tinctly than on other men; we see it are called to fill; when we survey the drawn from the source of light in the nature of our office, its labours, its reScriptures; we see it leading to a profession more specific, and more distinctive; and arguing, as in the former case, from increase of knowledge to a clearer sense of duty, and a higher tone of practice, we are compelled to compare the standard we see in them, with that which is maintained in the world around them, and to ask again, "what do ye more than others?" If the men who heard the preaching of John the Baptist in the wilderness were ordered to bring forth fruits meet for repentance: If the men who heard our blessed Lord were directed to deny themselves, and to take up their cross daily and follow him: If those who have been admitted into the church of Christ have promised to renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil: If every increase of light shows us more of the sin there is in man, and of the holiness there is in God; and every Christian privilege comes charged with its proportion of responsibility; then, what shall become of us, who are called to minister in the word, and who have offered ourselves to others as messengers from God to man? "Wo is me, for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of an unclean people;" were the words of Isaiah, when he saw the Lord in his glory, and looked on himself as the messenger whom the Lord would send. Such also must be the feelings of every one who thinks of the ministry of the gospel, and contemplates himself as the instrument employed. sponsibilities; the consequences that must follow its discharge towards others, and towards ourselves; no language seems suited to the feelings of our hearts but that of the prophet, when he shrank with terror and dismay from the duty he was called to. “But our sufficiency is of God." We know that "we have this treasure in earthly vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of man ;" and while we feel that his grace may be magnified in our infirmities, we dare not yield to the impression which might deter us from the work; nor refuse an office in which we may be the means of adding glory to his name. Having believed then, we speak. Having received mercy, we faint not. A dispensation of the gospel is committed unto us. Christ must be preached; the world must be warned; and whatever may be our sense of our own unworthiness, our message, as ministers of the gospel, must be delivered, and prayers and tears must testify to the sincerity with which it is urged. And it will not be delivered in vain! We know him who hath said, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee." We remember the word which says, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world;" and while we remember that whatever be the hand which planteth, or the hand that watereth, it is God that giveth the increase; we need not doubt the success of the message, on account of the weakness of the messenger by whom it is uttered. But let that weakness be what it may, And yet we know, that when a live let the consciousness of infirmity, of uncoal from the altar had been laid upon fitness be what it may; if ever it happen, the prophet's lips, his tone was altered, that that live coal from the altar, the rehis feelings were changed. The lan-membrance of him who is the propitiaguage of despair became that of confi- tion for our sins, be laid upon our lips, dence and hope; and he who just before as it was upon the lips of the prophet: recoiled from the office proposed to him, exclaimed at once, "Here am I, send me!" And thus it is with us, my brethren. We know, that of ourselves we are not able even to think the thing that is right; and when we dwell upon the charge we if it ever happen, that the words are heard by us which were heard by him; if it be said, "Lo, this hath touched thy lips, and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sins purged;" if a sense of the love of God be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which he hath given us; what is there to check | he ascertained that he was the son of a or to hinder us. The love of Christ will highly respectable and pious individual; then constrain us? Zeal for him who and that he had left the paternal roof in did so much for us; gratitude to him order to avoid restraint. A course of who suffered so much for us; will over-licentiousness had brought him to the come every other feeling. We shall rejoice in the privilege of confessing him before men; and like the apostles, we shall give with great power our witness of the Lord Jesus. Let us look then from ourselves, where there is so much to dishearten, so much to dispirit; and let every eye be fixed on him in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Let us think little of what we may be able to do for him, but think much of what he has done for us. Let us lose sight of our own insufficiency in considering the largeness of his mercy, the greatness of his power; and while we thus give ourselves to him who calls us; though we be the least of all saints, yet to us may be the grace given, to preach to others the unsearchable riches of Christ. BENEFIT OF A RELIGIOUS TRACT. Ar an Auxiliary Tract Society held in the neighbourhood of London, the following interesting anecdote was narrated by the Rev. Edward Parsons : "A member of parliament, now entered into his rest, was in the habit of appropriating the early hours of the Sabbath to the distribution of these little messengers of mercy. On one occasion, as he called at a house which he had visited for the purpose of leaving a tract, he was told by an elderly female, whom he had before seen at this habitation of misery, that a young man up-stairs wished to see him. He was introduced accordingly to a room at the top of the house, where he found the young man stretched on a bed of sickness. After some conversation with him respecting the state of his mind, borders of the grave, and he was now anxious, having obtained the pardon of his Maker, to secure the forgiveness of his father. The gentleman went, according to the directions of the invalid, to the father, and introduced his business with him in the following manner: "You have a son I believe, sir."—" Mention him not to me," said the dejected father; "he has been for a long time my grief, and shame, and sorrow: he will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." "I have seen him," said the gentleman. "When?" inquired the father, anxiously. "A very short time since," replied the gentleman; "he is penitent for his conduct, and his only wish is to obtain your pardon." They hastened together to the house where the wanderer had found a resting-place. When the door was opened, the sufferer lifted up his head, and as he perceived his father, his eye glistened with the hope of regaining his favour, and his tongue ejaculated the desire of his heart. The event proved that his hope was not fallacious, nor his plea for forgiveness in vain. The father ran, like the parent of the prodigal son, to embrace his long-despaired of but repenting child. The son again repeated his hope that he might, in addition to the pardon of the Almighty through a crucified Redeemer, receive the forgiveness of his parent; this request was immediately granted, and they both wept together. The feeble constitution of the young man, however, was not able to bear so much excitement; he fell from the embrace of his aged parent, and then once more lifting his eyes to heaven, he closed them again, and expired. SERMON XLIX. THE LEPERS OF SAMARIA. BY THE REV. J. SHERMAN, IN BEHALF OF HOME MISSIONS. “Then they said one to another, We do not well: this day is a day of good tidings, and we hold our peace: if we tarry till the morning light, some mischief will come upon us: now therefore come, that we may go and tell the king's household.”—2 Kings vii. 9. on account of a prophecy which Elisha delivered, contained in the first two verses of this chapter. "Then Elisha said, Hear ye the word of the Lord; Thus saith the Lord, To-morrow about this time shall a measure of fine flour be sold for a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel, in the gate of Samaria. Then a lord on whose hand the king leaned answered the man of God, and said, Behold, if the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be? And he said, Behold, thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof." THE Circumstances which dictated this | delay his design till the next morning, brief conversation were the following. Ben-hadad, the king of Syria, with a numerous army, had besieged Samaria, the capital of the kingdom of Israel. It appears that the siege was continued so long, and under such distressing circumstances, that the most awful consequences began to rage in the city. Such was the high price of all kinds of provisions, that as much as ten pounds were given for an ass's head, unwholesome, unsavoury food; and a pint of corn, taken from the crops of doves collected from the neighbouring country, was sold at the rate of twelve shillings a pint. Hunger had so blunted the sympathies of nature, that mothers had killed and eaten their own children; and the resources of the city were now in such a dreadfully exhausted state, that an entire surrender, or total destruction, must be the necessary sad consequences. Jehoram, instead of reproving himself for his own wickedness, and confessing to himself privately that he was the great cause of all the miseries which Samaria was now enduring, laid the fault upon Elisha, the most patriotic friend the country had; and he determined, therefore, to kill him. For this purpose he went to his house; and previous to the execution of that purpose he determined to hear the prophet for himself. Uttering some impious, abominable, and blasphemous expression, he was induced to In the afternoon of the same day four leprous men suggested to one another the expedient of going out to the camp of the Syrians, and seeing what had become of the army, or what was the state of the Syrian's force. They were outcasts from society; they were devoured by the leprosy; they were under the ban and curse of God and man: and therefore any thing that happened to them, they thought, could not make them worse. And, therefore, "they said one to another, Why sit we here until we die? If we say, we will enter into the city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there: and if we sit still here, we die also. Now therefore come, and let us fall unto the host of the Syrians: if they save us alive, we shall live; and if they kill us, we shall but die." millions, are perishing for lack of knowAs soon as it began to grow dark they ledge: God has blessed a variety of incommenced their operations, proceeding dividuals, by his rich providence, with a on their journey; and, to their great as- foretaste of the rich provision of grace tonishment, when they arrived at the and mercy, which makes happiness camp, they found no man there for the abound on earth, and fits souls for everLord had gone out before them, and lasting glory. Thousands are every day caused the Syrians "to hear a noise of perishing for lack of knowledge; and chariots, and a noise of horses, even the millions more must perish, if the bread noise of a great host: and they said"— of life be not sent. Now we, like the that is the Syrians-" one to another, Lo, favoured lepers, have found out a plentithe king of Israel hath hired against us ful supply to enrich ourselves, and feast the kings of the Hittites, and the kings the world. Thanks be to God that some of the Egyptians, to come upon us. few efforts have been made to supply the Wherefore they arose and fled in the world with this provision! But their twilight, and left their tents, and their wants are infinitely beyond all the suphorses, and their asses, even the camp as plies we have sent them. Millions are it was, and fled for their life." When crying, and are praying for this bread of they had satisfied themselves, by going life: and not only millions of the heathen, to the extreme end of the camp, that it whose case is constantly presented to our was not a stratagem of the enemy, they view, but millions of our own brethren, in then went, first into one tent, and partook villages, and hamlets, and towns of your of the luxuries of life that the Syrians own country, with your own blood runhad left behind; and entered another, and ning in their veins, where many of your took of the gold and silver, and concealed relatives dwell; where some of you have it in the earth. And after they had thus friends, servants, children, relations resatisfied themselves, they began to think siding. And these dark parts of the of their friends: "We have been into earth, though not like the habitations of the Syrians' camp, and we have now got cruelty in the heathen world, are yet full their money, and we have had their food; of vice, and misery, and ignorance, to our spirits are refreshed, and our bodies almost an abounding extent: and the obare nourished, by that of which we have ject of my standing before you this evenpartaken; but there are our poor brethren ing, is to "provoke you to love and to in the city; there are our wives, and our good works ;" and to endeavour to "stir children there, and there are vast num-up your pure minds by way of remembers there dying of hunger. We do not brance," to exhort you to "add to your well to sit here: this day is a day of good tidings; we have reaped the advantage of coming out; we have partaken of the bounty of God in this extraordinary way if we tarry until the morning light, and be so ungrateful to divine Providence for the blessings that are conferred upon us, some mischief will befall us. Come, let us rise up and go into the city, and tell the king's household the good things of which we have partaken." faith virtue," and to your virtue still My Christian brethren, the present The text, then, describes the times in state of the world is, in a spiritual sense, which we live: "This day is a day of good somewhat similar to that in which Sa- tidings." The text reproves our indiffermaria was placed when these lepers ut-ence to the tered these words. The armies of Satan not well." and of sin surround it; the people, by nishment if miseries of others: "We do The text pronounces our puwe delay to send them help. And the text suggests the method which | curses upon his head. He engaged in we ought immediately to pursue. First, then, the text describes THE TIMES "This day is a day IN WHICH WE LIVE. of good tidings." the mighty conflict: and, as smoke is driven away, so he drove them away. Our God arose, and he scattered all his enemies. It is true that Christ in this And is it not, my dear brethren and conflict died; but in dying he "destroyed sisters, a day of good tidings? What death, and him that had the power of are the peculiarities of the day in which death, and delivered us, who through we are called to live? There are these fear of death were all our lifetime subfour peculiarities in it; the first of which ject to bondage." It is true that he died; I will now mention:-that Jesus Christ but in dying he "put away sin, by the has obtained a complete conquest over all our sacrifice of himself." It is true that he enemies. And this is the great and espe- died; but he proclaimed the victory with cial truth which is published in the gos- his dying breath-"It is finished:" pel of Jesus Christ. Sin, and the world," Be of good cheer, I have overcome the and Satan, like a mighty army, with all world." It is true, friends, that he died; their leagued friends, were arrayed against us. "But justice quenched its flaming sword In Jesus' vital blood;" and the law was magnified, justice was satisfied, God was well pleased, and sinners were saved. And now the host of heaven and the church of Christ may sing "Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah! the work is done; the conquest is made, salvation is brought in; and the blessings which were so much needed for my soul, are all ready to be procured, to be bestowed, through his dying atonement." So that "this is a day of good tidings." The justice of God which we had offended, appeared in dreadful majesty against us; and until satisfaction was made to divine justice, mercy itself could not spare or pardon. The wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and all unrighteousness of men; and all our sad expectation consisted in tribulation and anguish, misery and wo, which were ready to fall upon our heads. Now we had to engage these hosts; we had to go out against them, these armies which surrounded us as they did Samaria. We had no champion, we Moreover, "this is a day of good had no individual who could protect our tidings" because Jesus Christ has procured cause; no army went out against them. an ample provision for all our necessities. Like Samaria, beloved, when we beheld The spoil is ours; the glory is his. The our condition, we were all alarm and all conquest was made by himself, and dismay: and, as in the case of Samaria, through that conquest all the benefits of the victory was wholly of heaven, so it is salvation are now amply provided and in our case: Jesus, from the height of amply presented to our use. And what the throne of his majesty, beheld us; are these blessings? My brethren, our pity moved him to compassionate our enemies had robbed us of peace, of joy, case; love, which had heights, and of communion, of justification, of holidepths, and lengths, and breadths, un-ness, and of heaven: but this day is "a known, and which passeth knowledge, day of good tidings;" Jesus Christ has brought him from heaven to earth in our restored that which he took not away. flesh. In that flesh he dwelt for thirty- Whatever scarlet and crimson sins have three years in our world, in the form of a been committed, in the gospel he has servant; and, as the Captain of our sal-presented a full, and free, and everlasting vation, single-handed and alone, he en- pardon. If pride, and passion, and pretered the bloody field; and sin and hell judice had corrupted the soul, and beopposed all its force against him. The come its grief, in the gospel is presented wrath of God seized and fell upon him a fountain opened for sin and for uncleanin all its awful majesty: justice demand-ness. If condemnation arise from the ed of him the debt which we had con- law, to terrify the spirit that knows not tracted; and the law poured forth all its how to justify himself before God, Christ |