this morning from Christ's communion. But were we thankful who staid behind? O if we were, if we felt that we had received mercy, then let us faint not; let us remember our infinite debt, -or, to speak more truly, for it is not a debt, -let us remember the infinite love which our heavenly Father has shown us, to excite us to love him in return. It is not a debt; if it were, how could we ever pay it? Our debts have been paid already to the full; God has himself paid them, by giving his only Son to die for us. It is not a debt, but it is God's free love to us, who giveth liberally to all men, and upbraideth not; but it is free and infinite love, which, not to feel and to return, is vileness. O labour we then in our several callings; labour we, and faint not! Christ tells us how we may show our love of him, by keeping his commandments, and by loving one another. By loving one another truly, so truly, as to desire that we may all be together with Christ for all eternity. By loving one another so truly, as to try to forward each other in the way of our best happiness. By loving one another so truly, as not to love, far less to encourage, but to grieve for each other's faults, and to try to lessen them. Well may we pray that we faint not, for indeed there is much to be done by all of us. May God give us the heart both to will and to

do; that, as we have, above the common lot of our brethren, received abundant mercies, so we may be enabled, through God's grace, to show forth more abundantly our love towards God and towards one another!

SERMON XXX.

OUTWARD CHANGES.

PSALM, XXX. 6-8.

And in my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong: thou didst hide thy face, and I was troubled. I cried to thee, O Lord; and unto the Lord I made supplication.

ALL Christians, in all ages, have delighted in the habitual use of the Book of Psalms. It is not only that they are still our favourite songs of praise in our public worship; but in private houses, by the sick bed, or in seasons of sorrow, or of care, or of joy, when we feel that we have offended God, or when we are more than usually full of love and gratitude to him, the Psalms furnish us with expressions suited to our various wants, and more exactly meeting the occasion than any words of our own. For although the direct allusions to a life after death occur only very seldom, and

although for this reason hymns written under the Christian dispensation might seem more natural to us, yet, so entire is the trust in God, so ardent the hope, and so strong the faith in his promises expressed in the Psalms, that their language comes up as fully to the hope and faith of a Christian, as if, like the Gospel, it had openly declared salvation through the blood of Jesus Christ.

An instance of what I have been saying, is to be found in the words of the text. They record an experience of the writer which belongs, or will belong, equally to us all. They describe three states which are, or have been, or will be, all ours. That is, we all know, or have known, or shall know, two of these states; it would be happy for us if we should all as surely know the third also. We are sure of knowing the prosperity and the carelessness, and the chastening; would to God that we might all know also the penitence and the final blessing.

The first state is thus described; "In my prosperity I said, I shall never be moved. Lord, by thy favour thou hast made my mountain to stand strong." When I said that we were sure of knowing this state, I meant so far as it is a state of prosperity; it does not follow that we shall share all the feelings described as belonging to it. We are all enjoying our good things, and apt enough to set our hearts on them, and to trust

to their continuing with us; but I do not know that we all thank God for them, or acknowledge even in word that they come from his goodness. So in the boastful prayer of the Pharisee in the Gospel, who gloried that he was not as other men were; we share enough in his pride, and are inclined enough to think too well of ourselves; but I do not know that we should equally agree with him in thanking God as the author of our supposed superiority. And thus the words both of that parable and of the verses in the text do but condemn us the more. For if it were pride when it sounded like thankfulness; if even whilst acknowledging God as the author of all our blessings and advantages, we really are not glorifying him, but ourselves, and value ourselves rather for having them than God for giving them to us; how much more manifestly is it pride and sin if we do not think of God at all, but confine our rejoicing wholly to our own state, without so much as a thought on him to whom we are indebted for it!

I said that we all had experience of the first state described by the Psalmist, the state of prosperity. Some fancy, when they hear the word

66

prosperity," that it belongs only to great and high fortunes, and so they think that it does not apply to them. But indeed there is not one of us here to whom it does not apply; for what seems