for instance-although changing his place daily-shall rise and set, twelve months from this date, at the same hour, and appear at his meridian in the same spot as to-day. Corresponding to that, or like the revolution of a wheel, which restores every spoke to its former place, society-whatever change meanwhile took place in personal liberty or hereditary property-returned among the old Hebrews to the very same state in which it was at the commencement of those fifty years, whose close brought in the jubilee. "Then," said Moses, "shalt thou cause the trumpet of the jubilee to sound on the tenth day of the seventh month, in the day of atonement shall ye make the trumpet sound throughout all your land. And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof; it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family."

In consequence either of his crimes or his misfortunes, the Hebrew was occasionally obliged to part with his paternal estate. His was sometimes a still greater calamity; for not only was his property sold, but his liberty. He became the bond-servant of some more fortunate brother. So matters stood till the fiftieth year arrived, and the jubilee was blown. At that trumpet soundhow fondly anticipated! how gladly heard!—the fetters fall from his limbs, and the slave of yesterday is to-day a freeman. At that trumpet-sound the beggar doffs his rags, the weary labourer throws down his tools. Marriage-bells never rang so merry as that blessed peal; it

has changed the serf into a freeholder, a man of substance and position. And as, blown with the breath of liberty, trumpet replied to trumpet, and the sound of the jubilee, rising from valley to mountain, echoed among the rocky hills, and spread itself over the land from beyond Jordan's bank to the shores of the sea, from the roots of snowy Lebanon to the burning desert-every man bade adieu to beggary and wandering and exile; like parted streams, divided families were reunited; long alienated possessions were restored to their original owners; and, amid universal rejoicings, feastings, mirth, music, and dances, every man returned to spend the rest of his days in his father's house, and when he died, to mingle his own with ancestral dust. What a singular institution! As a civil arrangement, acting as a check both on excessive wealth and on excessive poverty, it was without a parallel in any ancient or modern nation. But it was more; it was a symbolical institution. More than in many respects a great social blessing, it had a deep, holy, spiritual meaning. Celebrated on the great day of atonement-that day when the goat, typical of Jesus, bore away the sins of the people-it was the symbol of a better restitution and a better redemption; and was, in fact, a striking, very beautiful, most benignant figure of the redemption which we have through the blood of Christ, even the forgiveness of sins.

Before turning your attention to the redemption, of which that jubilee was such a remarkable figure, let me by way of warning remark—

I. Our redemption is not, like that of the Hebrews, a simple matter of time.

Every fifty years, and in certain cases every seven years, redeemed the Hebrew, and restored him to the enjoyment of his property. "If thy brother," said God, "an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years; then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee. And when thou sendest him out free from thee, thou shalt not let him go away empty." Thus, time set free the Hebrew slave, and, as its finger moved over the face of the sun-dial, pointed him onwards to freedom. Everywhere, and in its most ordinary course, time works many changes -the young grow old, and raven locks grow grey; the poor rise into wealth, while the rich sink into poverty; old families disappear, and new ones start up-like mushrooms. And, constantly changing the condition of society, as he turns the wheel of fortune, Time is altering the form even of this great globe itself. The proudest mountains are bending before his sceptre, and yielding to his silent but resistless sway. Nor is there a tiny stream that trickles over the rock, and, often hid under the broad fern, and nodding grasses, and wild flowers that grow on its narrow banks, betrays itself only by the gentle murmur with which it descends to join the river that receives its tribute, and rolls it onward to the ocean, but-teaching us in the highest matters not to despise the day of small things-is wearing down the

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mountain, and filling up the sea. Through the agencies of heat and cold, dews and rains, summer showers and winter snows, time is remodelling the features of our world, and—perhaps in that symbolizing the onward progress and future condition of society-reducing its various inequalities to one great common level.

But amid these changes shall years change, as a matter of course, the condition of a sinner? Shall they redeem him, for instance, from his slavery, or even relax the chains of sin? In the course of time you will grow older, but not of necessity better. On the contrary, while the Hebrew slave was, by every year and day he lived, brought nearer to redemption, and could say, on such a day and at such an hour I shall be free, it is a solemn and awful fact, that the longer you live in sin, the more distant, more difficult, more hopeless, does your salvation become. "The last state of that man is worse than the first.” Let us not flatter ourselves with the very common hope, I shall grow better as I grow older. That is very unlikely to happen. The unconverted are less likely to be saved at the jubilee age of fifty than at five-and-twenty-in their seventieth than in their seventh year. "Oh that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!" Do you say, in reply, But what then am I to do? Can I redeem myself? Assuredly not. But are we, because we can be redeemed only through the blood of Christ, to sit still; as if that redemption would come like a jubilee in the common course of providence, or time, or nature? No. We are to be up and doing;

since, in a sense, it is as true of a soul's as of a nation's liberty

"Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow."

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I do not say that we are to rise like an oppressed nation which wrings its liberties from a tyrant's hand; nor that we can purchase redemption, as we bought with our millions the freedom of West Indian slaves; nor that through works of righteousness that we do or have done, we can establish any claim whatever to its blessings. By care and industry you may acquire goods, not goodness; money, but never merit-merit in the sight of God. And yet I say, in God's name, "labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life;" "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;' give diligence to make your calling and election sure;" "take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, to love the Lord your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him with all your heart, and with all your soul.” There are various ways of being diligent. One man, seated at the loom, is busy with the shuttle ; another, at the desk, with his pen; another, in the field, at his plough; another bends to the oar, and, ploughing the deep, reaps his harvest on the stormy waters; another, seen through the smoke of battle, is straining all his energies on the bloody field, winning honours with the bayonet's rush and at the cannon's mouth. And, though men may call him idle, yonder