by parents, and those who possess parental influence and authority, exerting themselves to put a stop to it. There is a large number of the youth of this place who are left on Sundays to do that which is right in their own eyes. Now I do earnestly entreat you, one and all, to do what you can to amend this. Do not leave those whom you might influence for good, those for whose conduct you are accountable in the eyes both of God and man, to mispend God's holy day, and, under the very shadow of God's House, to gamble, quarrel, swear, and thus not only wrong their own souls, but shock and wound the feelings of those who have to pass by them on their way to the services of the sanctuary. Depend upon it, that their wasting the sacred hours of Sunday will leave you a dreadful account to give to Him who, as on the morning of that day, rose for you from the dead, and who will come again in glory to be your judge. Mispent Sundays are the root of all evil. Take up any of the accounts of those who are led on from bad to worse till they come to pay the last penalty to the offended laws of their country.

With what did

they begin? As it were, with one voice, they confess that their first step to ruin was the giving up the Lord's Day to worldly cares or worldly amusements, instead of thoughts of

Christ and Heaven, and the edification of their souls.

One word more, and I have done. You are going from the House of God to your yearly feast. Take care to observe your own rules, which are fully and excellently made for shutting out much of what is most objectionable and mischievous in large parties.

Such meetings for social enjoyment have nothing wrong in themselves. Our Blessed Lord shared the festivities of the marriage at Cana, and was once and again pleased to accept invitations to feasts. But though there is not necessarily any sin, there is assuredly much danger―danger, that, while you enjoy God's gifts, you should forget the Giver, who yet sees and hears you all the while. The heart is lifted up, the spirits are high, and you are betrayed into doing and saying many things which you are yourselves sorry for afterwards.

If any festive gathering might be thought safe against the intrusion of sin, surely it is when such gathering takes place among the members of a Society whose one great bond of union is to help one another to provide against illness and death.

SERMON XIV.

PREACHED, IN OBEDIENCE TO THE QUEEN'S LETTER, ON THE TWENTY-FIRST SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 1839.

ST. MATTHEW X. 8.

Freely ye have received, freely give.

THESE words, as they stand in their place in the Gospel, form part of our Blessed Saviour's charge to His Twelve Apostles, when He first sent them out to preach that the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Summoned from their fishing boats and nets, from the receipt of custom, and other lowly callings and occupations, they found themselves all at once endued with most wonderful gifts and powers. They were to heal the sick, to cleanse the lepers, to cast out devils. And though in this their day of small things, they ill understood the greatness of their mission, knowing as they then did little of the nature of the doctrines which they were to put forth,

and still less of the extent to which those doctrines were to be spread, still they doubtless understood enough of the duty which these particular words enjoined, and of the reason given for their performing it. They were to give freely, because they had received freely. The commandment, as it came to them, was most plain and clear; and most faithfully and fully did they execute it, both now in the first instance, when they were forbidden to go into the way of the Gentiles, or so much as to enter any city of the Samaritans, and afterwards, when the world was all before them, every barrier thrown down, and the whole wide field white already to harvest.

On they went, through honour and dishonour, through evil report and good report, in all things approving themselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings, by pureness, by knowledge, by long-suffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned. So freely did they give of the heavenly treasure which had been committed to them, that they counted not even their lives dear unto them, when the perverseness and obstinacy of those to whom that treasure was offered were so great that the experience of the suffering Psalmist came to be re

alized over again in their own case.

For thy

sake we are killed all the day long: we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.a

Now, what they did thus faithfully and thus fully in their own high place and order, all Christ's people are assuredly bound to do, in their place and degree, to the utmost of their power. The Apostles followed Him; and they say to us: Be ye followers of us, as we are of Christ. We also, in our time, have received freely to us also belongs the duty of giving freely.

Freely ye have received. Yes, Blessed Lord, what have we that we have not received, and received from Thy bounteous hands? In Thee we live, and move, and have our being. But not to speak of lower mercies, numerous and valuable as they are, to say nothing of the many comforts of this life, of the goodness which has again and again distinguished our country amid the nations of the earth, carrying us through a war longer and fiercer than any which our forefathers had known; and still nearer to our own times, (within the memory of almost all now present,) staying the plague of Cholera speedily among us, when it was allowed to rage long and widely among many other people; to say nothing Ps. xliv. 22; Rom. viii. 36.

b 1 Cor. xi. 1.