their ministry and vocation, and responsible to God for their conduct therein. How then shall we show forth our thankfulness, not only in our lips, but in our lives? How, but by believing that very principle, that very truth which He has taught us, and by which England stands, that we are God's people, and God's servants. He has indeed showed us what is good, and our fathers before us; and what does the Lord require of us in return, but to do the good which He has showed us, to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God?

Oh, my friends, come frankly and joyfully to the Lord's Table this day. Confess your sins and shortcomings to Him, and intreat Him to enable you to live more worthily of your many blessings. Offer to Him the sacrifice of your praise and thankfulness, imperfect though it is, and join with angels and archangels in blessing Him for what He is, and what He has been to you: and then receive your share of His most perfect sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, the bread and the wine which tell you that you are members of His Church; that His body gives you whatsoever life and strength your souls have; that His Blood washes out all your sins and shortcomings; that His Spirit shall be renewed in you day by day, to teach you to do the good work which He has prepared already

for you, and to walk in the old paths which have led our forefathers, and will lead us, too, I trust, safe through the chances and changes of this mortal life, and the fall of mighty kingdoms, towards that perfect City of God which is eternal in the heavens.

SERMON XV.

THE LIFE OF GOD.

EPHESIANS iv. 17, 18.

'That ye walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart.'

YOU

OU heard these words read in the Epistle for to-day. I cannot expect that you all understood them. It is no shame to you that you did not. Some of them are long and hard Latin words. Some of them, though they are plain English enough, are hard to understand, because they have to do with deep matters, which can only be understood by the help of God's Spirit. And even with the help of God's Spirit, we cannot any of us expect to understand all which they mean : we cannot expect to be as wise as St. Paul; for we must be as good as St. Paul, before we can be as wise about goodness as he was. I do not pretend to understand all the text myself: no, not half, nor a tenth part of what it very likely means. But I do seem to myself to understand a little about

why this trouble and that trouble come up for we shall find the reason in our own s greedy, self-willed hearts.

Oh, my friends, let us each search our own and repent, and amend, and resolve to do our as sons of God, in the station to which Go called us, by the help of The Spirit of God, He has promised freely to those who ask And now this day, as we thank God for this victory, let us thank Him, not with our lips n but with our lives, by living such lives as He to see, such lives as He meant us to live, li loyalty to God, and of usefulness to our bre and of industry and prudence in our calling, help forward, each of us, however humb station, the glory of God; because we shall e us, in the cottage and in the field, in the sho in the mansion, in this our little parish, and fore in the great nation of which it is a par forward the fulfilment of those blessed wor Father which art in heaven; Thy kingdom Thy will be done on earth as it is in heave therefore, also, the fulfilment of the wordcome after them, and not before them; ( this day our daily bread,

or both, and that is the 1 speaks in the text. will speak hereafter; use it is the thing to thoughts before the

St. Paul means, when in his day. For that said that every man, the same duty, and e right: every man, sins, breaks his duty in same wrong. There is life of God; there is being alienated from nan may commit difnother; one may lie, ay be proud, another 1 these different sins of sin; they are all at. And St. Paul tells

sin, what that same luces all sin in Christian

or Dissenter, in man or from which has come all one by man, woman, or made.

disease, to which every