if you want to have good bread, you must

begin by getting good yeast, and must knead it up well with the flour, so that the dough may rise and become light, instead of being heavy and lumpish. Now Jesus Christ in this parable tells us, that, as yeast is mixed up with flour, and works its way through every part of it, in order to turn it into bread, in like manner must his Gospel be mixed up with the hearts of men, and must work through every part of them, before they can be turned from children of death into what children of life ought to be. The leaven of his word must work in them, until the whole is leavened,—not only their outward behaviour, but their inward feelings also,-not only their deeds, but their words, and their very thoughts,—and not only those feelings and thoughts which seem to belong more nearly to religion, but all their feelings and all their thoughts. Whether in church or out of church, at home or abroad, in business or in pleasure, whether with his family, or with his servants, or with his friends,—wherever the Christian may be, and whatever he may be about, the leaven of the Gospel will be living and working in him. Whatever he does, he will do as unto God, always bearing in mind that he is God's child and God's servant. As a good child, and a good servant, always keeps his father's or his master's will steadily in view, and endeavours

to perform it, so does the follower of Christ try to follow Christ in doing the will of his Father. As light cannot hide itself, or check itself, but, when a candle is burning in a room, it fills the whole room with light, and leaves no corner of it in darkness; so, when the light of the Gospel is burning in a man, it must needs spread through every part of him, and fill every part with light: and it enables him to walk in everything, and to act in everything, not blindly as in darkness, but seeingly, so that he knows what he ought to do, and is able to do it. This, I say, it must needs do, unless there be something within him to check it: for the light will not check itself, or stop of itself. The leaven will work through his whole heart and soul and mind, raising them all, turning them all from heavy lumps of dough into nourishing wholesome bread. There is no part of a man's nature which the Gospel does not purify, no relation of life which it does not hallow. It does not make him less a husband, less a father, less a son, less a servant, than he was before: it does not rob him of one of his finer feelings, of one of his home affections, of one of his powers of body or of mind: but it gives them all a lift, and sanctifies them all, and makes them all rise heavenward.

This, I say, is what we ought to be: this is