DEDICATION. TO THE HONORABLE AND RIGHT REV. HENRY RYDER, D. D. LORD BISHOP OF LICHFIELD AND COVENTRY. MY LORD, If these Sermons strictly corresponded with the title prefixed to them, I should present them to your Lordship with but little diffidence. They might still be without any recommendations to general favor and attention, but their character would secure for them your approbation. Appointed the minister of a country parish, it has been my wish, as well as my duty, to break through trains of thought and modes of expression, which a long residence in a somewhat different situation had made familiar to me, and to adapt my language and ideas to the congregation of a village church. If I have not succeeded in attaining these objects, my failure has not been the result of indifference, or of a shrinking from effort. I have not delivered to my parishioners sermons which have cost me nothing; nor am I conscious of having had any other end in view in the composition of them, than that of expressing the weighty truths they contain, with plainness and force. My anxiety on this point may have been excessive. It may still be derogatory to the greatness of Him, without whom simplicity is as powerless as the most adorned rhetoric, and who can make even this humble volume an instrument of unspeakable blessedness to the least cultivated reader into whose hands he may suffer it to fall. Its appearance before the public in connection with your name, would have been to me, under any circumstances, a source of no ordinary pleasure, but I must now attach to this distinction a peculiar value, since it affords me an opportunity of openly acknowledging the kindness, which has placed me in the number of those who are indebted for the stations they hold in the church, to your Lordship's unsolicited patronage. I am, my Lord, Your most obliged and obedient Servant, 5 CONTENTS. ST. LUKE vi. 47, 48, 49.-Whosoever cometh to me, and heareth my sayings, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like: he is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it, for it was founded upon a rock. But he that heareth and doeth not, is like a man, that, without a foundation, built an house upon the earth; against which the stream did beat vehemently, and im- Sins blotted out by God. ISAIAH xliii. 25.-I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy The Character of the Pardoned. ST. LUKE vii. 37, 38.-Behold, a woman in the city, which Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs The Afflicted David a Pardoned Sinner. 2 SAMUEL xii. 13.--Nathan said unto David, The Lord Page 79. The Message sent to St. Paul in the Storm. ACTS xxvii. 23, 24.-There stood by me this night the angel SERMON XIX. SERMON XX. The Streams from the Rock at Horeb. PSALM 1xxviii. 16.-He brought streams also out of the rock. SERMON XXI. ST. LUKE XV. 4, 5, 6.-What man of you, having an hun- dred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he conieth home, he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying ST. LUKE XVI. 22.-It came to pass that the beggar died, and The Prayer of Christ for his Church. ST. JOHN Xvii. 24.-Father, I will that they also whom thou ST. LUKE iii. 21, 22.-Now when all the people were bap tized, it came to pass that Jesus also being baptized and praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Ghost de scended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a ST. JOHN XX. 26, 27, 28.-And after eight days again his disciples were within, and Thomas with them. Then came Jesus, the doors being shut, and stood in the midst, and said, Peace be unto you. Then saith he to Thomas, Reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side; and be not The Redeemed Sinner` a Temple of God. 1 CORINTHIANS vi. 19, 20.-What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God? and ye are not your own, for ye ST. MATTHEW xv. 28.-Jesus answered and said unto her, |