cease to have to work out our salvation with fear and trembling; if not at the retrospect of the past, yet at the chances of the time to come.

Why did she who had found such present help in her trouble, so great a salvation, so instant a release from an inveterate plague, why did she seek to hide herself? Why did she fear and tremble, knowing what was done in her? These are questions, the full consideration of which might detain us long. For the present let us ask ourselves, whether we are not to learn from all this that is recorded of her, not to be elate at even such present blessings, if vouchsafed to us. That her comfort might be full, she needed to be told by Him, Whose virtue had gone forth and had healed her, she still needed to be told by Him, to "be of good cheer! go in peace! thy faith hath saved thee!"

SERMON XIII.

THE WHOLE FAMILY IN HEAVEN AND EARTH.

EPHES. iii. 15.

The whole family in heaven and earth.

Of all the attributes of God, the attribute of love hath this excellent distinction put upon it, and is herein specially commended to our meditation, that it alone is once put for God's Name. "God is Love," says the disciple whom Jesus loved. We know indeed that God is not more love than He is justice, or mercy, or truth, for that, being infinite, He cannot be more one than the other, or any one, without all the rest; but, being each, He is all; being all, He is one.

The attribute of love hath then this prominent rank in Holy Writ, not in respect of God's Nature, but of His dealings with us, and our consequent duty to Him, and to our neighbour. His every dealing with us is full of love; and He not only claims our love by revealing Himself as our Creator, Preserver, Redeemer, Sanctifier; but He vouches to draw us to Himself even "with the cords of a man," with "bands of love "."

To take the case suggested by my text. Having, at the Creation, declared that "it is not good for man to be alone,” and by, therefore, giving him "an help meet for him," having instituted the ties of kindred and society, He hath so condescended to the nature given by Himself, as to speak to the children of men as His own children; and, dealing with them as such, to teach them to look up to Him as "Our Father, Which is in heaven."

Again, having thus "made of one blood all the nations that are upon earth ;" and

b Hosea xi. 1. e Gen. ii. 18. d Acts xvii. 26.

having opened, through the Blood of Jesus Christ His well-beloved and only-begotten Son, the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers, and receiving all that will enter therein as children by adoption and grace, He teaches them to look upon one another as brethren in Christ Jesus; linked together by bonds which neither height, nor depth, nor things in heaven, nor things in earth, nor things under the earth, nothing but their own wilful sin, can rend asunder; and declares them to form, through the "One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism "," One Church, visible and invisible, triumphant and militant, saints at rest in heaven, saints at toil on earth; "the whole family in heaven and earth." Can we, as social beings, as creatures who know, as we do, by the constitution of our very nature, what and how strong are those "cords of a man," those "bands of love," which bind, and, by binding in most sweet captivity, constitute the bliss of the relations of husband and wife, father and mother, paEphes. iv. 5.

e

rent and child, brothers and sisters; can we, as such, conceive any expression by which the doctrine and duty of love to God and to each other could be more forcibly brought home to us, than by this one, "the whole family in heaven and earth."

Surely not. And it has yet another most solemn sanction from God. As it were to prevent men from running (as some have done) into wild mystic notions, of so loving God above all things as to neglect to love things to which His Providence has bound us, instead of loving Him in them, for them, by them, He has made our very natural affections the motive to our allegiance to Himself.

The sceptic may stumble at the penalty attached to the breach of the first and second Commandments, as cruel and unjust; but the believer sees, that if man will not love God from the fear of suffering, not to himself but to his children, there can be no motive to that love of which his soul can be capable. If men