and tender attention to his happiness in this world and the next; he will imitate their example, and endeavour to honour their memory by practising all the virtues which they taught him. But dreadful must be the feelings of him, who knows that he has added to the usual sufferings of age, by the want of that duty and affection which his parents had a right to expect from him. Dreadful must be the state of his mind, when his conscience tells him that he has done so, after those parents are removed from this world, when he knows that he can never make them amends for his faults, never regain their love, never obtain their pardon and their blessing.

Consider what has been said, all ye whose parents yet live. Reverence the grey hairs of your father, and forsake not your mother when she is old. Bear with all their infirmities of body and mind, and have patience with them, if their understanding fail. Support them in poverty, watch over them in sickness, and let your tender care cheer the gloom of declining years, and smooth the bed of death. And may the blessing of GOD reward you, in the duty and affection of your own children; may

you live long in the land which He hath given you; and may He, who often in this world punishes the vices of the father upon the children to the third or fourth generation, may He make the blessings of your parents to rest on you and on your children, and show mercy to thousands in them who love Him, and keep his commandments. To Him be glory now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON X.

HEBREWS iv. 15.

But was in all points tempted like as we are, yet

without sin.

WE are told in three of the Gospels, that

after our Saviour was baptized, and

before he begun his ministry, he was led into the wilderness to be tempted of the Devil. It is not perhaps possible for us fully to understand the nature of that temptation; but I will lay before you what I apprehend we may learn from the account which is given us of it, and then proceed to consider how far it is in our power to imitate the bright example of our LORD and

Master.

We know from the Bible that the evil spirit, called the Devil and Satan, has been from the beginning the enemy of mankind. We know that

he tempted our first parents; that they yielded to the temptation, and by so doing, lost the favour of GOD, and the happiness of Paradise, and became subject to sin and death. We are told that this enemy of GoD and man still goes about seeking whom he may devour; and that the servant of GOD must resist him, and not yield to the temptations which he offers to draw him. from his duty. Some men resist with more constancy than others; but such is the weakness of our nature, that it never can be said of any man that he is without sin. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."'* But those temptations to which Adam and all his sons have yielded, were presented in vain to JESUS CHRIST. He resisted every art of the deceiver; and having been in all things tempted like as we are, he was still without sin. During the whole of his life he was perfectly innocent; and though it is impossible for us to be like him in that respect, yet we must constantly set his bright example before our eyes, and come as near it as we possibly can. We must imitate his spotless purity, and freedom from every kind of vice; his humility, his charity,

* 1 John i. 8.