as I could collect it from the hurried manner

in which she spoke, was this. She was the daughter of very respectable parents in the middle rank of society, who owned a small estate in the neighbouring parish; and had all but fallen a victim to the plans and artifices of an accomplished villain. Your Church, Sir'-and the tears flowed thick and fast down her pale and agitated countenance- was to me on that evening a Zoar, for it saved me from ruin. When I think of him, of his treachery, of his artifice, of what I might have been, here and hereafterlet me, Sir, weep on-there are other tears besides those of sorrow....

...When I married some months afterwards, my first care ere I quitted my home, and annually, while circumstances permitted it, was an endeavour to perpetuate those lessons of holiness for the benefit of others, to which I felt myself, individually, so deeply indebted. My parents are both dead; my husband I have lost in battle. And with wealth alike beyond my deserts or desires, I am come to spend my last hours near that temple, with which my grateful recollections of the past, and my brightest anticipations of the future, are inseparably blended.""

FAITHFULNESS THE ATTRIBUTE OF GOD.

DEUTERONOMY VII. 9.—“ Know, therefore, that the Lord thy God, he is God; the faithful God."

Of all the attributes which belong to our God, there is none more striking than His immutability. While all around us is subject to change, he still continues the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever;" while year after year produces constant alteration in our neighbourhood, in our families, in our situation, and in ourselves, "in him there is neither variableness, nor shadow of turning." As he was to the Israelites amid all their wanderings; as he was to Moses in all his trials; as Joseph found him in the dungeon, and Daniel in the lion's den; so he continues to us at this very day, this very hour,--" the faithful God."

Could any thing teach a lesson to man,-presumptuous, self-confident man,-and force on him the frailty and nothingness of his being,

it would be the contrast between his own fleeting existence, and the duration of natural objects around him. They remain uninjured and unimpaired, when time has dealt destruction and decay upon ourselves. The river glides on, murmuring to the air and glistening in the sun, as it murmured and glistened in our youth, in the youth of our fathers. The tree which flourished in majesty in our childhood, flourishes in majesty still. Even the works of human hands mock those that reared them. Where are the heads that planned, and the hands which raised this venerable House of God? * Where are the beating hearts that

Preached in December, 1828, at Monkwearmouth, the oldest church but one in the kingdom. Jarrow is ascertained to have been built A.D. 685, and Monkwearmouth a year later. I joyfully avail myself of this opportunity of placing on record my affectionate gratitude towards a parish and people, whose kindness, from the beginning to the close of our connection, knew neither change nor abatement; and whose munificence was beyond either my desires or deserts.

May every earthly blessing be theirs. I ever look back on the period of our connection with delight. And what my desire in ministering among them was, such is my prayer now, that in life they may show forth the power of the Gospel; that in death they may feel its support; so that "whether living or dying, they may be the Lord's."

K

so anxiously watched its progress, and so joyously hailed its completion? Stilled in the silence of the grave. The fruit of their labours survives them in vigour and beauty, while they have crumbled into dust. But with the Almighty Architect it is not so. He remains the unchangeable Eternal; from everlasting to everlasting he is God.

In touching on this stupendous subject, I shall enquire,

I. How WE DISCOVER OUR GOD TO BE A FAITHFUL GOD;

II. THE CONSEQUENCES

HIS FAITHFULNESS.

RESULTING FROM

First, then we discover the unchangeableness of our God from the book of Nature. We find every thing around us in a state of dissolution and decay. If we survey this fair and beautiful creation, or regard the starry firmament of Heaven, and look upwards through the stream of ages that are past, we shall come to a time when they did not exist: if we look onward to the ages which are before us, we shall come to a time when they shall be no more. Below, change is every where visible. We see the familiar objects of our childhood daily moving

away from our grasp; we see families, endeared to us by the closest ties of intimacy, broken up by the rough and unsparing hand of death. We discover our friends, as we advance in the journey of life, one by one dropping away from our side; and from this striking spectacle of mutability, we turn to one whom neither chance nor change can effect; to Him who inhabiteth eternity,-the great I AM.

We discover also the faithfulness of our God from the book of Revelation. Read it, my Brethren, as you will, and how you will, and when you will; but never will you meet with one single instance where God forgot those who put their trust in Him. Look at the history of the Jewish nation. While the Israelites were groaning under the bondage of Pharoah, in Egypt, God raised them up a deliverer, his servant Moses, and to him he promised continual aid. What was the event? The vast multitudes which Moses brought into the wilderness, helpless and hopeless, God unceasingly protected for the space of forty years. The hand of mercy spread their food upon the earth; gave them flesh from Heaven, and water from a flinty rock; directed them