yet did God forsake his reconciled and adopted child. He made Peter feel his own weakness: he makes them all, more or less, so understand the ingratitude of their remaining sin and unbelief: he shews them how easy it would be, if he were to withdraw his grace from them, to fall back into sin: but soon they mourn his absence; they fly now to the Saviour; they wrestle for the return of the Holy Spirit; and soon the cloud disappears, the sun shines forth, and the heart is filled with gratitude for restoring and preserving mercies.

Thus, brethren, in all the spiritual and temporal trials of life, you shall have "the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel" growing and expanding within you: "as is your day, so shall your strength be." I cannot foretell how many or how great may be your troubles: but one thing I know-for every trial that can befall you, there is, if you will only seek it in the appointed way, ar abundant supply of grace provided in "the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ." Yea, when called to what is commonly considered man's greatest trial, to pass out of time into eternity, to die, and go before the judgment-seat of Christ, even then there are kind promises contained in this Gospel, calculated to cheer the soul when flesh and when heart are failing. Then you will be enabled again to think of "the fulness of the blessing of this Gospel:" again to remember how Christ has died the just for the unjust, has tasted death, has taken away the sting of death: again you will cast yourselves on Christ, pray for his Spirit, think on his word, and look up to God, to whom you are going, as your God and Father. In the words of a pious Christian of another land and of another age, who used often in health to think and to say what he would do when death, when the long wished for chariot should come to fetch him home, across the margin of the river of life-" Then I wash myself once more quite clean in the blood of Jesus, put on again my white garments of the righteousness of Jesus Christ, and so I seat myself in the chariot, and get home." There we stop; I must scale heaven, and penetrate eternity, and shew you the fulness of pleasures at God's right hand for evermore, were I to attempt to complete the description of " the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel." Then make it yours by your own happy experience. I invite you all, I entreat you all to do this. Surely the unsearchable riches of the fulness of the blessings of eternity are not things to be despised. God alone can tell who among you are opposed to it or not. We ministers know, for our encouragement, that his word shall prosper in the thing whereto he sends it; but whether it shall prosper in this thing or that, we must leave to God and to your consciences to determine. Yet I may wish, you must allow me to wish, and to exhort, and to pray for every one of you, that you do not neglect so great a salvation so mercifully offered.

Let, then, this be our inquiry this week, Is this the Gospel which you hear preached among you from advent to advent, from one year's end to another, in its form and in its substance? How serious, how important a consideration! Happy for the minister if, after much self-examination and prayer, lest he deceive himself, he has the witness of his own conscience that, with much imperfection and infirmity, yet he desires not to keep back from you any part of "the fulness of the blessing of the Gospel." How important, again, is your consequent responsibility; how great is your privilege, yea, how inestimable your happiness, if the fulness of the blessing of this Gospel be indeed yours! Surely it is your wish that it should be continued to be thus ministered to you.

My last remark, therefore, is, if you desire ministers to come among you more and more in the fulness of the blessing of this Gospel, you must offer up many prayers on our behalf. The enemy of souls will keep us, if he can, from bringing before you this Gospel, which would make you so happy, and save you from his snare. One single praying Christian is a better friend to any minister than a hundred censorious critics, or a thousand idle flatterers. But I cannot urge this more earnestly, or in more affecting words, than in those which immediately succeed our text, and with these I conclude: "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me."

PEACE IN CHRIST.

HON. AND REV. B. W. NOEL, A.M.

ST. JOHN'S CHAPEL, BEDFORD ROW, NOVEMBER 29, 1835.

"These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”—JOHN, xvi. 33.

Ir was most gracious in our blessed Lord, to employ the last hours of the last evening which he spent with his disciples before his crucifixion, in thus administering to them repeated consolation. His whole ministry on earth was a ministry of peace. His entrance into the world was announced as bringing peace; and upon his entrance on the ministry, he declared that his mission was "to bind up the broken heart." In his first discourse, recorded by St. Matthew, he occupied himself in describing the way in which, in this world, the poor might be blessed. When he first prayed with his disciples after his resurrection, his earliest words were,." Peace be unto you." When he finally ascended to his glory, and was thus separated from them with respect to his personal presence, it was not before he lifted up his hands upon them, blessed them, and gave them consolation. And thus, on this occasion, the last words of his discourse, on that evening of suffering and sorrow to himself, were, "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace." He had repeatedly assured them that it was his intention that they should' enjoy peace. "Peace I leave with you," he says, in the fourteenth chapter, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." In the fifteenth chapter he declares," These things I have spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." And in the sixteenth chapter he assures them again, "Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you." It was most merciful in our gracious Saviour thus, in that hour when he was entering on a sorrow that has no parallel, to divert his attention from his own sufferings to console them under theirs. He who needed that an angel should minister unto him, and console him in his agony; he who said, when entering into that agony, "My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death," how much more worthy of consideration and regard his own feelings were than theirs. He had with the most kind and condescending care just forewarned them that that very evening they would betray their weakness and their unbelief; they were about to desert him in his last hours; and yet, instead of upbraiding them with their unbelief, he comforts them in their sorrow: "These things I have spoken anto you, that in me ye might have peace."

But, be assured, our blessed Lord did not mean to limit the consideration bestowed in these discourses upon those few disciples that immediately surrounded him there : his mind embraced the wants and sufferings of his people in all ages; and for us, no less than they, have these divine consolations been recorded, and to us, no less than to them, does he say, " These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace."

Let us then, my brethren, notice again (for we have already these truths)— let us again notice that it is the design of the gospel, of real godliness, to give us peace. If we have considered it before, yet, as our Lord repeats the statement, it is worthy of repeated notice; it should be impressed strongly on our hearts, and fixed deeply in our judgments: it is the design of the Gospel to give us peace. It is the tendency of true religion to rob us of no happiness, but to bestow much that is solid and lasting. If ever the Gospel produces its just results it brings the soul to peace;. it gives a holy, a rational, a tranquil, a thoughtful, a sanctifying, and an enduring peace. "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace." It brings a man peace with God, peace with his fellow men, and peace with his own soul. It gives him peace in the remembrance of his past transgressions, in the thought of his present weakness, in the anticipation of future dangers: in looking to all possible changes, his mind will be at peace. "These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace.”

Yet, at the same time, our blessed Lord assures the disciples here, that they should have affliction. This world is meant to be a world of probation, of discipline, of trial, and of improvement. It was not meant that they should be exempt from sorrow: he adds, therefore, here, "In the world ye shall have tribulation."

By the word" world," I understand our Saviour not merely to mean that they should have afflictions from the oppositions which ungodly men should every where, and through all ages, give to their doctrines and practices, but that, as long as they were in the body, the infirmities of the flesh, the mere circumstances attendant on our infirm condition, would bring them multiplied sorrows: "In the world ye shall have tribulation." As long as you are here below, while you are still wrestling with the remainders of sin, while you are yet exposed to those different providential dispensations by which you must be made meet for glory, you shall have much suffering: "In the world ye shall have tribulation." Often have the disciples of Jesus Christ, according to his word, suffered much: often do they suffer much now, exposed to an accumulation of physical ills, and suffering under oppression of mind. Sometimes they can say, indeed, "All thy waves and thy storms have gone over me:" and in such circumstances it is to be expected that even the tried believer, with a strong mind and faith, will sometimes feel his spirit depressed with sorrow. Our blessed Lord and Master in his sorrow said, "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." Even where the good providence of God surrounds his children with ali the blessings of providence, there is much in this present world to excite uneasiness and sorrow in every reflecting mind. We may feel pain from our own personal sorrows and sins. Each of the children of God must have his share of sorrow. They may be exposed, according to the arrangements of divine providence, each in his turn, and each in his measure to sickness, and losses, and disappointments, to the opposition of the woria, to

many of those cares of life which cross his wishes, and often shorten his days. Such is our natural infirmity, that these things will have at least a momentary effect on the Christian.

Still more, my brethren, our sins are a source of constant uneasiness. Who can strive to walk with God; who can look at what he ought to be, as the portrait of the Christian is drawn in the Word of God, or consider what many of his fellow sinners have been, without finding much to agitate and depress the soul? Many a victory, perhaps, with the assistance of divine grace, he may have won over nature, but by the same sins they are still again and again defiled. To find himself continually liable to transgress against such a God, and such a Redeemer, is enough to distress the Christian's mind. Which of us but finds abundant cause, both for humiliation and sorrow, in the indolence, the pride, the severity of mind towards others, the self-indulgence towards ourselves, in the harshness of judgment and spirit, in the disposition to revenge, in sensuality, in pride, in covetousness, in worldly-mindedness-which of us does not find in these sins that are continually rising up in the soul abundant cause for self-reproach? When we compare what we are with what we ought to be, this must indeed affect our minds. And how much more cause have we for affliction, when we think of the effect which our own infirmities and sins may have upon others. How many wasted opportunities of doing good; and how many are the occasions in which our own sinful defects may have done positive harm, and may have led others to be content with a lower standard of piety, or even perhaps to reject the lessons of godliness altogether.

If our own sorrows, then, and our own sins, may cause affliction of mind, we are not beyond the reach of the sorrows and the sins of others. We may be called to suffer in our children, in our friends, in our neighbours, in the world. The amount of sorrow is so great around us, that the Apostle did not hesitate to say, "The whole creation groaneth and travaileth together in pain." And there is nothing but a selfish withdrawment of ourselves from the sight of misery that is in the world; there is nothing but a disposition to shut ourselves up in the circle of our own enjoyments, and to try to persuade ourselves there is no misery beyond that circle, that would hinder us from feeling sorrow of spirit, on seeing how much of sorrow there is every where around us.

Then who can contemplate the sins of others without feeling some degree of pain? The sins of our children, inherited from our own corrupt nature, reproduced in them, perhaps after grace has in a manner conquered them in us, is enough to fill us with deep pain. It is enough to see the infirmities and defects even of our most valued friends, to see how much ungodliness triumphs in the world, to see how little grace reigns even throughout those of mankind that have yet been subdued and penetrated by the Gospel.

Then again, the sorrows and sins of others, as well as our own, are contagious, and have their influence, in various ways, on the happiness of all around us. So that a person surrounded by the blessings of Divine Providence, cannot but find in the present world much that may agitate and depress his spirit, unless he be sustained by divine grace. Our Lord said, therefore, "In the world ye shall have tribulation." This is not meant to be our home: and even the best enjoyments of life are sometimes the positive occasions of, and never can shield us from, those other sorrows which flesh is heir to.

Our blessed Saviour did further intend, that the peace which he bestowed on