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"I die in all humility, knowing well that we are all alike before the Throne of God, and request, therefore, that my mortal remains be conveyed to the grave without any pomp or state. They are to be moved to St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where I request to have as private and quiet a funeral as possible.

"I particularly desire not to be laid out in state, and the funeral to take place by daylight, no procession, the coffin to be carried by sailors to the chapel.

"All those of my friends and relations, to a limited number, who wish to attend, may do so. My nephew, Prince Edward of Saxe Weimar, Lords Howe and Denbigh, the Hon. William Ashley, Mr. Wood, Sir Andrew Barnard, and Sir D. Davis, with my dressers, and those of my ladies who may wish to attend.

"I die in peace, and wish to be carried to the tomb in peace, and free from the vanities and the pomp of this world.

'I request not to be dissected, nor embalmed; and desire to give as little trouble as possible.

(Signed)

"November, 1849."

"ADELAIDE R.

SERMONS.

Second Series.

I.

THE STAR IN THE EAST.

Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him."-Matt. ii. 1, 2.

OUR subject is the Manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles. The King of the Jews has become the Sovereign of the world: a fact, one would think, which must cause a secret complacency in the heart of all Jews. For that which is most deeply working in modern life and thought is the mind of Christ. His name has passed over our institutions, and much more has His spirit penetrated into our social and domestic existence. In other words, a Hebrew mind is now, and has been for centuries, ruling Europe.

But the Gospel which He proclaimed was not limited to the Hebrews: it was a Gospel for the nations. By the death of Christ, God has struck His death-blow at the root of the hereditary principle. "We be the seed of Abraham " was the proud pretension of the Israelite; and he was told by Christ's Gospel that spiritual dignity rests not upon spiritual descent, but upon spiritual character. New tribes were adopted into the Christian union, and it became clear that there was no distinction of race in the spiritual family. The Jewish rite of circumcision-a symbol of exclusiveness, cutting off one nation from all others-was exchanged for Baptism, the symbol of universality, proclaiming the nearness of all to God, His paternity over the human race, and the Sonship of all who chose to claim their privileges.

This was a Gospel for the world, and nation after nation

accepted it. Churches were formed; the kingdom which is the domain of love grew; the Roman Empire crumbled into fragments; but every fragment was found pregnant with life. It brake not as some ancient temple might break, its broken pieces lying in lifeless ruin, overgrown with weeds: rather as one of those mysterious animals break, of which, if you rend them asunder, every separate portion forms itself into a new and complete existence. Rome gave way; but every portion became a Christian kingdom, alive with the mind of Christ, and developing the Christian idea after its own peculiar nature.

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The portion of Scripture selected for the text and for the gospel of the day has an important bearing on this great Epiphany. The "wise men belonged to a creed of very hoary and venerable antiquity; a system, too, which had in it the elements of strong vitality. For seven centuries after, the Mohammedan sword scarcely availed to extirpate itindeed could not. They whom the Mohammedan called fireworshippers clung to their creed with vigor and indestructible tenacity, in spite of all his efforts.

Here then, in this act of homage to the Messiah, were the representatives of the highest then existing influences of the world, doing homage to the Lord of a mightier influence, and reverently bending before the dawn of the Star of a new and brighter Day. It was the first distinct turning of the Gentile mind to Christ; the first instinctive craving after a something higher than Gentilism could ever satisfy.

In this light our thoughts arrange themselves thus:
I. The expectation of the Gentiles.

II. The Manifestation or Epiphany.

I. The expectation: "Where is He that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen His star in the east, and are come to worship Him.'

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Observe-1. The craving for eternal life. The "wise men were "Magians," that is, Persian priests. The name, howeyer, was extended to all the Eastern philosophers who professed that religion, or even that philosophy. The Magians were chiefly distinguished by being worshippers of the stars, or students of astronomy.

Now astronomy is a science which arises from man's need of religion; other sciences spring out of wants bounded by this life. For instance, anatomy presupposes disease. There would be no prying into our animal frame, no anatomy, were there not a malady to stimulate the inquiry. Navigation arises from the necessity of traversing the seas to appropri

ate the produce of other countries. Charts, and maps, and soundings are made, because of a felt earthly want. But in astronomy the first impulse of mankind came not from the craving of the intellect, but from the necessities of the soul.

If you search down into the constitution of your being till you come to the lowest deep of all, underlying all other wants you will find a craving for what is infinite-a something that desires perfection-a wish that nothing but the thought of that which is eternal can satisfy. To the untutored mind nowhere was that want so called into consciousness, perhaps, as beneath the mighty skies of the East. Serene and beautiful are the nights in Persia, and many a wise man in earlier days, full of deep thoughts, went out into the fields like Isaac to meditate at eventide. God has so made us that the very act of looking up produces in us perceptions of the sublime. And then those skies in their calm depths mirroring that which is boundless in space and illimitable in time, with a silence profound as death and a motion gliding on forever, as if symbolizing eternity of life, no wonder if men associated with them their highest thoughts, and conceived them to be the home of Deity-no wonder if an Eternal Destiny seemed to sit enthroned there-no wonder if they seemed to have in their mystic motion an invisible sympathy with human life and its mysterious destinies-no wonder if he who could read best their laws was reckoned best able to interpret the duties of this life, and all that connects man with that which is invisible-no wonder if, in those devout days of young thought, science was only another name for religion, and the Priest of the great temple of the universe was also the Priest in the temple made with hands. Astronomy was the religion of the world's youth. The Magians were led by the star to Christ; their astronomy was the very pathway to their Saviour.

Upon this I make one or two remarks.

1. The folly of depreciating human wisdom. Of all vanities, the worst is the vanity of ignorance. It is common enough to hear learning decried, as if it were an opposite of religion. If that means that science is not religion, and that the man who can calculate the motions of the stars may never have bowed his soul to Christ, it contains a truth, But if it means, as it often does, that learning is a positive incumbrance and hindrance to religion, then it is as much as to say that the God of nature is not the God of grace; that the more you study the Creator's works, the farther you remove from Himself: nay, we must go farther to be consistent, and

hold, as most uncultivated and rude nations do, that the state of idiocy is nearest to that of inspiration.

There are expressions of St. Paul often quoted as sanctioning this idea. He tells his converts to beware "lest any man spoil you through philosophy." Whereupon we take for granted that modern philosophy is a kind of antagonist to Christianity. This is one instance out of many of the way in which an ambiguous word misunderstood becomes the source of infinite error. Let us hear St. Paul. He bids Timothy "beware of profane and old wives' fables." He speaks of endless genealogies"-" worshipping of angels ""intruding into those things which men have not seen."

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This

was the philosophy of those days: a system of wild fancies spun out of the brain-somewhat like what we might now call demonolatry: but as different from philosophy as any two things can differ.

They forget, too, another thing. Philosophy has become. Christian; science has knelt to Christ. There is a deep significance in that homage of the Magians. For it in fact was but a specimen and type of that which science has been doing ever since. The mind of Christ has not only entered into the Temple, and made it the house of prayer, it has entered into the temple of science, and purified the spirit of philosophy. This is its spirit now, as, expounded by its chief interpreter, "Man, the interpreter of Nature, knows nothing, and can do nothing, except that which Nature teaches him." What is this but science bending before the Child, becoming childlike, and, instead of projecting its own fancies upon God's world, listening reverently to hear what It has to teach him? In a similar spirit, too, spoke the greatest of philosophers, in words. quoted in every child's book: "I am but a child, picking up pebbles on the shore of the great sea of truth."

Oh, be sure all the universe tells of Christ and leads to Christ. Rightly those ancient Magians deemed, in believing that God was worshipped truly in that august temple. The stars preach the mind of Christ. Not as of old, when a mystic star guided their feet to Bethlehem, but now, to the mind of the astronomer, they tell of eternal order and harmony; they speak of changeless law, where no caprice reigns. You may calculate the star's return: and to the day, and hour, and minute it will be there. This is the fidelity of God. These mute masses obey the law impressed upon them by their Creator's hand, unconsciously: and that law is the law of their own nature. To understand the laws of our nature, and consciously and reverently to obey them, that is the mind of Christ, the sublimest spirit of the Gospel.

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