excellence and fitness in his laws, doctrine, and example, for the building up of your soul, a building of God, a temple for his Spirit to abide in, a house in which you yourself may have some rest, without the fears of those who build upon the sand, where the winds and the sea may destroy their dwelling.

But behold how beautiful, how calm, how full of glory is the soul in which the love of God and of men rests upon the ground of eternal truth! Jesus Christ is always in that soul: heaven is always near to it, and within sight: troubles rise against it in vain: he is stronger who is for it, than all who may be against it.

I would that not one present should remain unconcerned in the great subject to which all our meditations have conducted us, the love of God the Father, and of Jesus Christ, through whose holy life, death, and intercession, all our poor services, prayers, and works, of whatever

kind, are accepted by our Creator. There is no way of obtaining peace, but by acknowledging our dependence for mercy upon his free and unbounded love in dying to ensure to us pardon, and the Spirit of God to help us, and endless life to succeed this our short and changeful condition.

What more would you have done for you? God so loved the world that he gave his own Son up for us all. This is the great truth that the blessed evangelist St. John would address to us, if he were bodily present, as constituting our obligation to a Christian life. And of his love and tenderness you cannot doubt. To him the Son of God entrusted his afflicted mother.

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SERMON III.

GOOD FRIDAY.

1 COR. i. 23-25.

We preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the Greeks foolishness: but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men ; and the weakness of God is stronger than

men.'

So St. Paul saith, "The preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness: but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God. For it is written, I will

martyrs, and bishops, whence the church hath in various divisions grown and flourished over the earth to this day. To what life, or danger, or suffering, would not the hope of such prospects reconcile the beloved disciple? He was to see the coming of the Son of man to take vengeance on his enemies, and to destroy their city, that all nations might know that the stone which the builders refused, the rock of our salvation Jesus Christ, was precious in the sight of God.

And St. John was also to be baptized with the baptism of Christ; he was to be imprisoned and banished, and probably to endure other hardships, though of them we have no certain record. him it was given to suffer in the behalf of Christ, and, with the blessed apostle St. Paul, to be thankful for this very thing.

To

St. John preached and wrought miracles in Jerusalem and Samaria, and spent a great part of his time, probably after the period at which the Acts of the

Apostles close, in Ephesus. Thence he was banished in his old age to the barren and rocky island of Patmos. Here he was favoured with the most mysterious and awful communications that Heaven has made to man. Here he saw in vision, him that is the first and the last; that hath the keys of hell and of death; whose voice is as the sound of many waters, and whose countenance is as the sun shineth in his strength.

He was recalled from banishment; and spent the remainder of his days at Ephesus; and it is likely that from that place he sent forth that history of our Lord which we possess, which the church hath ever placed amongst her richest treasures, and hath called, by way of eminence, "the spiritual gospel." Its main intention is to prove the divinity and set forth the meritorious power of the Son of God. There is no doctrine which it doth not expound; no principle of life which it doth not strengthen, by exalting in its full