selves at the altar to the Lord who bought them, or not. Is not, then, this state the very halting denounced by the prophet, in the appeal before us; a state which cannot possibly remain fixed as it is, but must be eventually, perhaps even rapidly, modified, either for better or for worse? The worst issue is easy and natural: nothing easier than to pass by degrees from indolent postponement of amendment to confirmed despair of it; or from a somewhat uneasy acquiescence in irreligion, to confirmed satisfaction in it while the better issue can be obtained but in one way,-by direct submission to the searching light of God's truth. To avoid the deadly evil of progress in the downward path, there is but one resource; pressing home to ourselves immediately and practically the question, which master we will serve, whose wages and rewards we expect. To decide this in the settled plan of our lives, and to carry it into the whole detail of practice, is what constitutes the Christian's daily business; the subject of every morning's prayer, and every evening's review of his conduct.

With this question therefore thus proposed to each, individually, I would now conclude. Whatever be the principle which any one among us may prefer in heart to follow before the God who created, who preserves, who sustains him,-who brought us at first from nothing, and recovered us when we were worse than nothing,-who redeemed us at an infinite price in Jesus Christ, who

regenerated and appropriated us to Himself in the holy font of baptism,-who has surrounded us with wise laws, holy discipline, good examples, venerable and time-hallowed institutions, and who offers Himself to us, in all the fulness of grace, in His Church and sacraments;-let him be assured that the rival principle will fail, it will disappoint, as well as fatally mislead. Its pleasures and its toils issue equally in sorrow; the troubles and anxieties it will multiply will be as ineffectual to future peace or safety as the knives of Baal's worshippers, or the self-immolations to Moloch; and whatever be even the appearance of goodness which may, in the present stage of our being, belong to one who follows this rival principle in preference to God, most certainly, when that stage is withdrawn, the appearance will be such as to vindicate the justice of the divine judgment in this matter,—to shew the soul that was thus guided to be destitute of the substance of real virtue, of all that is required to sustain it in happiness to eternity, and fit only for abodes where the light of God's blissful presence can never penetrate. Let the choice then be now made in the calm deliberate survey of these things. If the LORD be God,-if He who created and redeemed be indeed the arbiter of your whole being and destiny,-if He alone is careful for you, and loves and desires your welfare, then follow Him in the way to which He graciously invites you, in which He has aids abundantly sufficient to support your steps, to direct and prosper you to

the end. If the world or the flesh be God,-if they can supply you to eternity with what the wants of your immortal being require,-if even now they can satisfy in prosperity, or console in disappointment and sorrow,-then indeed follow them. Otherwise be true to your Christian engagement, and renounce them as masters utterly.

SERMON IV.

THE PHARISEE AND THE PUBLICAN.

(Preached at St Mary's, on the eleventh Sunday after Trinity, Aug. 30, 1840.)

LUKE XVIII. 9.

And he spake this parable unto certain that trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.

A SENTENCE like this, prefixed in the inspired gospel to our Lord's parable, not only declares the occasion on which it was spoken, but explains its entire scope and intention. All the contrast exhibited between the two descriptions of worshippers, that are denoted severally by the Pharisee and the publican, with the judgments passed respectively on their spirit and their success with God, all must be directed to this end, to shew the folly of so trusting in ourselves that we are righteous as to despise others; in other words, to place before us the evil of self-exaltation and self-confidence, with the contrary benefit of selfabasement and humility.

To this purpose I would invite your attention to the successive circumstances of the parable contained in the gospel appointed for this day. "Two men," says our Lord, "went up to the temple to

pray." It is the unspeakable mercy of God, not only to allow, but to invite and command us to express our feelings and our wants to Him in prayer: a still further mercy, that he provides us with places in which we may thus approach him in a peculiar manner, and without distractions. In the Mosaic dispensation, under which these two men lived, there was an earthly sanctuary for this purpose, constructed after the fashion and similitude of heavenly things, as revealed to the lawgiver of Israel on the mount of Sinai. This sanctuary possessed, in its Holy of holies, an image of the LORD'S inaccessible residence in the Heaven of heavens; but into the surrounding courts His people were admitted according to their various degrees of legal privilege and sanctity, to approach Him with prayer and praise; to rest upon that covenant of which the memorials were in the ark of the inmost sanctuary; and thus to look, even then, beyond the figures of heavenly things that surrounded them, to the eternal rest yet reserved for the faithful people of God. And now, since the outer court of that house, the court of the Gentile proselytes, from which Christ expelled the traders that desecrated it, is expanded into a house of prayer for all nations, as he then declared, and Isaiah had prophesied before, a far greater effusion of that blessing is now ours. What was before the peculiar possession of Jerusalem, is now become, and that in a higher and more intimate sense, the privilege of every place throughout the world: that is of every place which possesses the memorials