Fear of punish

lower motives, till their relish for the higher ones is utterly lost. But even the lower motives of fear and the hope of reward, are far preferable to that of emulation ; the fear of lawful authority, far from degrading the character, on the contrary sobers and exalts it; it is the fear of unlawful authority that is mean and mischievous, the fear of our equals, the fear of ridicule, the fear of the opinion of the world. ment and hope of reward, we may safely use with children, and with all imperfectly formed characters, because God Himself has thought fit to use them. They are not the best motives certainly, but they may and do often lead to the best; they keep our practice right, till the habit of acting is acquired, and then we do good easily, and for the higher motives of love and duty. Whereas emulation, as it is in its very essence a breach of charity, a struggling to obtain a good thing in preference to our neighbour; so it fosters pride in our hearts, and a spirit of selfishness, the very two feelings which are most at variance with those of heaven, and most congenial with those of hell.

But immediately after he has condemned emulation, he gives us in one short verse, the picture of a Christian acting in the business of life on Christian motives. "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Emulation cannot make the most ambitious man alive labour more heartily than the love of Christ will make the Christian. "Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit." Life is too short, and we have too much to do in it, to allow of our being idle. Our business, indeed, is infinitely various, and some have the privilege of not being bound to any one of necessity,

but of choosing for themselves that for which they are most fitted; but woe to him who lives without choosing any, or who is slothful in that which is laid upon him by necessity. Most certainly we may here apply our Lord's words, "If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous Mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" If you have been idle in your earthly stewardship, if you have turned to no profit the time and the faculties lent to you by God for His service, you will assuredly never be allowed to waste in the same manner the never ending time, and the incorruptible faculties, which are the portion of the just in heaven. Be not slothful then in your daily business, but fervent in spirit, not going through it as a heavy drudgery, with your minds fixed on some future enjoyment, but doing it actively and cheerfully, and with your hearts in the work. Yes, I may say with your hearts in the work, if you bear in mind the words that follow," Not slothful in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." So long as you remember in whose service you are working, and are thus restrained from those sins which often beset the industry of a worldly man, an unscrupulousness in the means of getting rich, and a carefulness and covetousness even when there is no dishonesty; so long as you remember who is your Master, and how long your service to Him will last, not for seventy years only, but for ever and ever, so that your earthly labour is but the smallest and the poorest part of it, the mere cheap materials which are given us to practise on, till we have the skill to use something better; so long as you do this, you may have your hearts in your work, and they will only be the more in

heaven. You may be fervent in spirit over the common trade or profession or employment of your every day life, and yet may be offering to God a constant worship too, in that temple of your heart which the Holy Spirit vouchsafes to dwell in.

LALEHAM,

November 11th, 1827.

SERMON VII.

ROMANS XIII.

ROMANS, Xiii. 7.

Render, therefore, to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

THE thirteenth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans is a continuation, as I said before, of the subject begun in the twelfth; namely, a most perfect display of the full and varied fruits of Christian principles, in private life and in public. What those principles were which alone could bear such fruit, had been stated at length in the earlier part of the Epistle: these latter chapters give us, in a manner, the glorious harvest of that divine seed, such as it would yield always, if our soil and climate, our evil nature and manifold temptations, did not so often blight and ruin it.

The Apostle, in these chapters, goes over the several parts of our common living, to show us how we should live in each as Christians. He dwells, however, chiefly on our duties towards our neighbour, whether in private

life or in public; as these form the largest part of what we have to do, and afford perhaps the principal matter of our trial. And we may observe, in what he says on this head, a mixture of the highest virtues with those which we are accustomed to think trifling, but which, from the constant occasion which there is for their exercise, and from the amount of pleasure and comfort which they give, are in reality very important. I mean that just after the command, "Bless them that persecute you, bless and curse not," we find it added, " Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." The first of these exhorting us to a sort of heroic perfection, such as many men may go through life without finding any occasion to practise; the second calling for an exertion of kindness and good feeling which every man, more or less, must be required to show to his neighbours, as he has intercourse with them in sorrow or in joy.

What is said with great truth of men gradually gaining higher and higher ideas of Christian perfection from a study of the Scriptures, with a view to make them a light to their path, applies very much to passages such as this which I have just now been reading. The broad and principal commandments strike us immediately; or rather we are made familiar with them from our childhood, so that we know them at least, whether we practise them or no. But he who, first honestly labouring to fulfil these, turns over the volume of the Scripture to learn the finer and more minute features of the Christian character, will find something applicable to every part of his daily living, something that will serve as a rule for his temper and manners, no less than a guide to his actions, in the most trifling particulars. It is