to his good pleasure, hear the words addressed directly to you: "let not the rich man glory in his riches. Have you been men of prayer more than all others?" You have had occasion, and you will have occasion to your last moment, to be prayerful men beyond all others. When you have read the Bible (you are in greater need, than almost any, of learning what it contains) have you ever met with this passage, "Beware, lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, and thou say in thine heart, my power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth." Beware, is the command of your God; has bewaring been the course your conduct? If it has not been, your conscience must tell you, that though you may have heard sermons, and received the eucharist times out of number, though you may have drawn near with your lips in his house, through each successive season of life, all has availed you nothing; "the deceitfulness of riches has choked the word, and it has been unfruitful" in you; your immortal soul has but famished all the while, your perishing body alone has thriven, and here is your portrait drawn by an unerring pencil; "Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness: then he for

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sook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the rock of his salvation." Oh! then, before it be too late, turn to him who speaks from heaven to you, and remember, that as "he accepteth not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the rich more than the poor, and that as your silver and your gold shall not be able to deliver you in the day of the wrath of the Lord, you must have another ground of trust, and another source of deliverance to look to. Not that riches themselves will keep you out of heaven, for Joseph of Arimathea will be there for ever, but trust in riches will not keep you out of hell, and Dives in torment has already told you so. There are riches you may value beyond limitation, and they shall conduct you to safety and joy, for they are the unsearchable riches of Christ, of him in whom there is an exhaustless abundance, of which we all may partake.

And therefore, to you who are of the wise, the mighty, or the rich, in your own or the world's estimation, and to you also who are neither the one nor the other, to all and to each, this is the heaven-descended precept, "Let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight, saith the Lord." Here is a pre-eminence, a wisdom and wealth which are divine and everlasting. All pursuits, without it, we shall one day find grovelling, and

all glory short of it we shall one day own delusive. If we belong to Jesus, we rejoice in him supremely, and in the flesh we have no confidence. We hold ourselves set apart for his glory, and are ready and anxious more and more to consecrate to him all endowments and possessions, whether of mind, body, or estate, that he may be honoured in the use of them. Before all things, then, let us unite in prayer, that we may understand and know God by true faith, and by the experience of his in his dear Son, that we may and mercy grace behold his glory and be changed into his image, that we may be followers of him in his lovingkindness and righteousness, and to our dying day delight only in the things pleasing to him!

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SERMON IX.

Go

MISSIONS TO THE HEATHEN.

ST. MARK, xvi. 15.

ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to

every creature.

A TRUER evidence of deep and holy benevolence cannot be given than the adoption of the spirit of these words. For though they are addressed in the first instance to the ministers of God as official emissaries of his will to man, their application includes all the avowed followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. Only a few, comparatively, are concerned in the direct commission to preach the gospel, but all are implied in its indirect injunction to communicate it. Through that Gospel, when imparted spiritually to the heart and conscience, we know a saving faith is conveyed and nurtured in believers: and since we are told that it alone has brought life and immortality to. light, we see but too plainly that where its joyful

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sound is not heard, there the soul is in dark and inevitable ignorance of its dearest concerns. Now this is the condition of the whole heathen world, of myriads on myriads in pagan Africa and Asia, and this is a condition which no one can contemplate without sorrow, who has anything of the life and power of godliness in his own soul. Apathy, alas! there has been in the great and righteous cause of unfolding a Saviour to the extremities of the earth; and apathy, though not perhaps on so extended a scale, there unhappily still is among some who profess that blessed But all such apathy is congenial only to the bleak regions of an half-earnest heart; and being as it were a poisonous weed in the Christian garden, it spreads a blight on all within its reach!

name.

It may be useful, my brethren, should God bless our efforts, somewhat to dilate upon this subject. On this day,* especially, when in her collect and lessons our church points to the strength and consolation of the Scriptures, we may derive from it instruction to our own souls.

Before we do this, let us briefly review the circumstances which give a peculiar emphasis to our Lord's words in the text. Having now risen from the dead, he had established the perfect veracity of his mission. To several of his followers he had made himself personally known, Second Sunday in Advent.

*