sings they have received at her hands, that they have not a wish, nor a thought, beyond the Church of the Prayer Book; and that they are so satisfied that all things necessary to salvation may be found within her pale, that they would never join with those who find cause of offence in her. But while I gladly believe this of you, let me remind you, that to be a sincere Churchman implies something more than a mere profession of principles. It implies a constant, diligent walking in all the Church's ordinances. It implies habits of discipline and self-restraint. It implies a life spent, acccording to your means and abilities, in prayers, and fasts, and alms. It implies stedfastness, and diligence, and discretion, and humility: a dread of false doctrine, heresy, and schism, and yet a charity that thinks no evil and hopes the best; that loves the sinner, even while it hates the sin. It implies a spirit of patience and forbearance, a readiness to submit to misrepresentation and calumny, and a willingness to forgive them and pass them by. It implies an earnest desire to remove

all causes of offence, and a special care of creating them; but it, likewise, implies a full practical belief in our Saviour's words, "Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in Me;" and an earnest fear lest by putting any slight upon the Church, we should incur the anger of the Church's Lord, of Him who declared to the founders of that Church, "He that heareth you, heareth Me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth Me; and he that despiseth Me, despiseth Him that sent Me."

SERMON VI.

HOLINESS IN OURSELVES, AND FORBEARANCE

TO OTHERS.

MARK ix. 50.

Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.

WHATEVER may be the difficulties and uncertainty attending the interpretation of that part of our blessed Lord's address to the beloved disciple, which immediately precedes the passage I have just read to you, the text itself has no obscurity whatever. It is the simple enunciation of a command which we are all bound to obey; and the general drift and connexion of the context will, in spite of those parts, whose meaning is less obvious, be so far clear to the careful reader of his Bible,

that he will be at no loss to discover the kind of circumstances, under which the discharge of the duty here prescribed becomes especially needful.

Those persons who have made it their business to defend our Holy Religion from the assaults of unbelievers, by careful consideration of those external evidences of its divine origin, which are unnecessary to men who, like ourselves, have, as I trust, the testimony of its truth within us,-these Apologists of Christianity have been wont to adduce, as one among many other proofs in favour of our Lord's commission from on high, that if He had been a deceiver, He would never have fixed upon such persons as those whom He actually selected to be the first preachers of the Gospel. And a moment's reflection will suffice to convince us that there is great force in the argument. An impostor would have chosen instruments who gave promise of immediate usefulness; if he intended to make them partners in his deceit, he would have fixed on the subtle, the cool-headed, the daring; if his object was to deceive them, he

would have invited none to be his disciples but the weak, the dull, the unsuspicious.

But instead of this, we find the Founder of Christianity choosing for His followers a class of persons whose minds were just of that very temper, which, supposing Him to have been a deceiver, would have given Him most trouble. The Apostles, (I am, of course, speaking of them as they were before the day of Pentecost) shewed themselves to be anything rather than ready to give implicit faith to their Master's teaching; they were frequently jealous of one another; there was little or no bond of union between them; and the moment the Shepherd was smitten, the sheep were scattered abroad.

If such men became, in after times, the successful preachers of the Gospel, it could only be, first, because what they preached was true, and, therefore, God was with them; and secondly, because they had prepared themselves for their task of Christianizing the world, by disciplining themselves into obedience to those rules which their heavenly Master laid down for their guidance.