that it is a mere sin to be angry with others for not believing what we do not really believe ourselves, but only do not dispute it. We may take it upon trust, so as not to question it ourselves, but not so as to condemn or be angry with those who do question it.

There is no greater error in the world than to fancy that ignorance and meekness go together; that thought and wisdom make us proud. On the contrary, thoughtfulness, which is at the bottom of all religious knowledge, is one of the greatest softeners of the human mind, not in itself indeed the same as love, yet naturally preparing the way for love. And thoughtfulness, blessed be God for it, does not depend on learning, nor is the particular portion of those who have read many books and have much leisure. Even in the busiest life, he who has no other book than his Bible, may enjoy the blessedness of thought; of such thought as leads to the highest wisdom; thought upon life and death, sin and holiness, God's promises and Christ's love. Nor do I believe that in what I have been saying this day, I have been in anywise speaking to the air, but that the serious mind will have been able to follow me, and will have been able also to judge of what has been spoken, and if true, to believe it.

But one remark I would wish to add in conclusion, for your sakes as well as for mine. I am

well aware that what I have been saying is not in the strictest and fullest sense the preaching of the Gospel, and no one feels more than I do how infinitely that preaching of the Gospel transcends in value every thing else in the world. But I chose a different line, as more suitable to one not directly connected as a minister with this congregation. Even in serious conversation we do not touch upon the deepest tones of all, except where our relation is very near and intimate; we are contented with an humbler office,-to minister, as it were, in the outer courts of truth. But for those who complain that no preaching but that of the very Gospel itself is becoming a Christian minister, or useful to Christian people, I would refer them for an answer not only to some of the books of the Old Testament, which, on their notion, we might almost strike out of our Bibles, but to a complete portion of the New Testament itself, to the Epistle of St. James, the Lord's brother. That epistle undoubtedly supposes that they who were to read it had received other teaching beforehand; that the Gospel in the strict sense had been already preached to them. But in itself it does not in that high sense preach the Gospel; it dwells rather from beginning to end on such points of Christian duty as are required to perfect the man of God unto all good works; points which may be called properly moral. Now

that some Christian preaching, in particular circumstances, should follow the model of St. James's epistle, appears to me no just matter of blame. But as St. James's epistle is in the New Testament one only out of many, and as he himself must often and earnestly have preached the Gospel in the more strict sense, although he did not do it in this one epistle, so should we, both preachers and hearers, greatly deceive and hurt ourselves, if we forgot that the proper preaching of the Gospel and the believing it is our one great business, without which, and except as founded upon it, and taking the knowledge and belief of it for granted, all other preaching is to Christians worse than unprofitable, not edifying their souls, but rather subverting them.

Preached at CARFAX CHURCH, Oxford,

Jan. 30, 1842.

SERMON V.

CHRISTIAN SCHOOLS.

ST. LUKE, xix. 45, 46, 47.

And He went into the Temple, and began to cast out them that sold therein, and them that bought; saying unto them, My house is the house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves. And He taught daily in the Temple.

THIS action of our Lord's, taken in its direct and historical form, was no more than a lesson of reverence for places set apart for sacred purposes, a lesson against common profaneness. In this sense it is probably not greatly needed now; for the profanation of churches by converting them to common worldly uses is not a prevailing fault; nor, again, are our Christian churches so like the Temple at Jerusalem, nor our worship and state so like that of the Jews, as that all which was profaneness in the Temple would be profaneness if done in a church. I do not propose therefore to dwell upon our Lord's action according to this its

outward and historical form, any farther than merely to say that there is undoubtedly such a sin as profaneness, and that it is shewn by an irreverent treatment of places which our common feeling regards as sacred.

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But ascending from the mere outward form of our Lord's act, to what may be called its spirit and meaning, we find more than one sense in which it may be taken. Christ cleansed His temple, so do thou thy heart," is the expression of one of our best sacred poets, and the allusion is quite allowable and just. For the heart of every Christian is properly God's temple, where every evil thought is a profanation against the Holy Spirit abiding in us. In this respect, how continually is God's house of prayer changed into a den of thieves; how often does the din of all evil passions drown the offering of prayer and praise, which the Christian within the temple of his heart should continually offer!

Yet neither is this the sense of our Lord's action on which I purpose now to dwell. I shall not speak of profaneness committed against His temples of brick and stone made by men's hands, nor yet of profaneness committed against His most inward and spiritual temple-the redeemed soul of each particular Christian, in which the Holy Spirit dwells. There is a third sort of Christian temple, which may be and is profaned daily; not a temple