are so wild and giddy, and thoughtless, that they cannot hear the voice of God in Holy Scripture, nor take the warnings of His Church daily and weekly repeated; if it makes no difference to them when they are told of death and judgment, but they will still go on to affront their Maker by coming careless and unsteady to His divine ordinances,-What can be said or done to them with any chance of profiting their souls?

I have now endeavoured to set before you, first, the temper in which it becomes us to appear before God our Saviour, whether in our first solemn vow of Confirmation, or as often as we renew that vow by repentance, confession, and self-examination, especially in order to the Holy Communion.

I have also shewn you the wrong tempers and delusions of the devil, by which these solemn occasions are too often made void and ineffectual.

I conclude with the awful words of the great Prophet, and God grant that we may all remember them to our comfort at the last great day: I call heaven and earth to record against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life.

COLN, June 22, 1828.

Confirmation to be the 26th.

SERMON XXII.

ROMANS xii. 10.

"Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another."

THIS
HIS is part of a description of love unfeigned,

or true charity, which St. Paul is recommending to Christian people, as the only way to secure themselves for ever the inestimable blessings of which God made them partakers, when He called them to be Christians.

Let love, says he, be without dissimulation.

Abhor that which is evil; cleave to that which is good.

Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another.

not.

Not slothful in business.

Fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.

Rejoicing in hope.

Patient in tribulation.

Continuing instant in prayer.

Distributing to the necessity of saints.

Given to hospitality.

Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse

Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.

Be of the same mind one towards another.

Mind not high things, but condescend to men of low estate.

Be not wise in your own conceits.

Recompense to no man evil for evil.

Provide things honest in the sight of all men.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath. . . . Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

Now, if you were to take every part of this remarkable description, and consider it carefully over, you would find that it touches as it were one by one all the sore places of our temper and conduct in our dealings one with another. There is hardly a selfish or unkind saying current among worldly men, there is hardly a single plea for hard and unfair conduct towards one's neighbour, which is not met and answered by one verse or another of this most edifying chapter.

For instance, in the verse next before this we are told that it is one mark of true Christian charity to abhor that which is evil, and cleave to that which is good, that is, to select in all things, little and great, that which will please God, and let alone that which will displease Him. Now, this at once sets down as utterly unworthy of a Christian, such expressions as these, far too ordinary amongst us, "Nobody is perfect every one has his fault. We must take the bad with the good," and so on. In opposition to all which, we are here told that we cannot be too careful in avoiding the evil we find in other men, nor too earnest in attaching ourselves to the good. To practise either of which rules, implies unceasing

care and circumspection, a real endeavour to be perfect and unblameable: the absolute and direct contrary of that dangerous easiness of temper which tempts men to acquiesce in wrong conduct, whether in themselves or in others, under pretence that "nobody is perfect."

The next instance is that which I just now read to you for the text: Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love, in honour preferring one another. Every word of this passage tells, every part of it enhances and enforces, the mutual exercise of charity in such a way as to expose and silence, one after another, some of the common, vulgar excuses for unkind behaviour.

For, first of all, we are not only "to love," but "to love as brethren," with brotherly love be kindly affectioned one to another. A Christian is to love all men, even the worst of heathens and of unbelievers, his own enemies and the enemies of God; whoever they are, he is to wish them well and pray for them always, and when they come in his way, to do them as much good as he can. But towards those who are Christians like himself he owes something more than this: he must love them with somewhat of that partial kindness which all men naturally feel towards their brethren and near relations. He must not wait till the opportunity of doing good to them presents itself, but must go out of his way to find it; must make it one of the chief businesses and employments of his life to advance their interests in all ways; especially that interest which the great Father of the family he knows has most at heart-the holiness and salvation of their immortal souls. We must not be eager to shew that we know the faults of

our fellow-Christians; for though it is one of the best duties of fraternal love to rebuke our brother himself, and not suffer sin upon him, every one feels how unbrotherly it is to be forward in publishing that sin to others. You would call a man most unkind and unnatural who went about telling his neighbours how worthless his brother was; but Scripture, you see, teaches that for one Christian to delight in speaking evil of another, whether truly or falsely, is just the same sort of unkindness and

ill-nature.

The thing which hinders us from seeing and feeling this as we ought to do I apprehend to be nothing else than our great carelessness about our Christian calling; our want of faith in the blessings which Jesus Christ provided for us when He received us into His Church. If we had anything like a worthy notion of our near relation to God, adopted as we are by baptism to be His own children in Christ Jesus, we should then understand how very near the same adoption brings us to one another.

But whether we choose to recollect it or no, certain it is that we are all brethren, and as brethren are bound to love and serve one another. By which one consideration, if men would but bear it in mind, a whole host of unkindly thoughts and expressions would at once be silenced and done away with, "Such a person is nothing to me; I am sorry for him, but I must keep my charity for those who are nearer, and who may sometime come to want." Imagine how it would have sounded to have heard one of the first Christians talking at this rate, in the days when no man accounted that any of the things which he possessed were his own, but they had all things