cept as they have left consequences upon our souls, according as they have been improved or neglected-they will be as though they had never been! When we were children, we spake as children, we understood as children, we thought as children. Not more completely have we, as men, put away all childish things, than, entered upon our immortal state, we shall put away worldly things. The greatness, the abilities, the riches, the reputations of the world, will be as little, yea, less to us by far than the toys, the plays, the lispings, and the tears of our infancy -for these we see repeated in others, whilst they are recalled even to us by the memories of ourselves, and our elders: but those will be passed, and passed for ever, from us, and from all: unless, indeed, they remain in our recollections, to sting us with the thought of the ill use which we made of them.

And what shall remain? our Baptized being; our Spiritual life; our holy or unholy souls! That which is now so apt to be lost amid petty thoughts and trifling interests; that which is now so often overlaid by all manner of worldly and temporary inequalities; will then stand forth in the greatness of its own true proportions. Our Spiritual Being! Created at the sacred font of holy Baptism, when first the germ of

divine life was planted in us by a second spiritual birth; grown secretly, first the blade, then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear, and that while men slept, and were dreaming of distinctions, advantages, and differences; which, while it remained in this lower world, drew nutriment and strength, under the Holy Spirit of God, from all those endless varieties of situation and circumstance which were to other men poison and death; in our Spiritual Being—soul and body raised to every seed his own-we shall stand before the Eternal Judge of quick and dead, capable of new and unimagined heights of bliss or depths of woe, to pass at once and for ever to our own place.

My brethren, the thought which this passage of Holy Scripture suggests to us, and which I wish to press forcibly upon your minds, is one of the utmost consequence to be remembered; the greatness of our souls of our baptized and reborn souls! A greatness so overwhelmingly great, that in comparison of it, the differences of this earth, the petty, temporary differences of this earth, would be absolutely below consideration, if it were not that as we treat them, and deal with them, as we allow them to affect us, so will our immortal souls grow or languish in their divine life. Nor is this thought without

a strong bearing upon yourselves, and your present state of life and feelings. The inequalities of station you feel but little but the inequalities of ability, knowledge, and success, affect you deeply. How soon do the readier, quicker minds presume upon their readiness! How soon do they lower down their pains and industry to the level which will suffice to keep them clear of blame! How soon do they exalt themselves; love their reputation, live upon it, make it go as far as it will in supplying the place of duty! And how soon are the slow discouraged! If they think they have but one talent in comparison of their neighbours with five or ten, how readily do they justify themselves in hiding even that one in a napkin: how delusively do they comfort themselves in thinking how much they would have done, and how great they would have been, if they had been the possessors of the greater gifts! How soon, again, if distinction and success be distant, and not of easy or immediate attainment, do efforts become feeble and languid, till they finally cease and come to nothing!

And what is all this but a similar case, similar as far as the circumstances permit, to the one on which the Corinthians received the rebuke and precept of St. Paul? We neglect our great

gift, because of the inequalities of the small gifts; we do not cultivate that which is divine and eternal, in which we are all alike, because of differences, slight and trifling differences too, in that which is unimportant and transitory.

A little while, and all this will be over. We shall meet the judgment with widely different thoughts from those with which we are occupied, whilst we are surrounded by the distinctions and comparisons of life. May it be our happy lot in that day to find, that by the Holy Spirit of God we have grown inwardly in our spiritual growth while we remained in the flesh, and that the fancied inequalities and discouragements of things temporal have not betrayed us into the fatal and final neglect of the things eternal!

SERMON V.

CONFESSING CHRIST BEFORE MEN.

ST. MATTHEW X. 32.

"Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven."

THESE words occur in the course of the commission given by our blessed Lord to His twelve Apostles, when, during His own lifetime, He sent them out by two and two to preach to the lost sheep of the house of Israel alone, that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. But though this commission was thus given at an early time, and apparently only for a temporary purpose, we cannot read it through without clearly seeing that, like most of our Lord's discourses while on earth, it bears on higher and more lasting subjects than those in immediate connexion with which it was spoken. He seemed to be speaking