bad motives could have prompted you,-as in the instances of that unholy and unchristian bounty which the young, amongst the richer classes, sometimes show to the vile tools of their vices and their follies, and which, so far as I can see, must have arisen out of good, and ended in good. Here was one such occasion; but do you suppose that others can ever be wanting? Do you not think that fit objects are always to be found, to make it your duty to deny yourselves in your expenses for your own mere pleasures, that you may have to give to him that needeth? Is it not evident that a great school might thus, at comparatively a small sacrifice to its members, be rendered a positive blessing to the poor around it, instead of being, as has been too often the case, a positive evil? And if so, is it not clear also that you have a way of fulfilling St. James's command, without any forwardness or extravagance, a way open to the very youngest? And if it be open, is it not clear, lastly, that not even the very youngest can, without great sin, refuse or neglect to follow it?

2. Our Christian service to God consists further "in keeping ourselves unspotted from the world.” In this I do not see that there is any thing which concerns one period of Christianity, or one age of of us, as individuals, more than another. It were a mistake to suppose that, by living in the

any

world, we must necessarily be "spotted," that is,

The two things are

defiled and corrupted by it.
very different; inasmuch as the

one is our duty, and the other would be our ruin. But along with this, on which there is little need to dwell, it becomes us to remember that, because we do and must live in the world, because a life of religious solitude is out of the question, that therefore the command to keep ourselves unspotted from the world concerns us so much the more. We are in danger of being corrupted by it, because we must have so much to do with it. And what is the corruption to be dreaded? It is of various sorts; but perhaps, if I might take one as the representative of all the rest, and being, indeed, the very source of them all,-I should say that it consisted in letting things seen hide from our minds the things that are not seen; in letting the life that now is so engross us, that we think not of the life that is to come. This is the corruption of the world generally; how different soever may be the particular sort of things seen by which the things unseen are veiled to us. No doubt there is a great difference here. In middle life we have already outgrown many of these idols; and in old age we shall have outgrown more. Nothing is easier than for the old to overcome the temptations of those in their prime, or for those in their prime to think little of the temptations of the

young. But still to all of us it is the world that hides heaven from our view: it is something on this side of death which prevents us from fixing our eyes on that which is beyond it. And whereever this prospect of things eternal is so closed, there are we spotted by the world, there our service to God is not the service of faith, is not pure and undefiled religion. This is a temptation from which we cannot escape,-we must not hope to fly from it, but to overcome it. It will haunt us through life in every condition, even amidst sickness and poverty, which we might fancy would save us from it. But undoubtedly it haunts us most, and such whose circumstances are like ours. Age has not yet weakened our powers, poverty and sickness have not taught us how much there is in the world besides enjoyment. And yet in our youth or vigour, in our health and comforts, woe to us if we are not unspotted by the world,— woe to us if we do not still keep the view of eternal things open; still, with an unsparing hand, clearing away the branches and the trees, how beautiful soever, that would obstruct the prospect of the mountain of God; doing that for ourselves by our own watchfulness and prayer, which no outward circumstances will ever do for us, if our own care has been wanting.

RUGBY CHAPEL,

May 24th, 1835.

SERMON XXXIV.

ST. JAMES.--FAITH AND WORKS.

ST. JAMES, ii. 18.

Yea, a man may say, Thou hast faith, and I have works: show me thy faith without thy works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.

THE Epistle of James, and the manner in which some have received it, and many more neglected the lesson which it teaches, affords a remarkable instance of the way of teaching followed in the Scriptures, and of the difficulty of getting men in their teaching to follow the same. The Epistle itself takes up one view of Christianity almost exclusively, and follows it through with the utmost perfectness. The view which I speak of, I may be allowed to call the moral view, as distinguished from the doctrinal;-the laying out of sight the great peculiarities of Christianity, and considering it only as it is the law of nature and of Moses,

perfected in the two points of love to God and man. It would not have been possible for any part of the Christian Scriptures to have taken up the view exactly contrary to this; that is, to have dwelt wholly on the doctrinal points without the moral points;-for doctrines not used as principles of life, that is, coupled with the moral conclusions for the sake of which they are revealed, are no better than theoretical truth, with which Christianity has nothing to do. We have, therefore, no part of the New Testament so wholly doctrinal as the Epistle of James is wholly moral; but we have a great many which are both doctrinal and moral; and some in which the doctrinal part has been by some of its interpreters made so far theoretical, that the whole book has seemed in their use of it to be exclusively doctrinal, though in reality it is not so.

The view contained in the Epistle of St. James is undoubtedly not the whole of Christianity, any more than the view contained of it in St. Paul's speech to the Athenians. But it was not God's purpose that we should possess either the one or the other of these by themselves. Our whole knowledge of Christianity was not to be drawn from these sources only. It is enough that God judged it fitting that this view of it should be presented to us along with others, as being not only in itself beautiful and useful, but serving