instructions, and ordinances, to fence us about with such external aids as may render the habits of a life of devotion more easy to us, and backslidings less of a temptation. The rest remains with ourselves. We must endeavour to realize our true state, that, as I have already said, in our stedfastness is our only chance of safety. We must keep our eyes fixed on one object, -the working out our own salvation. From this object nothing must divert us: it must absorb us wholly. No sacrifices must be counted too costly to attain it; no surrenders too great to secure it. We must bend all our cares and studies this one way; and no allurements of the world, no earthly success, no domestic affections, must interfere with it. All must be laid aside which comes in competition with it; everything must be thankfully received, (trial, suffering, sorrow, be it what it may) which may help us forward in our pursuit of it. If need be, we must leave the dead to bury the dead, and be ourselves without a place wherein to lay our head. We must be ready to give up all

that most we cherish and love the best, without repining and without regrets; for "no man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."

To encourage us in such a course, we have all the most gracious promises which are written in the Word of God. And on the other hand, to deter us from back-sliding, we have there the admonitory record of the fate of those who in the hour of trial have mourned over what they had once professed to resign. And the lesson which the history of these judgments affords, is, that they who hesitate are undone ; and that whatever their previous advancement may have been, if they once deliberately look back, when they have put their hands to the plough, their labour proves all in vain.

"Remember Lot's wife;' for she was one," as Bishop Andrewes instructs us, who "fell when she had stood long, and who woefully perished at that instant when God's special favour was proffered to preserve her: when, of all other times, she

had means and cause to stand; then, of all other times, she fell away." Having been brought out of Sodom, and warned of the danger that would ensue; having Angels to go before her, Lot to bear her company, her daughters to attend her, and being now at the entrance of Zoar, the haven of her rest, that very time, place, and presence, she made choice of to perish in.

And she who died with her face towards Sodom, was one whose sin it was that she "looked back." She did not go back, she only looked back: and she never looked forward more!

My brethren, let us think of these things.

SERMON X.

TRUSTFULNESS.

JOB Xiii. 15.

Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.

THESE are the well-known words of that Holy Patriarch whose praise is in all the Churches, for the patience and trustfulness with which he bore the trying of his faith, and submitted to the merciful chastisements of his heavenly Father.

It is a great matter with us, my brethren, if, when we can weep no longer for a bereavement, we begin to endeavour to resign ourselves to God's will; if, when bodily pain, or worldly anguish, have come upon us, and after a while are lightened,