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more continually, and to draw the picture of it, as it were, in our minds, that our blessed Saviour and His Apostles have told us so much about it, have mentioned one by one so many of the terrible as well as the encouraging sights and sounds which will attend it. I suppose there is hardly any person, accustomed to exercise serious thought at all, who has not framed in his own imagination a sort of picture of that great and dreadful day. Upon the comfortable half of that picture let us learn to set our hopes, to seek no other happiness than what Jesus Christ will give to the good on that day, nor on any other terms than those upon which He will give it. It may be innocent and excusable, but it is not properly a holy and Christian hope, whatever stops on this side of the grave.

Again, there being two great errors, either of which is enough to spoil your hope of salvation, namely, despondency and presumption, it is remarkable how with two words the Holy Spirit puts us on our guard against both. If a man thought only of himself, and of what he has deserved, this would surely make him despair of God's mercy, and would slacken his hands from doing his duty. To prevent which, we have the comfort of the Scriptures mentioned as a sure foundation of our hope, that is, that help and strength which, as the Scriptures tell us, the Holy Spirit is ready to give to the worst of sinners, truly repenting. Again, if a man were to think only of God's great love and compassion, without considering his own unworthiness, this would be the way to make him presumptuous. It might encourage him to be careless about his duty, as though God in His mercy would look upon him as

being already good enough, or at any rate, as if there was a good chance of His making him good enough, one day or other, without anything done on his own part. To hinder these presumptuous fancies, we are told that patience as well as comfort is to be learned out of the Scriptures, to be the foundation of a Christian's hope. By "patience," you are to understand "patient continuance in well-doing," for our Lord Jesus Christ's sake. Let every thing that happens to you, everything you do, be turned to account in that way, and then you will have a title to the comfort of the Scriptures and to the sober and reasonable hope of everlasting life, which flows from it.

By keeping these two words, "patience" and "comfort," always together in your minds, your wishes, and prayers, you will be enabled to join together those Christian duties which seem, at first thought, most contrary the one to the other. The hope which is nourished by quietly suffering evil, and comforting one's self under it with the thought that it is the will of God, will prove, at one and the same time, lively enough to keep a man's heart and thoughts always in heaven, yet sober enough to make him attend, without grudging, to all his duties and businesses on earth. There is no other way of accounting for the calmness and evenness of spirit with which, in the midst of pain and anguish, one may sometimes see Christian people, after a well-spent life, attending carefully to all, even the most trifling things, they have to do and when their serious thoughts are more and more taken up with eternity. Of which there is a beautiful instance in the Bible, in the last Epistle to Timothy, written by St. Paul just before his death. Among the most solemn sentences relating

to the great work in which God had employed him, and the reward which he soon hoped to receive in God's presence, we find him giving such directions as these: Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me; the cloke that I left at Troas with Carpus, when thou comest, bring with thee, and likewise the books; but especially the parchments. These words, which may seem of little consequence to us now-a-days, might however be turned to excellent use, if we would take them as a hint from Almighty God, how sober and composed even when nearest enjoyment, is that hope, after which it becomes us to labour and pray; since it did not hinder the great Apostle, now at the point of departing to be with Christ, from recollecting and ordering such every-day matters as his clothes, his books and parchments.

Finally, and above all, the hope which the Scriptures would teach us is ever mixed with fear; with fear of nothing so much as clokes and excuses for sin. This is always to be remembered, both when we pray for it, and when we seem to enjoy it. If we are not in the fear of the Lord all day long, we can have no good ground of hope, when we lie down at night, of rising happily in the morning. And we may take this for a certain truth, that it is better, infinitely better, to go down to the grave stooping, as it were, and feeble in spirit, for want of comfortable hope, than to allow ourselves to forget, in the pleasing imagination of God's favour, any one of the least of His Commandments.

EASTLEACH, Dec. 14, 1823.

SERMON XVI.

IF

PHILIPPIANS iii. 12.

"Not as though I had already attained, either were
already [made] perfect."

F we had never heard these words before, we should naturally suppose them to be spoken by some young beginner in Christianity; at least, if we were to judge by the satisfaction which most people take in their own doings, and the praise they sometimes receive for a very trifling amendment.

We should be far indeed from supposing that they were the words of the best and greatest Christian, perhaps, that ever was; the words of St. Paul himself.

We are so used to value ourselves, and to hear others value us, for being ever so little better than we used to be, for having left off one or two bad habits, or for sinning not quite so often as we didthat it must seem strange to us, to find such a man as St. Paul speaking in this modest and humble tone of what he had done, and was doing in the way of goodness. If any one of us were half as good as St. Paul, all his friends would surely think him, and there would be great danger of his thinking himself, quite as good as he need desire to be. To hinder any such bad consequence, we find this holy Apostle

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again and again taking pains to hinder those who thought best of him, from supposing that he was good enough. For instance, he tells the Corinthians, that he was much afraid, after all he had done, and after all God's mercy to him, that he might prove a cast-away at the last; and therefore did as much as he could, by fasting and abstinence, to keep himself fit for God's service. I keep under my body, says he, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away.

Here in the text he is speaking to the Philippians, who being, as it plainly appears, full of affection towards him, would be the more likely to think too well of him, and to set him up as their pattern instead of Jesus Christ. This, I suppose, made him the more careful to warn them, that he was still on hard duty like themselves,-still a sinner struggling with many infirmities, not a pattern of holiness and perfection.

This it was yet the more necessary for him to do, because he had been obliged, in the course of his instructions, to speak more highly of himself than he could have wished.

There were persons in those times who, though they were Christians, kept continually troubling themselves and one another by going back to the law. They insisted that men should be circumcised, and keep the other customs which Moses commanded; thinking that if they were very exact about these things, they might somehow or other be excused, before God and man, for neglecting those duties towards God and their neighbour, which it would be more unpleasant to them to keep. Just as in our

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