The spirit of Christianity is forgiving and kind, as the father's heart when running to embrace a long lost son; it is loving and tender, as the sighs of the mother over her expiring babe; it is mild and benevolent, as the whispers of angels to the departing saint. Is that man then a Christian, who judges and condemns his brother, whose tongue is sharper than the adder's sting, who bolts and bars the gate of heaven against all mankind, but himself and his little sect?

We all see through a glass darkly: darkly enough, God knows. We see in part, we know in part. Some see more, some less. Is this any reason why you should contemn, and disturb, and vex, your neighbour? Because an individual or a people are not as understanding as you are, would you withhold from them all sound instruction? If our own knowledge be limited, and imperfect, and obscure, if our opinions are far from being infallible, shall we not sympathize with men groping in darkness, mistaken, and erroneous? You perceive a mote in their eye, possibly, possibly, a beam is in your own eye. Have they not a claim on your Christian sympathy, your tender' compassion.

Let the man, who is sure that God has revealed his secrets to him, despise his weaker, humbler brethren, and arraign them before his bar; but let him first show, in words which cannot be mistaken, that he, exclusively, understands the oracles of God, that he is authorized to reduce us to his opinions. Then will we bow to his spiritual authority.

But will any man who has known the terrours of the Lord, who, perplexed with uncertainty, has de

voutly and humbly laboured to understand the truths of revelation, who has been oppressed with fears lest he himself should fall into fatal errours, will he judge and condemn his brother, and call him, for whom Christ died, by hard and bitter names? Has he the charity which hopeth all things, that believeth all things, and endureth all things? Or has he the pagan pride, which kindled the fire of Babylon's furnace ? Is he not guided by that terrific blaze, unconscious of the gentle star, which led the wise men to Bethlehem?

We are now worms, grovelling in darkness; we are birds of the night, averting our eyes from the splendours of moral day. Soon we shall drop these tenements of clay, and rise, and soar, and mingle with patriarchs and prophets. We shall there, at the footstool of the Eternal, learn the wonders of immortality. There, in the society of the redeemed, robed in light, and in the immediate presence of God himself, we shall advance in knowledge, till we reach the present attainments of David, and Daniel, and Isaiah, who have been for thousands of years in the school of heaven. We shall then more rapidly advance, till we acquire the present wisdom and understanding of Gabriel, and the highest seraphs around the throne. We shall still advance, and leave the present attainments of the highest angels as far behind, as those angels are before the weeping babe of yesterday. Then how low, how miserable, will our present attainments appear. Who will not then exclaim, How could I indulge pride and selfexultation, how could I reproach the errours of my

neighbour, when my own views were so feeble, so confused?'

We know in part. Our own conduct and attainments demand the candour and charity of our friends. Shall not we then manifest that charity which covereth a multitude of sins? The Saviour himself is touched with the infirmities of our imperfect brethren. Shall mortal man be more severe than his Maker? | Shall we not all rather, like our divine Saviour, who freely associated with all the sects and tribes of Israel, do good to all men, as we have opportunity.

SERMON X.

JEREMIAH xvii, 9.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.

As the benevolent physician would wish never to administer a remedy which is unpleasant, so the sympathetic preacher would gladly be excused from publishing any doctrine which is offensive, any duty which is unacceptable. But as the guardians of your health are compelled by love and humanity, to recommend medicines bitter to the taste, so the ministers of the cross find themselves called, by the voice of compassion and tenderness, to proclaim doctrines painful and alarming.

Such was the situation of the good prophet. It became his duty to tell the house of Israel their sins, to proclaim to the world their depravity. This was not a description of this or that unprincipled individual, but of the whole race. Not merely their immoral actions, but their hearts, the fountains of action, are "desperately wicked." A doctrine always admitted