succeed to old ones. And we have awful warnings, too, that our earthly life is frail and uncertain that man which is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery; that he cometh up, and is cut down like a flower, that he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In all this stirring scene of earthly hopes and fears, of sudden alarms and long securities, of pains and pleasures thus mixed in every variety of combination, and for ever changing, how fares it with our hidden life? How goes on that inward, immortal thing? How fares the real, substantial true life, in the midst of these chameleon-like hues and shifting shadows which surround us? How thrive the secret habits of holy thoughts, governed desires, real humble reverence of God, earnest and faithful obedience, sincere and honest prayer, holy words?

Within a few days many of you will pass from amongst us. O how touching are those times when you thus part-part from a scene in which you have been so much together, -part, with your respective hidden lives in we know not how various stages of growth or decay,-part, to encounter we know not how various trials of spiritual danger, how subtle adversaries, how searching temptations!

Those hidden lives will have their after-history. They will grow, or they will languish. They will be stronger in grace, or they will decay and perish.

O may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, be on you, that you may have the heart, the grace, and the strength to make your blessed baptismal calling and election sure; that your hidden lives, which are immortal in themselves, become immortal to happiness in you; that parting here, and parting now, even if you should never see one another's face again in the flesh, you may at least meet in the blessed company gathered on the right hand of the Judge in the awful day!

SERMON IX.

THE QUEEN OF THE SOUTH.

ST. MATTHEW Xii. 42.

"The queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here."

THE passage in which our Lord speaks this wellknown verse is one in which He is reproving, with extreme severity, certain of the Scribes and Pharisees who desired to see a sign from Him. It appears from the Gospels that this was a prevailing and constant wish with them. They are continually represented as asking for a sign—a sign from heaven; insomuch that St. Paul, speaking of the opposition given by the Jews to Christianity, sums it up, as it were, in this

expression, "the Jews ask a sign'." It seems to characterize the Jewish opposition. There were two sorts of opposition in argument to Christianity, the Jewish and the Greek :-the Jews asked a sign, and the Greeks wanted wisdom. Each sort of opposition denoted the sort of character of the opponents. Both refused to accept the message of Christianity: one, because there were not such visible, confounding signs as they demanded; the other, because they did not find the peculiar philosophy or wisdom in which they delighted, and which they expected in a revelation from God: and yet, as St. Paul adds, to them which are called, whether they be Jews or Greeks, Christ is both the wisdom and the power of God. There is abundance of Divine signs of power, and abundance of Godlike wisdom in Christ; more than all the world besides can supply; but Jews and Greeks demanded they knew not well what, and thus utterly lost the very demonstrations of divinity which they professed to be most in search of.

The Jews, however, seem to have asked, with a remarkable uniformity of hardness of heart, for a sign; some sign to be exhibited in the

1 St. Matt. xvi. 1. St. Mark viii. 11. St. Luke xi. 16. 29. 1 Cor. i. 22.

sky. This they did, as we are repeatedly told in the Gospels, to tempt Him: that is to say, to try his power; to ascertain how much He could do. They wished to propose to Him something very difficult, something, obviously, beyond the power of man to perform; something, besides, which He plainly did not choose to show to them and this they determined to make their condition of believing Him. They resolved to shut their eyes to everything else, however great, or wonderful, or miraculous it might prove. With the usual perversity of those whose hearts are in fault, they spoke after the manner of their fathers. "He smote the stony rock indeed, so that the waters gushed out, and the stream flowed withal; but can He give bread also, or provide flesh for his people?" "He saved others, let Him save Himself." "If He be the King of Israel, let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe Him." This is the sort of unreasonable way in which people talk when they are resolved in their hearts that they will not yield their belief, or assent to something which they do not like. They do not speak out boldly, and say, I will not believe; for they have not quite made up their minds to this; nor, indeed, are they quite aware themselves that this is their real meaning. So they say, if we did