for the love of Christ and of their brethren, the love of Christ and of their brethren has no place in their hearts.

One way in which this self-denial must be shewn, is in overcoming our passions. Our love must not be easily provoked. Charity, the apostle tells us, suffereth long, and is kind. It takes its pattern from the long-suffering of Christ. Ever since the fall of Adam the sins of mankind had been provoking God to wrath: yet God would not be provoked, save to a far more exceeding and wonderful display of his love. Instead of baring the arm of his vengeance, and cutting us off in our iniquity, he stretched forth the arm of his mercy, and sent his Son to bring us back to the fold. It is only when love will not be provoked, except to fresh deeds of love, that it proves itself to be pure and thoroughly disinterested, and to spring from the only pure source, the love of God and of Christ. For even the natural man desires to be loved by his brethren, and will love them for the sake of gaining their love: but when the natural man finds that his love is only met by thanklessness, it fades and dies. Christian love on the other hand in its outward workings is like God's love: it embraces the thankless as well as the thankful. Nay, as God has done more for sinners, than ever could have been done for man,

if he had continued in righteousness, so will christian love be most active and diligent in trying to soften and win the hearts which need it the most.

Such must be our love, if we would shape it into any likeness to Christ's love for us, of which at best it can never be more than a very faint and lame copy. For his love was truly boundless; ours will be cramped and hemmed in on every side by the weaknesses and wants of our nature. His love was perfectly disinterested; ours is evermore disturbed by the wish for some manner of return. He gave up the glories of heaven; we can only give up a little of the dross of earth. He forgave sins without number and excuse; we can only forgive what we have no right to resent. Feeble however and unworthy as our love may be, it is the only return we can make to Christ; and as such, Christ vouchsafes to accept it. The love which we shew to our brethren, he vouchsafes to accept as shewn to himself. "Inasmuch as ye have done it," he says, "to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it to me." The one object for which Christ came down on earth, was to make men holy and blessed. The one reward which he received when he went home to heaven, was gifts for men, to make them holy and blessed. This then, my brethren, if we love Christ is what we must strive to do for Christ. We

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must strive to work under the guidance of his Spirit, in order to win souls for him, in order to help our brethren on along the road of holiness and blessedness. In this work we may all do something in this work every Christian may be a fellow-labourer with Christ. Christ's reward on his Ascension, I have said, was the bestowing gifts on men. But that is only for a time, only as the means toward the reward which he will receive on the last day. That will be his true reward, the reward for the sake of which he died, the reward for the sake of which he is still ever giving gifts to men. In the day when he makes up his jewels, in that day will the souls of all those whom he has redeemed be gathered into a crown of glory around his eternal head. Every soul that is saved will be a jewel in Christ's crown: every、 soul that is lost will be a jewel out of Christ's crown. Wo then, bitter wo, to those through whose fault a jewel is lost out of Christ's crown! How will they dare make answer, when he asks them, Where are my jewels? Blessed on the other hand, most blessed on that day, will they be, through whose patient endurance in christian love any jewels for Christ's crown have been gained.

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SERMON XX.

CHRIST'S GIfts.

PSALM lxviii. 18.

Thou hast received gifts for men; yea, even for thine enemies, that the Lord God might dwell among them.

IN my last sermon on this verse I set before you the wonderful goodness and love manifested by our Lord and Saviour in coming down from heaven so entirely for our sakes, that his very rewards were gifts for men. He went through all, and bore all, not for the sake of receiving, but of giving, that he might as it were earn the privilege of bestowing greater graces and blessings upon us. But we shall take an imperfect view of our debt to him, unless we consider for whom Christ received these gifts, for whom he made so great a sacrifice,—namely, for his enemies. This is the point which the apostles urge so strongly, as the most wonderful and

convincing proof of God's boundless love. Thus St Paul says in the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans : ،، While we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly. Now scarcely for a righteous man will one die.” Scarcely, he says: because one or two might perchance be found with courage enough to die for the sake of a good man and a good cause. ،، But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Again, a verse or two after," when we were enemies," the very word the Psalmist uses,- 66 we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son." And again in the Epistle to the Ephesians, "God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together with Christ: for ye were strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world; but now ye are made nigh to him by the blood of Christ." (ii. 4. 12.) St John's words in his first Epistle are to the same purpose. "In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love;"—or this is the great, the astonishing proof of God's love,that "before we loved God, God loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."