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how and enabled by a prudent use of small means to minister to the comfort of your brethren, and strive by neighbourly kindness to increase the value of the gift: a kind word is much to a person who is in sorrow, and will not be forgotten by Him who has promised that a cup of cold water, given because one belongs to Christ, shall in no wise lose its reward.

Are there any among you who, in the hour of sickness and distress, have received the benefit of your self-denials when in health and prosperity? To you what can I say but bid you to consecrate this day by hearty thanksgiving to God, and to ask His continued favour on yourselves, and on your companions, that you may have the satisfaction of bestowing some future day upon others the timely aid which you have yourselves received.

Remember, lastly, that all lesser bonds of union ought to be copies of that greater one which exists among Christians, and should therefore call your minds back to it. You are memsuch to feel for

bers of Christ's body, bound as

one another: "as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ:" the members therefore of that one

• St. Mark ix. 41.

body "should have the same care one for another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it P." In proportion as societies like yours exemplify this truth and recal it, they are good; but if they serve to narrow the wider bond of union, they do harm.

And now, brethren, one short word of admonition before you go. This day is to be a day of feasting with you; it is natural and expedient that it should be so: but beware lest your table be made a snare to you: excess and drunkenness are no fit commemoration of a Christian society; may we not rather be sure that they will bring on it God's wrath?

Be sober then, and temperate: your mirth will be none the less, your regrets will be fewer. Commend yourselves and your undertaking by humble prayer to God's good keeping. Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it"."

P 1 Cor. xii. 12, 25, 26.

9 Psalm cxxvii. 1.

r Psalm lxix. 23.

SERMON II.

GALATIANS vi. 2.

"Bear ye one another's burthens, and so fulfil the law of Christ."

THE event which our Church celebrates to-day by a special service is the Ascension of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ into heaven; the conclusion of His ministry upon earth in our nature. And though we are met here to-day with a special and peculiar purpose of our own, this is no reason for our forgetting that object which all Christians ought to have for their thoughts and meditations. It would not be right that we should allow a festival of our own appointment to put out of our minds one which is common to the whole Church of Christ; and not only would it not be right, it would not be expedient for us. As members of a friendly society we come to church to-day to remind ourselves that there are other reasons for joining such associations beside the prospect of advantage to ourselves and to enforce these

other reasons upon our hearts and consciences no thought can be more suitable than the remembrance of Him Who as on this day ascended to the glory which He had with the Father but left for our sake; ascended after that He had been seen of His disciples for forty days from the time that He triumphed over the power of death, and had spoken to them during those days "of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God" reminding them of many precepts which He had delivered before, and telling them of much more which it concerned them to know respecting the ordering of that kingdom which He had established in the earth. In selecting therefore for our consideration this morning the passage I have read, I desire to join together two distinct thoughts which may yet well harmonize and make each other clear; I wish to shew first what is meant by the command to "bear one another's burthens," and next how in so doing we in a peculiar manner "fulfil the law of Christ;" carry out into our daily practice some part of that which He spoke concerning the kingdom of God ere He ascended far above the heavens, being seen by the eye of flesh no longer, but still seen continually by the faithful spiritual eyes of those who "in heart and mind

a Acts i. 3.

C

thither ascend b," dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto;" yet ever spiritually present in His Church.

I. The image employed in the text is one of those many simple images scattered through Holy Scripture which are open to the understanding of all and are yet full of the deepest meaning. When is it that we feel a weight or burthen? not when we are resting ourselves by sitting or lying down, for then we should rest our burthens also, but while we are moving along. It is plain then that the Apostle means to represent us all as on a journey, travelling towards some place where we are at last to rest, or at all events to cease from travelling and come to our journey's end.

This, I need scarcely tell you, for I am sure you must all understand, is the journey of life a journey which must be taken by all, which begins when we are born into the world, and ends in the valley of the shadow of death, which when our time is come receives us all, 'high and low, rich and poor, one with another.'

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To represent life by this image is common in Scripture. When "Pharaoh said unto Jacob, How old art thou? Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an

b Collect for Ascension-day.

c 1 Tim. vi, 16.

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