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tabors," saith the Spirit, "and their works do follow them." If the love of the Father be in us, where is the thing done which we have to show? You think justly, feel rightly — yes, but your work. Produce it. Men of wealth, men of talent, men of leisure, What are you doing in God's world for God?

Observe, however, to distinguish between the act and the actor: it is not the thing done, but the Doer, wlio lasts. The thing done often is a failure. The cup given in the name of Christ may be given to one unworthy of it; but think ye that the love with which it was given has passed away? Has it not printed itself indelibly in the character, by the very act of giving? Bless, and if the Son of peace be there, your act succeeds; but if not, your blessing shall re turn unto you again. In other words, the act may fail, but the doer of it abideth forever.

We close this subject with two practical truths.

First of all, let us learn from earthly changefulness a lesson of cheerful activity. The world has its way of looking at all this, but it is not the Christian's way. There has been nothing said to-day that a worldly moralist has not already said a thousand times far bet ter. The fact is a world-fact. The application is a Christian one. Every man can be eloquent about the nothingness of time.

But the application! Let us eat and drink, for to morrow we die? That is one application. Let us sentimentalize and be sad in this fleeting world, and talk of the instability of human greatness, and the transi toriness of human affection? Those are the only two applications the world knows. ollection, and are merry; or, they dwell on it, and are

They shut out the rec

sad. Christian brethren, dwell on it, and be happy. This world is not yours: thank God it is not. It is dropping away from you like worn-out autumn leaves; but beneath it, hidden in it, there is another world lying as the flower lies in the bud. That is your world, which must burst forth at last into eternal luxuriance. All you stand on, see, and love, is but the husk of some thing better. Things are passing; our friends are dropping off from us; strength is giving way; our relish for earth is going; and the world no longer wears to our hearts the radiance that once it wore. We have the same sky above us, and the same scenes around us; but the freshness that our hearts extracted from everything in boyhood, and the glory that seemed to rest once on earth and life, have faded away forever. Sad and gloomy truths to the man who is going down to the grave with his work undone. Not sad to the Chris tian; but rousing, exciting, invigorating. If it be the eleventh hour, we have no time for folding of the hands; we will work the faster. Through the changefulness of life; through the solemn tolling of the bell of Time, which tells us that another, and another, and another, are gone before us; through the noiseless rush. of a world which is going down with gigantic footsteps into nothingness. Let not the Christian slack his hand. from work; for he that doeth the will of God may defy hell itself to quench his immortality.

Finally, The love of this world is only unlearned. by the love of the Father. It were a desolate thing, indeed, to forbid the love of earth, if there were nothing to fill the vacant space in the heart. But it is just for this purpose, that a sublimer affection may find room, that the lower is to be expelled. And there is

only one way in which that higher love is learned. The cross of Christ is the measure of the love of God to us, and the measure of the meaning of man's exist ence. The measure of the love of God. - Through the death-knell of a passing universe, God seems at least to speak to us in wrath. There is no doubt of what God means in the cross. He means love. The measure of the meaning of man's existence. Measure all by the cross. Do you want success? The cross is failure. Do you want a name? The cross is infamy. Is it to be gay and happy that you ive? The cross is pain and sharpness. Do you live that the will of God may be done, in you and by you, in life and death? Then, and only then, the spirit of the cross is in you. When once a man has learned that, the power of the world is gone; and no man need bid him, in denunciation or in invitation, not to love the world. He cannot love the world: for he has got an ambition above the world. He has planted his foot upon a Rock, and when all else is gone, he at least abides forever.

17*

XIV.

[Preached November 14, 1852.]

THE SYDENHAM PALACE, AND THE RELIGIOUS NON
OBSERVANCE OF THE SABBATH.

ROM. xiv. 5, 6

"One man esteemeth one day above another; another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God

thanks."

suggested by one of Lately, projects have importance surpasses

THE selection of this text is the current topics of the day. been devised, one of which in all the rest, for providing places of public recreation for the people; and it has been announced, with the sanction of government, that such a place will be held open during a part, at least, of the day of rest. By a large section of sincerely religious persons this an nouncement has been received with considerable alarm and strenuous opposition. It has seemed to them that such a desecration would be a national crime; for, holding the Sabbaths to be God's signs between Himself and His people, they cannot but view the desecration of the sign as a forfeiture of His covenant, and an act which will assuredly call down.

national judgments. By the secular press, on the contrary, this proposal has been defended with consider able power. It has been maintained that the Sabbath is a Jewish institution in its strictness, at all events, not binding on a Christian community. It has been urged with much force that we cannot consistently refuse to concede to the poor man publicly, that right of recreation which privately the rich man has long taken without rebuke, and with no protest on the part of the ministers of Christ. And it has been said that such places of recreation will tend to humanize-which, if not identical with Christianizing the popula tion, is at least a step towards it.

--

Upon such a subject, where truth unquestionably does not lie upon the surface, it cannot be out of place if a minister of Christ endeavors to direct the minds. of his congregation towards the formation of an opinion; not dogmatically, but humbly remembering always that his own temptation is, from his very posi tion, as a clergyman, to view such matters not so much in the broad light of the possibilities of actual life, as with the eyes of a recluse from a clerical and ecclesiastical, rather than from a large and human -point of view. For no minister of Christ has a right to speak oracularly. All that he can pretend to do is to give his judgment, as one that has obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. And, on large national subjects, there is perhaps no class so ill qualified to form a judgment with breadth, as we, the clergy of the Church of England, accustomed as we are to move in the narrow circle of those who listen to us with forbearance and deference, and mixing but little in real life, till, in our cloistered and inviolable sanctu

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