lips, to watch the mind's secret movements with a holier jealousy!

My brethren, we might pursue the subject into more detail; but enough is done, perhaps, if I have put your thoughts and feelings into a right train, if I have brought you solemnly to consider the announcement of the text, and to prove by it the worth of your labours, and the reasonableness of your hopes. O that we might all engage in our worship of to-day, and in our occupations of to-morrow, remembering that "the things which are seen are temporal, and the things which are not seen are eternal." It is plain, if this be so, that indifference about religion is madness. The distant, the hidden, outweighs the near and palpable, as much as our solid globe outweighs the smallest mote that dances in the sunbeam, and a thousand times more. But it can only be by an effort, by a struggle, by a victory over ourselves, nay, by a thousand victories over flesh and sense, that we escape from that which surrounds us, and presses upon us, and shuts us in, to the Mount of Contemplation, or to the sanctuary of devotion, whence we may see the gates of the Celestial City, and where we may commune in secret with the "Father of our Spirits." The distant must be brought near; the hidden must be made manifest; what Scripture declares should be to us as that which our eye hath seen, or our ear hath heard, or our hands have handled. Faith, then, a living faith in God's promises through CHRIST, must be our telescope. And God's spirit must clear our sight, or we shall be like blind men with a glass in their hand. Not once, therefore, but daily must we pray, "LORD, increase our faith; set our affections on things above. We are too much at home here for strangers and pilgrims. O wean our hearts from earth and its vanities, and fix them on Thyself, on the

joys of Thy salvation, and the glories of Thy kingdom. May we be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises. O, Thou LAMB of GOD, who takest away the sin of the world, pardon, pardon, we beseech Thee, our past worldliness, and let our conversation be henceforth in heaven."

BY THE

REV. C. H. RIDDING, B.C.L.,

RECTOR OF ROLLESTONE, WILTS, VICAR OF ANDOVER, AND FELLOW OF WINCHESTER COLLEGE.

ST. LUKE XV., 10.

I say unto you, that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth.

T this season of penitential discipline*, so wisely

AT

appointed by the Church as a season of especial self-examination and self-abasement, when the humbled Christian stands in need of support in carrying on his spiritual contest, it is well for him that he is enabled, if he will, to derive consolation and encouragement from the Word of GOD himself. When sinful man is brought by reflection to feel the sad and deplorable state in which he is, and to acknowledge that his evil condition s of his own grievous fault, and that, if it should please the Almighty to enter into judgment with him, he has nothing of his own to plead against the terrible sentence due to sin, nothing to appease the anger of GOD, or abate the fury of His just indignation; he is then in danger of sinking under his overwhelming convictions, and would well-nigh be brought to despair, did not a voice from on high encourage him to go to the throne of grace with boldness, and thence to obtain mercy in his time of need. Of such a nature is the declaration of our Saviour, "I say unto you, that there is joy in the presence of the angels of GOD over one sinner that repenteth;" in which there is something so simple in expression, and yet so sublime in conception, so consolatory in doctrine,

The season of Lent.

VOL. III.

Y

and so universal in application, that I doubt whether the whole compass of Holy Writ affords a passage of greater interest. Imagine to yourselves, brethren, the heavens and all the powers therein, cherubim and seraphim, the vast innumerable company of angels, assembled round the throne of the Almighty, and thence beholding with pleasure the first workings of the Spirit of CHRIST in the awakened sinner, watching with intense anxiety his conflict with the powers of darkness, and hailing his final triumph with notes of joy and gladness.

Could the most hardened and impenitent sinner free himself for a while from the bands of iniquity, and raise his thoughts to the things that are above,-could he but turn his eyes to the contemplation of the glories of that place, where CHRIST sitteth on the right hand of GoD, the one Mediator between GOD and man, he must of necessity, one would think, be struck at once with the heinousness of sin and all its dreadful consequences,-so dreadful, that when the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness even the angels of GOD rejoice; and then applying to his own case the awful denunciations against sin on the one hand, and the free offer of grace and mercy on the other, and comparing his present condition as the slave of Satan with what it ought to be as the servant of GOD, must be arrested in his course of wickedness, and be brought at least to consider for a time his own awakening interest in the Gospel message; which, while it warns him to flee from sin by the threatening of a worm that never dies, and a fire that is not quenched, does at the same time animate to self-denial and a striving after holiness, by the promises of a heaven, where, every faithful servant of CHRIST, "there is fulness of joy for evermore."

for

In considering more at large our Lord's declaration