We on its application to actual and everyday occurrences. must descend to all the realities of human life. We must accompany our hearers into their houses, their families, and their business. We must make them feel that religion is something more than the dream of fanaticism, or the idle abstraction of a visionary. We must make them feel its weight and its importance, and shrink from no familiarity however unwarranted by the example of our great patterns and directors in pulpit eloquence, or however offensive to the pride of a morbid and fastidious delicacy. Any other views of religion are vain and unprofitable. They only serve to disguise the human character, and to throw a false and delusive colouring over the walks of life. They resemble those works of fiction which may give delight and entertainment to the fancy, or amuse the reader by the splendours of an ornamental eloquence, while they leave no lesson behind them, and can be transferred to no purpose of substantial improvement. It is under these impressions that I bring forward the injustice of neighbours as standing high in the catalogue of human afflictions. We have all felt it to be of real and frequent occurrence, and it is certainly one of the most painful feelings to which you can expose a mind of pure and delicate integrity. I know nothing more calculated to provoke the indignation of an honest mind than to see the simplicity of an upright character surrounded by the low arts of knavery and imposition-trampled upon by the villany of those whom gratitude ought to have secured to his interest-laughed at and insulted because he has too little suspicion to guard against the tricks of a sneaking duplicity, and too much generosity to distrust that man who comes to him under the disguise of smooth words and an open countenance. The loss which the injured man sustains from the injustice of his neighbour forms but a small part of his vexation. When a loss is the pure effect of accident or misfortune, it may not deprive us of a moment's sleep, or cost us a moment's uneasiness. But when the same or an inferior loss is the effect of injustice, it comes home to the feelings with a severity which to some minds is most painfully tormenting. The loss is of little importance; but who can bear to have the generosity of an open and unsuspecting confidence insulted-who can bear to be surrounded with falsehood, artifice, and intrigue-who can bear that most grievous of all disappointments, the treachery of one who has practised on our simplicity, and on whose integrity we placed a fond and implicit reliance-who can bear to be placed in a theatre where malignity and injustice are in arms against us, where we can meet with no affection to enlighten the solitude of our bosom, no friendship in which to repose the defence of our reputation and interest. To a man whose heart rises in all the warmth of affectionate sincerity the treachery of violated friendship is insupportable. He feels himself placed in a wilderness where all is dark, and cheerless, and solitary. He resigns himself to all the horrors of a disordered melancholy, and his spirit sinks within him under the reflection of this world's injustice. But let not his heart be troubled, he has a friend in heaven. The Eternal Son of God will never desert him. The angels of mercy smile upon his footsteps, and hail his approach to their peaceful mansions. There charity never ends. There he will celebrate in songs of triumph the joys of truth and of righteousness. He will inherit the affection of the good, and join in those eternal prayers which rise to the throne of mercy from one blessed and united family. Another example of trouble and distress in the history of man is that anxiety which every parent must feel under the embarrassment of a numerous and unprovided offspring. He has much to care for. This is a world of vice, and disease, and misfortune. The death of a child may bring affliction, but what is worse, the corruption of a child may bring infamy and disgrace upon his family. The love of parents never leaves their children. From the cry of feeble infancy to the strength and the independence of manhood, it follows after them, and shares in all their joys and in all their anxieties. They go abroad into the world, and the hearts of their parents go abroad along with them. The warmth of a mother's affection can never desert them she hears the howling of the midnight storm, and prays that Heaven would watch over the safety of her children. : Happy the day of their return, when the old man gets his sons and his daughters around him. They are his staff in the years of his infirmity. Sweet to his soul is the hour of family devotion-when he rises in gratitude to heaven for giving peace to his last days-when he prays God that He would take care of his children, that they may live to carry him to the burialplace of his fathers, and that they may all rise again to rejoice for ever in our Redeemer's kingdom. "Then kneeling down to heaven's eternal King- SERMON IV. [THE latter months of Dr. Chalmers' connexion with Cavers were engrossed with the preparations for the ensuing winter, during which he taught the Mathematical Classes in the University of St. Andrews. These preparations, and perhaps also the hurry of separation, have left evident marks of haste upon this farewell discourse. The reader, besides, will notice that in two instances an "&c." is placed at the end of a paragraph. This mark frequently occurs in the manuscript of the earlier sermons, indicating the insertion at the time of delivery of some favourite passage previously written and committed to memory. A sermon so hurriedly written, so incomplete, and so fragmentary as that which follows, should not have been inserted had it not been that a comparison of its closing address, with the other farewell discourses given in this volume, promotes so largely one of the leading purposes of the present publication.] TITUS I. 1. “Paul, a servant of God, and an apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the faith of God's elect, and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness." It has been insinuated to the prejudice of our religion, that its effects are far from corresponding with the magnificent anticipations of its first founders. They predicted that in the establishment of Christianity we would enjoy the reign of benevolence and peace. But let us survey the broad aspect of the world and its inhabitants-the ambition which involves it in the miseries of war-the selfishness which is unmoved by the plaintive cry of distress-the deceit which fills the earth with the exclamations of the injured-the cruelty which feasts on spectacles of pain-the licentiousness which degenerates a people, as it withers the graces of youthful modesty—the superstition which in its grovelling subjection to externals deserts the manly and respectable virtues of social life, surely wickedness aboundeth in the land, and the cry thereof ascendeth unto heaven. Are these the boasted effects of religion-of that religion which was to extend through the world the triumphs of truth and of virtue of that religion which announced peace on earth and good-will to the children of men; and which promised to unite the world into one family by the sacred law of love? For what purpose that illustrious succession of prophets who appeared to alleviate the gloom and ignorance of antiquity? For what purpose did the Son of God descend from the celestial abodes of love and of virtue-live amid the sufferings of persecution and injustice, and die a martyr to that cause He had so nobly defended? Even now, though we possess the sacred treasure of His instructionsthough refined by all the improvements of art-though educated in all the wisdom of the ancients-even now we exhibit the vices which disgraced an age of ignorance and barbarity. To palliate, however, the enormity of the picture, it may be urged that the most important effects of Christianity are from their nature invisible, while the prominent features of vice must strike the observation of the most superficial and indifferent. Vice stalks abroad, and exposes its shameless forehead in the face of day. It attracts attention by the glaring deformity of its character-by the tumultuous disorder it creates. in society-by the outery of those whom it injures-by the transitory splendour of its career-and by the disgraceful ignominy of its fall. Virtue seeks the shade; it shrinks from applause; it delights in peaceful unostentatious retirement. To find virtue we must seek for it, because it shuns observation. Virtue is humble and unambitious of praise; it doeth good in secret; it is content with the gratitude of those orphans whom it shelters of those aged to whose sickness it administers-of that family whom it rescues from want. It seeks something |