thus to establish the connexion of this entire subject with the Gospel for the Day :-" Verily, verily, I say unto you: Except ye eat the flesh. of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood, hath eternal Life.". "As the living FATHER hath sent Me, and I live by the FATHER; So he that eateth Me, even he shall live by Me!"... Sacramental Communion with CHRIST is therefore CHRIST'S own great appointed means for sustaining that new Life which the soul receives originally in Holy Baptism, and receives from GOD.

Let the sum of the matter be stated in conclusion in a few plain words.-Our Life is onein Time and in Eternity: one long, continuous, unbroken, never ending life. And in this life, what men call "Death" is an inevitable incident. But GOD uses the terms "Life" and "Death" in quite a distinct and different meaning. To be in Him, is to live. "Life" is the name which He gives to the state of that soul which is united by faith to its LORD. To be cast off from Him is to die; and the state of one effectually separated from Him, He calls "Death." In this, He hath been constant and consistent from the beginning. When He told our first

Parents that in the day they ate of the forbidden Tree, they should surely die,-He declared the soul to be dead when once it has fallen away from communion with Himself. The lie of Satan, ("Thou shalt not surely die,") was a base equivocation; little understood (it may be thought) by her to whom the sophistical promise and persuasion were addressed. Our first Parents did indeed live on,-so far as breathing and eating, waking and sleeping, moving and feeling and acting, is to live: but the hidden reality was very awful, and presented a far different aspect. Henceforth, they only lived, in that by faith they apprehended the promised MESSIAH. The need of Sacrifice for Sin was taught them; and of them and their posterity it was just as true as it is of us at the present day," he that believeth on the SoN hath everlasting Life: and he that believeth not the Son, shall not see Life, but the wrath of Gon abideth in him." And again, before describing that Sacramental Communion of which we have already spoken, our SAVIOUR says,-" Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on Me hath everlasting Life."

I invite you to make this a practical matter by many a time asking yourselves whereby ye

know ye live. His state surely is terrible, past words, who "is dead while he yet liveth!" Consider, I pray you, that it is no license of language to assert that in GoD's sight, some who "have a name that they live" must be but living corpses. They walk hither and thither,-buy and sell, eat, drink, and are merry,-anticipate for themselves many years of enjoyment of the good things which they have laid up. Perfectly correct they may prove in this anticipation. What if they should come to four-scoreand-ten years? survive their generation? die at last not without some measure of human applause? Alas, they were dead while they lived!

Do any ask for the outward signs of this terrible state? The tokens I am about to name are fallacious, I grant: but I suppose they are such as these:-There was a life of estrangement from GOD's House and GOD's Sacraments. There was a life of which the days began and ended without prayer. God's Word was no joy. The very thought of GOD was an intrusion. All the Service was an unwilling, a grudging service. Above all, there was at least some one favourite sin indulged: ("is it not a little one? it was asked :") and instead of Faith and

Love ruling the heart, there was blank unbelief and terrible Fear. Was there not also, instead of that passionate cry, "LORD, be merciful to me a sinner," was there not an eager snatching at every human dream of deathbed conversion,irresponsibility,-universal forgiveness,-election to Glory, repose in Death,-anything in short, rather than the sober Truth of Scripture, as witnessed to by the universal Church? He who indeed "loves Life," will watch with alarm the first beginnings of decay in his spiritual state. And there will be secret communings with self; and strong supplications to the GOD of the spirits of all flesh; and there will be a patient doing of "the first works." Yes, acts of obedience there must be; a life schooled in a hundred nameless particulars to God's revealed Will. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep My saying, He shall never see Death."

Fifth Sunday in Lent.

THE FOURTEEN DAYS BEFORE EASTER.

EXODUS iii. 8.

I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians.

THE most inattentive must be struck, I should think, by the choice of the proper Lessons at this Season. We began the Bible on Septuagesima Sunday; that is, on the third Sunday before Lent, thus sounding a note of preparation for all that was to follow; and the Church, (or, if you please, the Voice of GOD,) has been speaking in plainer and yet plainer accents to us ever since. Lot, narrowly rescued from the judgment which fell on guilty Sodom;-Abraham, tried by the command to offer up his son Isaac ;-Isaac, deceived by Jacob ;—Jacob, exercised by his daughter's fall and his sons' fierce cruelty ;-Joseph, tempted and persecuted in the house of Potiphar;-Joseph's brethren, dis