remembrance use your church according as your Prayer-book directs, and I dare promise you it will save your soul. Sometimes reflect with yourself, After a short time these sights and sounds, this building and these worshippers, these prayers, psalms, lessons and sacraments, will be nothing more to me, as to seeing and hearing; I shall be parted from them and they from me. Where shall I be then? in Abraham's bosom, or tormented in flames? Again, after no long time more, these things will be nothing more to any one; the sights and the sounds will all cease, and not one stone of the building will be left upon another; but the worshippers, they will still be in being, and will be once more gathered together, as now, in one congregation. For a short time they will be gathered, but there will soon be a fearful parting; and on which side shall I be?

If, whenever you come to church, you endeavour to come thus, in serious thought of your last end, I confess I do not see how you can come too often; provided, of course, other duties be not left. Coming thus seriously, I should think, would help you as much on week-days as on Sundays; and might it not also sometimes help you, if when you had any little

leisure, you should come into the church even out of service time, and exercise yourself quietly in your Saviour's Presence, for a few minutes, in serious reflection and prayer? We hope to be able to leave the church open for certain hours daily, to give persons an opportunity of saying their prayers there if they will. It may be an advantage to some, whose homes are crowded and busy, to have such a place of shelter, where they may perform their devotions undisturbed. Sometimes, again, a person might wish to come in a little before service time, or stay in church

a little after. The church will be kept open accordingly.

But whether alone or with the congregation; whether on Sundays or on week-days; whether in or out of church; these exercises will do us good, if we remember the end, and not else. The profit of the very building itself depends on our remembering that in a short time not one stone will be left upon another. This remembrance will lead us straight to Him whose Presence alone causes this to be a church. He has graciously come this day to be with us in our building. Be it our care so to behave that we drive Him not away, nor force Him to leave us and our building desolate. So even that dreadful word, which warns us of the ruin of all these things, will be a word of comfort to us. For as it assures us, that one stone here shall not be left upon another, so it tells us of a heavenly temple, of living stones, which shall last for ever; into which temple we are all of us even now builded, and by the grace of His Spirit, may if we will secure our place in it. And as in this outward and visible house the meanest material has its part, as the most ordinary sand or clay, by proper mixing and colouring and dressing, is fashioned into the most beautiful and durable forms, the very glory of the building; so very vile and wicked sinners, if truly penitent, humble and persevering, may prove in the end real saints, jewels in the crown of our Redeemer, precious stones in that wall, wherein no one stone shall ever be displaced from another; for they shall all be made perfect in one, Jesus Christ.

HURSLEY,

Oct. 24, 1848.

First in New Church.

SERMON XLIV.

2 COR. iii. 17.

"Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

HAD

AD we been in the palace of the high-priest the night before our Saviour suffered, we should have seen standing by the fire a person in great anxiety and trouble of mind, betraying himself by his voice and manner to be one of our Lord's disciples, yet when something was said to him by no other than a poor maid-servant which shewed that he was taken to belong to Christ, it exceedingly put him out, and he had no more courage than to say, over and over again, with oaths and curses, that he did not know the Man. Such was his fear and dread, on seeing our Lord in chains, and the high-priest and his attendants using Him so ill, that he durst not at all own himself to belong to Christ; in mere cowardice he denied Him, whom with all his heart he had repeatedly confessed to be the Son of the living God, and the only one to whom men might go for eternal life. This you would have seen, had you been in the high-priest's palace at Jerusalem the Thursday night before the first Easter Day.

From Thursday before Easter to Whit Sunday is a very little more than fifty days, and very soon after Whit Sunday, had you been a second time in the same place, the palace of the same high-priest Caia

phas, you would have seen the same person, St. Peter, again; but how different in his behaviour! Now, it is not a weak maid-servant asking him a chance question, but the high-priest himself, who had the chief power in the city, and who had succeeded in bringing his Master to that cruel death; he, Caiaphas, asks St. Peter, by what power or name he was doing what he did; and instead of shrinking back or denying anything, St. Peter tells him boldly, It was in the Name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the stone which was set at nought of you builders, but which is now made the Head of the Corner; and that in no other name is salvation at all to be had; and being threatened, he says he must go on speaking what he had seen and heard of Christ. In short, he who had been a trembler and a coward is changed into the most courageous of men. Now, what hath happened, to cause so great a difference? The Spirit of the Lord, the Holy Ghost, hath come down, and is entered into St. Peter's heart to dwell there; and now instead of the fear of man, there is nothing in him but "boldness and fervent zeal, constantly to preach the Gospel" unto all whom his Master should send him to. Now he takes no thought how or what he shall answer, or what he shall say; for he knows that it is not he that speaks, but the Spirit of the Father and the Son that speaketh in him; and now he is indeed ready to follow his Lord both to prison and to death.

So great a difference did the coming of the Holy Ghost make; and not in St. Peter only, but in all to whom He gave Himself in the same way; coming to abide, not only with them, but in them. St. Peter's was only one case out of those many millions, upon whom, since that first Whit Sunday, the Holy Com