soul, till you have been ready to exclaim, Men and brethren, what shall I do?

Is it not here that you have drunk in with intense emotion the proclamations of salvation which respond to such an anxious inquiry,—the glad tidings of God's pardoning love in Christ-the promises of deliverance and acceptance for every one who turns to him-the cheering assurances of his effectual help to cleanse the thoughts of your hearts by the inspiration of his Spirit, and to make you new creatures in Christ Jesus? And is it not here that you have specially found yourselves new creatures, and exercised the functions of new creatures; bowing in holy adoration with the prostrate throng around you, breathing forth with them the lowly supplications of the contrite heart, swelling with them the chant of praise, and communing with them by spiritual sympathy, till you have felt the whole assembled multitude to be indeed of one heart and one soul? And even if much of your knowledge and your piety have been gained elsewhere-from books, from friends, from private meditation, prayer, and reading of the Bible,—still, what has put life into that knowledge, nourished and refreshed that piety, and fed from week to week the new-born spirit within you? Has not private inquiry sent you with renewed attention to public instruction? Has not your domestic read

ing of your Bible brought you with increasing interest to its public exposition? Have not your closet devotions nourished up a spirit which can find its fullest utterance and expansion only with congenial spirits? and that utterance and expansion have you not experienced specially in the fullcharged atmosphere of God's own house? Brethren, I know not how you feel in this matter; but I do trust, that in judging from my own experience, I find many a heart here responsive to my own— which has hung, as I have done in early youth, upon the preacher's lips, craving for instruction as my very life—which has felt the gush of new emotion when anxieties, and fears, and hopes, a mingled throng which laboured in my bosom, have found their counterpart and utterance in another's bosom - which has mused upon the words of prayer, or risen up to heaven's gate upon the wings of praise. And then I ask,-What minisWhat, under God's providence, and by his blessing, was the instrument of this? What found the place for our assembling, the words for our use and meditation, the ministers for our guidance, the instructions for our spiritual food, the ordinances for our strength and comfort? Our Church!-our Mother Church!--to whom we owe ourselves, and all our present joys, and all our future hopes! O well might the Psalmist exclaim,

tered all this ?

in the psalm of our text, "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord!" Well might he say in another place, "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; yea, if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy!"

Once more only. He who meditates on his relation to the Church, will feel towards her, not reverence merely, as to a Nursing Mother; nor Gratitude only, as to a Spiritual Instructor; but FERVENT ZEAL, as for a bosom Friend.

The mind of man was not made for unlimited diffusion. If the sphere of its exercise is too much. enlarged, its feelings become diluted, its energies paralysed. It requires concentration in order to efficiency. It is within a bounded space only that its best affections can thrive. And hence, all the dreams of amiable enthusiasts who would become citizens of the world at large, and have no country and no home, have soon been found but dreams; and all the efforts of the ambitious after universal empire have proved abortive. The bubble has been blown till it has burst. It is not in one universal community, having only a single centre, that man is formed to live; but in many and various particular communities, having each its centre in

itself, and harmonizing, at the same time, in their revolutions, one with another. And if, therefore, in our pursuit after universal charity and fraternity, we rend asunder particular ties and obligationsthe associations of place and circumstance -the unities of brotherhood and clanship; we shall find ourselves too late-dissolved into lukewarmness, and lost in latitudinarian indifference. Consequently, would we prosper either as men, or patriots, or Christians, while we maintain the strictest amity with other men, and other states, and other denominations of Christianity, we must yet maintain most carefully the independence—the peculiarity, I might say, of our own mind—the love of our own country-the zeal for our own Church. For true charity consists, not in parting with our own sentiments to adopt another man's or in striving to compound some heterogeneous mixture of the two; but in leaving to that other the liberty of sentiment and conduct which we claim from him for ourselves. It lies not in obliterating all our points of difference with others; but in rather bringing out, and dwelling on, our points of resemblance. It is not indecision or indifference of mind, but meekness and forbearance of heart. It does not yield up the truth, -no, nor hide the truth!. - but it holds the truth, and speaks the truth, in love. And, therefore, the greatest charity and catholicity of spirit for the

Church of Christ at large may yet consist with the most honest and devoted zeal for our own immediate Church in particular; nay, with an earnest wish and a laborious endeavour to unite men with that church, and to promote its interests in every way. And such, then, is the zeal and the devotedness of him who feels his obligations to the Church of England. He looks upon its institutions, and its worship, and its members, as something more peculiarly his own. And while, therefore, on the one hand, he exclaims with St. Paul, "Grace be with all them who love the Lord Jesus Christ in simplicity!" and, "as we have opportunity let us do good unto all men;" he yet adds with the same St. Paul, "especially unto them which are of the household of faith;" and cries with the Psalmist, in our text, "O pray for the peace of Jerusalem ; they shall prosper that love thee. For my brethren and companions' sake I will now say, Peace be within thee. Because of the house of the Lord our God I will seek thy good!"

But let us recollect that it is not merely similarity of opinions which constitutes us members of a religious society. That would be mere coincidence. It is something more than this. It is coherence as one whole-combination in one system

concentration in one point. A Society is not an aggregate of individuals thrown fortuitously toge