SERMON IX.

CHRIST'S ADVENT.

MATTHEW, xxi. 9.

And the multitudes that went before and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David.

LUKE, Xxiii. 20, 21.

Pilate, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them; but they cried, saying, Crucify him, Crucify him.

THESE two events took place within a week of one another. And although it would not be safe to assume that all those who cried, "Crucify him," had been amongst those who had so lately cried, "Hosanna to the Son of David:" yet as each of these cries is described as having been the general voice, at the time when it was uttered, there must have been a great many persons who joined, and, most probably, with equal earnestness, in both. The cause, indeed, of the change of feeling is not

difficult to understand. The people received Christ as their King, and expected Messiah; but finding that he did not answer to their expectations of him, that he made no attempt to rouse them against Cæsar, or to call on them to resist paying tribute to the Romans, they soon began to think that he must have deceived them; their old notion returned, that his signs and wonders had been done through the help of evil spirits, and their violence against him was exactly in proportion to the high-raised hopes which his conduct had disappointed.

But all this is but a matter of history: the feelings of the people of Jerusalem, and the causes which led to them, are, in themselves, only a subject of curiosity. The verses, however, which I have read as the text, are something more than historical. The change which they describe is felt by more than the people of Jerusalem: it is one which, within a time as short, is constantly experienced by ourselves. On the Sunday we may be joining, in all sincerity, in the cry of "Hosanna to the Son of David;" and before the end of the week, our hearts may be saying in effect, "Crucify him, crucify him!" A change even more sudden than this was felt by the Apostles, on the very night on which our Lord was betrayed. For after they had exclaimed, in the fullest earnestness, "We believe that thou camest forth from God;"

Jesus said to them, "Do ye now believe? Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour cometh, yea, is now come, when you shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone." And so it happened immediately afterwards, for they all forsook him, and fled.

These, then, are both instances of what we know well enough in general, though in our own case we are for ever forgetting it, that little reliance is to be placed upon feeling, be it as sincere as it will. The faith which a strong excitement kindles, disappointment will soon put out; and who is there but must expect to meet with disappointment? These moments of solemn and raised feeling ;such as the instant of Christ's entrance into Jerusalem, with the memory of his having just freed Lazarus from the bands of death, fresh in the minds of all; or such as when his disciples, knowing that he was so soon to leave them, heard him assert that he was but going to return whence he came; that he had come forth from his Father into the world, and was now going to leave the world, and go to his Father;-these moments, which are full of the divinest happiness to him whose habits of life are consistent, and his fear of God perpetual, are even dangerous to those whom they find, as it were, unprepared to receive them. They are dangerous, although they may be also most salutary; for as a dull and careless soul may,

on the one hand, be roused by such strong impressions, and thus brought, as it never else would have been, to seriousness and repentance; so, on the other hand, it may be roused, and be satisfied with being so it may be wholly taken up with the great and new pleasure of its actual sensations, and thus may neglect the opportunity of changing them into something substantial and lasting. Then it comes to pass that they soon vanish, and leave the mind in a duller state, and harder to be roused, than when they first visited it.

These thoughts have been brought to my mind by more than one circumstance connected with this day. First, there was the communion in the morning, a strong exciter of good and holy thoughts in those who partake of it; and of thoughts which, in too many cases, do not outlive the day which called them forth. Again, for all of us, whether we have attended the communion or no, the return of this day, with the parts of Scripture chosen for the service of it, is, to my mind, always a remarkable period. The mere circumstance of beginning once again the yearly round of our Sunday services is, to one who notices it, not less solemn than the beginning again of the natural year. And here we commonly do notice it; because it is a period which always marks the near approach of our holidays. Thus much, however, is merely outward; it is no more than what we feel at beginning again

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any uniform round, which we have often gone over before; and this, therefore, is a feeling which grows with our years, and with the number and interest of those associations, which are linked with its past revolutions. But there is another point which marks the services of this day more particularly; -it is called Advent, that is, " coming;" and though by Christmas-day so soon following it, it may seem to refer, and does, indeed, historically, to Christ's coming in the flesh, yet the language of the Collects, as well as of the Epistles and Gospels, for all these Sundays, shows that it would lead our minds no less to Christ's second coming, his coming to judgment: and as every year leads us further away from the first, so it brings us nearer to the second. Nor is it without its use to think how many centuries of hope deferred have passed away, since St. Paul wrote the words which were read in the Epistle this morning. Even then they looked forward to that day as close at hand, of whose rising we even yet behold no certain dawn. Yet watching the course of things, since the Messiah first opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers, we see how the purposes of God have been steadily ripening, and how, had the world closed indeed, according to the expectation of the apostolical age, before that very generation had all passed away, its close must have seemed premature. Not, then, as men disappointed, and,