death, when man may thus do good notwithstanding his decease. This is eternal life, life without a break, without a period of inactivity. O noble attainment! We will not leave ambition to be engrossed by the worldly: a Christian should live to do good, and he should not be content to do it only while he lives. The being remembered through the being useful; the continuing to serve God, when apparently withdrawn from his service; the surviving in the Church, not indeed on the storied marble, but through leaving behind us what furthers the advance of the Gospel, whether it be in example, or in writings, or in engines for the diffusion of truth-let us not be told that this desire, a desire which seems specially at home amid our cloisters and groves, must be sinful. Rather were it sinful not to entertain it. As Christians, we should burn to bring glory to God. We should not be willing to be circumscribed by life, The battle is to go on, and we should long to take part. The Church is to be edified, and we should crave for employment. Yea, it might be as pure and humble a wish as ever was breathed, though it might sound like that of one eager for human distinction, if it did not suffice us to be useful to others whilst we tabernacled amongst them; but if, throwing onwards our thoughts to yet distant days, we craved that it might, in some sense, be said of us as of Abel, "He, being dead, yet speaketh."

As then in our last discourse we warned you to be watchful of your speech whilst living, so now we

entreat you to labour that you may speak when dead. We do not exhort you to seek "the honour that cometh from men:" he who does so will never obtain that which cometh from God. But nevertheless we show you a field for ambition. It is our privilege as men, as Christians, to act for futurity. The beast of the field, and the fowl of the air, act for to-day, or at most for a brief life, and have no mysterious drawings towards far-distant ages. But man is ever launching into unborn time, as though he felt it to belong to his being. It does so belong: and the Christian but strives to spoil the grave of its victory, when, not content with bringing God glory whilst he lives, he longs to bring God glory when dead.

Noble longing! The wounded warrior, as the life's blood ebbs away, will sometimes kindle at the noise of the battle. He will half raise himself from the earth, listen to the distant shout, and forget his anguish, as he hears the triumph of his comrades in arms. Yes, chivalry has such tales; but Christianity may have nobler. The servants of Christ, when they can no longer join the war, may breathe out the soul in prayers for its success. And the glorious, the majestic thing, were to feel, as the eye grew dim, and the pulse feeble, that, having laboured to the end in the championship of truth, we were not even then to be wholly discharged-to be able to exclaim, with all the confidence of a little child, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit," and at the same time, with all the heroism of a soldier of the cross, "Being dead, I yet shall speak."

SERMON III.

THE STRONGER THAN THE STRONG.

ST. LUKE, xi. 21, 22.

"When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils."

THE discourses of our blessed Saviour, and particularly his parables, admit frequently, like the prophecies of the Old Testament, of a double application; the one temporary or local, the other having reference to all ages and lands. They took their rise, for the most part, from circumstances peculiar to the Jews. But such circumstances were commonly emblematical or figurative; and therefore what they suggested would naturally be as applicable in other cases as in that more immediately concerned.

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A collection was made after this Sermon in support of the Old Charity Schools.

The passage which we now take as our subject of discourse is of the parabolic kind, and will be found to admit, if not require, the twofold application. It was in consequence of its having been insinuated that He cast out devils by the power of Beelzebub, that Christ delivered this parable. It must therefore be regarded as designed, in the first instance, to place under the right point of view the cure of demoniacs. But there is a great analogy between the case of an individual corporeally possessed by an evil spirit, and that of a sinner influenced by Satan, the great tempter and seducer. Hence, in speaking of the one, our Lord naturally, and, we can scarcely doubt, designedly, used language which is applicable to the other, or, rather, which seems to lose much of its force, if it be not taken in the wider signification. We will therefore observe for a moment how the parable rebuts the blasphemous supposition of the Pharisees, and then proceed to interpret it in that larger sense which is the more interesting and instructive to ourselves.

Now there was something very simple, and at the same time very striking, in the argument with which our Lord met those who imagined him in league with the devil. He put it to these blasphemers to consider whether, if a kingdom or a house became divided against itself, it would not thereby insure its own speedy ruin. There could be no debate upon this: and was it then to be thought that there was any such division in the kingdom of Satan, a leader as politic as

malignant, and all whose energies and agencies were centered in the one object of opposition to God? Though probably our Lord designed his argument to go yet further; for it was not impossible, that, in order to blind men to his stratagems, Satan would apparently act as though divided against himself. But those who most hated Christ were unable to bring against him any charge of vice: there was no disputing that his doctrine was according to godliness; and therefore the chief absurdity lay in supposing that Satan would aid him in miracles which were to authorize a system counter to his own. Had this been possible, there would indeed have been such evidence of division in the kingdom of Satan as might have proved that kingdom tottering to its fall. But this was incredible: and the men who heard our Lord enjoin nothing but a lofty moralitya morality which had only to prevail, and Satan's power would be overthrown-and saw him confirm his teaching by ejecting evil spirits, were bound to conclude that the kingdom of God had come upon them, and that the finger of God was busy in their midst. The only just inference, as our Lord proceeds to state, from the dispossession of demons, was that a stronger than the strong had arisen, and that it was an evidence and earnest of victory, that the garrisons, so to speak, were expelled from the holds on which they had seized.

But here the parabolic representation opens before us in the breadth which forbids our restricting it to