And first, I would remind you that the consideration of your relation to the Church in which you have been educated will lead you to approach to full communion with her, with the deepest REVERENCE towards her, as your nursing Mother. The consideration, I say, of the Church, and your relation to her. For I can well believe-indeed, I know it from early experience-that till we have considered the subject, and have developed in the mind its manifold particulars, we do not—we cannot-sufficiently appreciate the relation in which we stand to her, nor the various duties which result therefrom. It is so in all our relations. Even the filial, the closest of all, affects and sways us only in proportion as we recollect its sacredness. The man who suffers all the memorials of early tenderness and care to be overrun and smothered by the widespreading weed of selfishness, and, in his ardent occupation with the present and the future, forgets the past which gave him all that he possesses, may well become undutiful and disobedient, and regard his parent with the indifference-perhaps the jealousy with which he looks upon another man. But he who looks back on the long expanse of years gone by, and sees throughout that space one image constantly recurring - one form mixed up with every circumstance, and associated with all his best emotions; he who observes that in

the very twilight of his consciousness his father's image glimmers-the earliest idea that he can distinguish, the morning-star of thought-he cannot look upon his parent, nay, think of him in any period of his being, without a pause of sacred reverence a bowing of the spirit, as before one whose relation to himself has been so close, so early, so pregnant with innumerable consequences, that he cannot fathom its beginning, nor appreciate its extent.

But just so is it with the Church of Christ in which we have been educated. Can we look back to a time in which her image does not present itself? Can we recollect when we could call her solemn assemblies, the exhortations of her ministers, the responses of her services, and her pealing organ swelling forth the note of praise, something altogether new and strange to us? We may, indeed, point to a time when we awoke to personal interest in these things-when we passed on from the careless, indevout attendance of custom, to the earnest breathings of spiritual prayer;-but even this very awakening was but progression, not alteration ; it was, as Bacon says, proceeding betterwards, not otherwards; ("in melius, not in aliud;") "a mind of amendment and proficience, and not of change and difference." There was the groundwork of the picture the same, but it became tinted with

a heavenly light. The stock of the tree remained, but it was grafted by a Divine hand. The soil in which it had been planted was still around its roots; but now those roots began to draw up nourishment from that soil with new life and vigour. And, therefore, as David and the spiritual Israelites of old felt towards their ancient law, which was the nurse and nourishment of their spirituality

as the first Christians regarded the Jewish church from which they sprang, and the hopes of Messiah, out of which had grown their faith in Jesus as a spiritual Deliverer- -so does the godly Churchman feel towards his Mother Church, which ministered to him those elements of truth and duty on which God has breathed the breath of life. "We have thought of thy loving kindness, O God," declares the Psalmist, "in the midst of thy temple !" "O walk about Zion, and go round about her; tell the towers thereof; mark well her bulwarks, consider her palaces for this God is our God for ever and ever!" "The first fruit is

holy," says St. Paul, "and the root is holy." "Think not," says our Lord himself, "that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." Spiritual improvement throws not down, but builds up-casts not aside familiar principles with innovating scorn, but developes those principles into all the fulness

and maturity of which they are susceptible. Brethren, as you would nourish that which most ennobles man, —a sacred regard for all the ties and obligations of humanity; as you would cherish the moral taste for order and social law-nay, as you would grow in piety towards God himself, the First Father and the Governor of all, O foster sedulously within you-O keep well from the influence of lawless speculation - a child-like reverence for ancient things!

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But it is not here that he will stop who well considers his relation to the Church of England. will feel not only Reverence, but GRATITUDE fervent gratitude-to her, to whose habitual and imperceptible influences he owes so much of his present stature of mind, his present attainments, whatever they may be, in spiritual things. The amount of our obligations of this kind it were indeed impossible to estimate. But this amount we do not even suspect, till we have deliberately examined and traced up the history of our spiritual life. How gradually, how quietly, how wondrously, by the co-operation of innumerable and various circumstances, has this life been developed and sustained! The present is the product of the past. What we are, we have been fashioned to. And of this fashioning, how much has been afforded by the

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public services, the public instructions, and the public sympathies of our Church! Let me ask you -you who have been from youth up trained as consistent members of our community,

whence

have you gained so many-or so clear or so vigorous conceptions of Religion, as from the public ministrations of the Word of God? Is it not here

that you have heard those passages of Scripture read which have impressed upon your memory all the most important narratives and exhortations of the Bible, and listened to those applications of Scripture which have shown to you your personal interest in those narratives and exhortations? Is it not here that you have had awakened in you the suspicion that a great work still was wanting in your soul? Is it not here that conscience has been drawn from her obscurity, and been emboldened to speak to you in a tone you never heard before? Is it not here that the secrets of your heart have been made manifest, and falling down upon your face, you have worshipped God, and confessed that God was in us of a truth? Is it not here that the Holy Ghost has breathed into you his quickening powers, and taken of the things of Christ and shown them to you, and testified of his greatness and his glory, and charged you with your past ingratitude, and warned you of your danger, and pressed home conviction to your inmost