make them hate and fear their neighbours, because they know that their neighbours do not respect them, or are afraid of their neighbours finding them out.

What says brave, plain-spoken St. James?'Let no man say when he is tempted, I am 'tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted ' with evil, neither tempteth he any man.' 'From whence come wars and fightings among you? 'Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? Ye lust, and have 'not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot 'obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because 'ye ask not.'

But as for God, he says, from him comes nothing but good. Do not fancy anything else. 'Do not err, my beloved brethren. Every good

'gift and every perfect gift is from above, and 'cometh down from the Father of lights, with 'whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turn'ing. Of His own will begat He us with the 'word of truth, that we should be a kind of 'firstfruits of His creatures.'

My friends, all these things were written for our examples. God grant that we may lay the lesson to heart. A dark night may come to any one of us, a night of darkness upon darkness, and sorrow upon sorrow, and bad luck upon bad luck; till

we know not what is going to happen next; and are ready to say with David-'All thy waves ' and thy billows are gone over me;' and with Hezekiah'I reckoned till morning, that, as a 'lion, so will he break all my bones from 'day even to night wilt thou make an end ' of me.'

God grant, that before that day comes, we may have so learnt to know God, as to know that the billows are God's billows, and the storms his storms; and, after a while, not to be afraid, though all earthly hope and help seem swept away. God grant that when trouble comes after trouble, we may be able to see that our Father in heaven is only dealing with us as he dealt with those poor Jews; that he is all the while saying 'Peace!' to us, whether we be near him, or far off from him; and is ready to heal us, the moment that he has worked in us the broken and contrite heart. And we may trust him that he will do it. him one day is as a thousand years. And in one day of bitter misery he can teach us lessons, which we could not teach ourselves in a thousand years of reading and studying, or even of praying. But our prayers, we shall find, have not been in vain. He has not forgotten one of them; and there is the answer, in that very sorrow. In sorrow,

With

he

is making short work with our spirits. In one

terrible and searching trial our souls may be, as

the Poet says—

Heated hot with burning fears,

And bathed in baths of hissing tears;

And battered by the strokes of doom,
To shape and use.

Yes. He will make short work at times with men's spirits. He grinds hearts to powder, that they may be broken and contrite before him: but only that he may heal them; that out of the broken fragments of the hard, proud, self-deceiving heart of stone, he may create a new and harder heart of flesh, human and gentle, humble and simple. And then he will return and have mercy. He will show that he will not contend for ever. He will show that he does not wish our spirits to fail before him, but to grow and flourish before him to everlasting life. He will create the fruit of the lips, and give us cause to thank him in spirit and in truth. He will show us that he was nearest when he seemed furthest off; and that just because he is the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, who dwelleth in the high and holy place, for that very reason he dwells also with the humble and the contrite heart; because that heart alone can confess his height and its own lowliness, confess its own sin and his holiness; and so can cling to

his majesty by faith, and partake of his holiness by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit.

God grant that we may all so humble ourselves under his mighty hand, whenever that hand lies heavy upon us, that he may raise us up in due time, changed into his divine likeness, from glory to glory; till we come to the measure of Christ, and to the stature of perfect men, renewed into the image of the Son of Man, Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen.

SERMON XVIII.

ST. PETER.

MATT. XVI. 18.

Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church.

THIS is St. Peter's day. It will be well worth

our while to think a little over St. Peter, and what kind of man he was. For St. Peter was certainly one of the most important and most famous men who ever lived in the whole world. You just heard what our Lord said to him in the text. And certainly, from those words, and from many other things which are told of St. Peter, he was the chief of the apostles-at least till St. Paul

arose.

St. Paul says himself, that he had as much authority as St. Peter, and that he was not a whit behind the very chiefest of the apostles: but St. Peter, for some time after our Lord's death, seems to have been looked up to, by the rest of the apostles and the disciples, as their leader, the man of most weight and authority