sins."

before the Judgement Seat, when He Who hath given us so much shall come as He hath said, and require much from us? I beseech you, let us all once more turn our minds seriously to those most fearful words, "If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your If you do not earnestly set your minds to think of Christ as actually present in His Church, in prayer, in self-examination, in public worship, and especially in Communion, you will die in your sins," very likely without knowing it; you will live and die unawares in the fatal deadly sin of spiritual sloth; and too likely, O misery of miseries, you will even pass away in this state of self-deceiving error; you will be one of those who will say by and by, "Lord, Lord, have we not done many things in Thy Name? and He will say, I never knew you." You will go to Hell, as one has fearfully said, with your faces turned all the way towards Heaven. Think what it will be to pass from this world into the dreary and dismal state of those who are kept waiting in their prisons of darkness: all one's vain hope gone in a moment, as though it had never been, and nothing for the future but a sad and certain expectation of wrath which shall never end. Think of the day which will be here before long, when all expectation shall be ended. Think of the Eternity which will come after that day. Think of these things, and fear to die in your sins: and that you may not die in them, believe that your Lord is here; believe earnestly, believe thoughtfully, the gracious Presence of Christ your Saviour, now about to be sealed anew to you by the yearly remembrance of His Death and Resurrection. Believe and consider that the Saviour

and Judge Whom you read and hear of, is even now close to you, closer than you can imagine. He is every hour reaching out His gracious Hand for you to lay hold of. No decency, no goodness towards man will save you, if you are undutiful to Christ. Only believe that it is He: turn not from Him: that you may not die in your sins, but live in His Righteousness!

SERMON XXXVII.

WORK WHILE IT IS DAY.

PASSION SUNDAY.

S. JOHN ix 4.

"I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work."

i.

A WONDERFUL moment it was in our Lord's wonderful life when these words were spoken. He had just been hiding Himself from the unbelieving Jews, e., He had made Himself invisible, when they were taking up stones to stone Him for what they pretended to account blasphemy. They took up stones to stone Him, but Jesus hid Himself, and went out of the Temple, going through the midst of them, and so passed by. And as Jesus passed by, He saw a man which was blind from his birth, sitting and begging at the entrance into the Temple. And after some conversation with His disciples, He restored sight to that poor blind man, and in.no long time after, declared Himself to him plainly to be the Son of God. He had hidden Himself from the Pharisees, who were in the way of boasting of their sharp spiritual sight from them He hides Himself, but He shews Himself to the blind beggar. And in this, He tells us, He was

doing His proper work, the task which His Father had appointed, and He had undertaken. "For judgement," saith He, "I am come into this world, that they which see not might see, and they which see might be made blind." He came as a refiner's fire, to try every man's work of what sort it is. This is His work, His proper work, to save us if we will believe and obey; to leave us without excuse if we will not. It was His work, when present in the flesh, with all who came within reach of Him; it is His work no less with us all, who live within sound of His Gospel, now that He is invisibly present in His Church by His Spirit. In this work, the work of Him that sent Him, our Lord is engaged continually, all the year round: yet He seems in such Seasons as this of Lent, to take it in hand in a more especial manner. For what do we mean, when we say it is the time of Lent? Surely nothing less serious than this: that now we are aware of our Lord standing and knocking at the door of our hearts and consciences, and calling upon us to let Him in. And when we say, as we do this morning, Now the fifth Sunday is come: what is this but acknowledging, that more than half the special time appointed this year for our repentance and conversion is already gone, and we had need make much of what remains?

To this kind of reflection, at such solemn times, our Lord calls us, by that very remarkable saying, "I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day the night cometh when no man can work." Only think, my brethren, Who it was Who uttered these words. It was the great Almighty God Himself, He in Whose hand are the times and seasons, and

all things, Whom none ever can stay from doing what He will, when He will. Even He, having made Himself for our salvation one of us, condescends to be bounded, as we are, by the limits of time. He sets Himself times and seasons, a certain number of years, months, weeks, days, hours and minutes, within which, and not before nor after, His work on earth is to be done. And this portion of time He calls His day, and likens Himself so far to any labourer among us: in that our ordinary works also require to be done by daylight. "The sun ariseth, and man goeth forth to his work and to his labour until the evening," but if he loiter and put it off, and allow himself to be taken up with other things, "the night cometh when no man can work;" he loses that day, and he never, never can recall it. Our Lord set Himself a time, and spake thus of His work, as for other reasons, so certainly for an example and instruction to us, to stir us up to do our work also. For indeed our work, as Christians, is in a certain sense His, and His work is ours, by our marvellous Communion with Him. We are members of Him, very limbs of His body the Church, so that in a mysterious way what we do He doeth, and what He doeth we do. Our doings, as Christians, are, as His were, the works of Him that sent Him, the special tasks assigned us by the Father, even as His whole life on earth, and all He did and suffered in it, was His special task assigned Him by the same Holy Father. For what He said to the Father concerning His Apostles especially, we may understand as spoken in our measure concerning ourselves and all Christians: "As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so also have I sent them into the world." God B b