passage through life; by the blessing of God this will prepare you for it,-it will make you thoughtful and resigned without interfering with your cheerfulness. It will connect you in your own thoughts with the Saints of Scripture, whose lot it was to be patterns of patient endurance; and this association brings to the mind a peculiar consolation. View yourselves and all Christians as humbly following the steps of Jacob whose days were few and evil; and David who in his best estate was as a shadow that declineth, and was withered like grass; and Elijah who despised soft raiment and sumptuous fare and forlorn Daniel who led an Angel's life and be lighthearted and contented, because you are thus called to be a member of Christ's pilgrim Church. Realize the paradox of making merry and rejoicing in the world because it is not your's. And if you are hard to be affected, (as many men are,) and think too little about the changes of life, going on in a dull way

without hope or fear, feeling neither your need nor the excellence of religion; then, again, meditate on the mournful histories recorded in Scripture, in order that your hearts may be opened thereby and roused. Read the Gospels in particular; you there find accounts of sick and afflicted persons in every page as mementos. Above all, you there read of Christ's sufferings, which I am not now called upon to speak of; but the thought of which is far more than enough to make the world, bright

as it may be, look dark and miserable in itself to all true believers, even if the record of them were the only sorrowful part of the whole Bible.

And now I conclude, bidding you think much of the Scripture history in the light in which I have put it, that you may not hereafter find that you have missed one great benefit which it was graciously intended to convey.

SERMON XXVI.

CHRISTIAN MANHOOD..

1 Cor. xiii. 11.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

WHEN our Lord was going to leave the world and return to His Father, He called His disciples orphans; children, as it were, whom He had been rearing, who were still unable to direct themselves, and who were soon to lose their Protector; but He said, "I will not leave you comfortless orphans, I will come to you1;" meaning to say, He would come again to them in the power of His Holy Spirit, who should be their present allsufficient Guide, though He Himself was away. And we know, from the sacred history, that when the Holy Spirit came, they ceased to be the defenceless children they had been before. He

1 John xiv. 18.

breathed into them a divine life, and gifted them with spiritual manhood, or perfection, as it is called in Scripture. From that time forth, they put away childish things: they spake, they understood, they thought, as those who had been taught to govern themselves; and who, having "an unction from the Holy One, knew all things."

That such a change was wrought in the Apostles, according to Christ's promise, is evident from comparing their conduct before the day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit descended on them, and after. I need not enlarge on their wonderful firmness and zeal in their Master's cause afterwards. On the other hand it is plain from the Gospels, that before the Holy Ghost came down, that is, while Christ was still with them, they were as helpless and ignorant as children; had no clear notion what they ought to seek after, and how, and were carried astray by their accidental feelings and their long-cherished prejudices.— What was it but to act the child, to ask how many times a fellow-Christian should offend against us, and we forgive him, as St. Peter did? or to ask to see the Father, with St. Philip? or to propose to build tabernacles on the mount, as if they were not to return to the troubles of the world? or to dispute who should be the greatest 1? or to look for Christ's restoring at that time the

1 Matt. xvii. 4; xviii. 21; xx. 20. John xiv. 8.

1

Natural as such

temporal kingdom to Israel1?

views were in the case of half-instructed Jews, they were evidently unworthy those whom Christ had made His, that He might perfect" before the throne of God.

66

present them

Yet the first disciples of Christ at least put off their vanities once for all, when the Spirit came upon them; but as to ourselves, the Spirit has long since been poured upon us, even from our earliest years; yet it is a serious question, whether multitudes of us, even of those among us who make a profession of religion, are even so far advanced in a knowledge of the Truth as the Apostles were before the day of Pentecost. may be a profitable employment to-day to consider this question, as suggested by the text,—to inquire how far we have proceeded in putting off such childish things as are inconsistent with a manly honest profession of the Gospel.

It

Now, observe, I am not inquiring whether we are plainly living in sin, in wilful disobedience; nor even whether we are yielding through thoughtlessness to sinful practices and habits. The condition of those who act against their conscience, or who act without conscience, that is, lightly and carelessly, is far indeed from bearing any resemblance to that of the Apostles in the years of their early discipleship. I am supposing you, my bre

1 Acts i. 6.