live with. The less you will be disposed to fret at their selfishness and pride, the more heartily you are vexed at your own.

2. Be not selfish. Next to pride, if it be not the very same thing, stands selfishness, as the fruitful source of ill temper. "Look not" then " every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others." (Phil. 2.4.) Consider ever how you may best forward the comfort and happiness of those you live with. And in the trifling occurrences of each day and hour, watch how you may most lighten, not your own share, but theirs, of the ills of life; and how best enlarge not your own portion, but theirs, of its enjoyments.

3. Set a watch over your lips. And when an angry thought arises, for a while be resolutely silent. Words are to anger, as air to kindle flame. Without them it soon dies for want of vent. Whatever you have to say will tell as well if said presently. And ere presently is come, you will most likely be glad that you never said it.

4. Avoid whatever you have found to be your usual provocations to anger. As, for instance, if you quarrel over games of chance, this is sufficient reason to leave them off; or any particular expression in speech, or peculiarity in dress, or food, or any practice, however indifferent in itself, if it minister usually occasion to family feuds, avoid it, desist from it, forbear it. For what can it be worth to you, compared with the importance of not falling out by the way? ? O consider how narrow your path is, how strait the gate of eternal life; how manifold the perils of your journey; how large the comfort of kindly company! O consider how short the time is that you can be spared to walk together on the way of life! How soon may be cut off from your society the brother, the sister, the parent, the child, the friend most near and dear! How will you then regret, when your eyes may no more behold their presence, how bitterly will you then regret, that you should have spent the past hours, which can never be recalled any one of them, in acts of

unkindness, or in words of bickering and strife! That you should have chilled by peevishness the warmth of love, or hindered by ill timed sullenness the exercise of Christian counsel !

5. Take then in the last place this one direction more, "Overcome evil with good." "A soft answer turneth away wrath." Reply therefore, if at all, with gentleness and love; or if silent, let the heart be lifted up in prayer; in prayer, as well for those who shall by any means provoke you to wrath, as for your own improvement and control. Give us, O God, thy grace to restrain our selfish tempers, to be meek and lowly in heart, to think no evil, to bear all ill; and, however we may be provoked by our companions in life, still to see that we fall not out by the way; for the love of Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end.

SERMON XIX.

CHRISTIAN ALMSGIVING.

LUKE 14. 12, 13, 14.

When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours; lest they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.

On this text, I would first observe, that it does not mean, as it might seem, to forbid the invitation of our friends. "Call not your friends," "but" "call the poor," means, if thou callest thy friends, call the poor still more. And thus the word "not" is often used in

Scripture by way of comparison. “I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance;" (Matt. 9. 13.) that is, not the righteous only, but much more sinners, such as indeed all are, if they but knew their real estate. And thus St. Paul says of himself, (1 Cor. 1. 17.) "Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel;" though in the very next verse before he had declared, "I baptized also the household of Stephanas."

Christ then does not here bid us shut our doors against our friends and relatives. He condemns not that social intercourse, which yields the delightful recompence, not of meats and drinks, but of enlarged affection. Such intercourse we are at liberty, we are bound, to keep up, with all due regard to the value of time, and to the rules of temperance and sobriety. But such intercourse we are ready enough of ourselves to maintain; such invitations we are willing enough to exchange, with a view merely to our own present satisfaction. And therefore our Lord here first puts them out of the question. He