before the Altar of our Lord and Saviour, yet no man need despond therefore. The mischief that comes into a man's mind will not be imputed to him for sin, if he consent not to it, if he take no sort of pleasure in it. If it make him more earnest in prayer, fuller of penitence for the past, more watchful and devout for the future, then, instead of making his burthen heavier, it will turn to his profit, and be counted among the instances in which, by the good help of his God, he has got the better of his spiritual

enemy.

In any case whatever, we must have shame, sooner or later, for our sin. Adam could not eat of the forbidden tree, without his eyes being opened, and his knowing himself to be naked: and it was the greatest of mercy to him and to us, that when he would have hidden himself, God called him out, and brought him to confession and repentance. Let us take comfort as well as warning from him. If God in any way makes our faces ashamed, let us take care that the shame do its work upon us; let it lead us to seek His Name. If He put us to open reproach before men, let us take even that thankfully, hoping that it may save us from confusion in the day of judgement. If our shame be but in secret, occasioned by the bitter and tormenting recollection of our past and secret sins, let it render us the more humble, the more circumspect, the more self-denying: but in any case never let it drive us to any sort of sullenness or despair.

But as we think deeply of our sin, and pray for grace to acknowledge it as as we ought, and to loath ourselves for it in our own own sight: so let us keep

continually before us the mysterious hope of our possible forgiveness and recovery. Well may it seem too high and hard a saying, for such as know the evil we know of ourselves, ever to think of such deliverance as the blessed Gospel holds out the hope of: entire purity, the presence of God, seeing Jesus Christ as He is, and becoming more and more like Him. It is more than we can conceive, yet by His mercy we may hope it, and we may be doing some little, every day and every hour, towards having it fulfilled in ourselves. All days and all hours we may be offering ourselves before God, as the leper in Capernaum did; "Lord if Thou wilt Thou canst make me clean;" or as the woman of Canaan, "Lord help me, for even the dogs eat of the crumbs." And He Who has recorded in His Gospel such gracious deeds for our encouragement, will not be wanting to us, when we are cast down by His severe warnings and judgements. Between the shame and penance He lays on us, and the comfortable examples He sets before us, we shall be abundantly helped towards that blessed place, which our sins have so nearly forfeited. Only we must make up our minds not to shrink from the inward shame, any more than from the outward affliction-which at any time He may send. We must submit humbly and hope courageously and then, although as long as our life here lasts, our confusion may one way or another cover us daily, the sweet hope will still be ours, of wakening up one day in the Presence and Likeness of Christ, and feeling that we are freed from sin and shame for ever and ever.

SERMON V.

ON FASTING.

FIRST SUNDAY IN LENT.

S. MATT. iv. 2.

"When He had fasted forty days and forty nights, He was afterwards an hungered."

FORTY whole days and nights He went without meat and drink, and instead of wasting away and perishing, as a mere man left to himself, of course must have done, long before the end of that time, He was not, it should seem, even hungry, until the end of the days. Then the pangs of hunger came upon Him; until then He lived on in the body without meat or drink, and without pain at the want of them.

Surely brethren, to the poor the Gospel is preached, in this as in all other parts of it. Surely this history of our Lord's fasting is one very striking instance of His unspeakable love and condescension, in so ordering what He did, and what His Evangelists should write of His doings, as should most especially make Him known, as He is, to the poor of His flock.

For the very first foundation and corner-stone of

His Gospel is this: that God the Son made Himself Man, perfect Man, in all but sin like unto us, that He might be our Redeemer, and the Author of everlasting life: continuing all the while perfect God, One with the Father and the Holy Ghost, "over all blessed for ever." This is the foundation of the whole everlasting Gospel: for if our Lord had not been made Man, He could not have died and suffered for us, nor have risen again, nor ascended into Heaven, nor would He have had any Body for us to receive, and thereby through His Holy Spirit, to be united to Him. I say, the Incarnation of Christ is the foundation of all our hope and comfort: and how could this glorious Incarnation be more effectually preached and witnessed to the poor of the flock, than by the account of His divine and wonderful fast? The forty days continuing without food by His own power,-this sheweth His Almightiness and Divinity: His bearing the pangs of hunger at the end of the time no less certainly sheweth Him to be true Man.

And who can sufficiently admire and love His wonderful sympathy and charity with poor fallen man, that He, the Most High and glorious God, Who made the earth and bringeth food out of it, should endure the same inward pain and sinking of body as any one of us sinners on being left a certain time without food. Thus He began His ministry, for this miraculous fast, as you know, was the very last step in the preparation He made, before going forth on His great work of overthrowing Satan's power, and working our deliverance openly in the sight of angels and men. After He had fasted

and had hungered, He was tempted, and after His temptation He straightway began to preach the Kingdom of God and to heal diseases. His ministry -His suffering ministry began with hunger, and ended with thirst: thus every way, He would have us behold in Him a true Son of our Father Adam, one who can be touched with a feeling of our infirmities. He began with hunger, by voluntary and willing hunger, which we call fasting-thereby teaching us how to overcome the bodily appetite which led our first parents wrong. They sinned by eating, He overcame sin by fasting-They began to yield to the serpent by longing after the forbidden tree, He began to bruise the serpent's head by abstaining from food in itself lawful and innocent. He began, I say, with hunger, and He ended with thirst, for one of His three last words on the Cross was, "I thirst," the fever which goes before a painful death was strong upon Him, and He complained of it, not to have it relieved,—for He knew that they would give Him nothing but vinegar to drink --but partly to fill up the measure of His sufferings, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, partly to give one more token of His true partaking of our nature and entire sympathy with all our infirmities.

He began with hunger and ended with thirst: so far those can best understand His mercy, who best know what thirst and hunger are: and who are those? generally speaking, of course not the rich, but the poor. The poor, by their very situation in life sometimes going without food, sometimes having but a scanty allowance, can best judge by actual feeling and experience how great the love must