tions on which salvation hangs. And if it is the few only who be thus children of God, the few only, out of all that have promised at the font, if there are but "ten righteous" in the city, and if "the salt" that is upon "the earth" has scarce kept its savour, then surely many a man there is who must "believe and tremblem." If these things are true, then tremble, my brethren, in truth.

Often "the

For the

fear of God is the beginning of wisdom"." sake of Christ who hanged on the tree for the redemption of our souls, for the sake of our endangered souls themselves, let not such tremendous truths be of no effect, passing by as the idle wind, which no man regardeth.

My brethren, make your religion a real business. Encompassed as we are by the temptations of the world, easily beguiled by our treacherous hearts, a religious life is the hardest task which is set before us, but the reward thereof is the greatest also. Look on it as a task, a labour, consider it as a hard race, and so act. Be determined, under God, to save your souls. Is there anything beyond plain sense in such a determination? Say, Christ to aid, 'I will not fall into everlasting burnings!' Leave not your souls to chance-reforms and maybe repentances. If, of His grace and mercy, Christ the Lord will make manifest His Spirit in your bosoms, be determined that you will make mani

1 Gen. xviii. 32.

m James ii. 19.

n Prov. ix. 10.

fest your obedience, your thankfulness, and your love.

My brethren, we have the promise of God that if we will receive, He will grant. "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely°;" "Ho! every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters." Have, then, the spirit of prayer in your bosoms: but it must be sincere prayer; the humble, the repentant, the heartfelt want of the strength and the guidance of the Lord.

Ask in this honest, humble, hopeful spirit, and the Holy Spirit will enter in and comfort your hearts, as long as you will be obedient; will guide and sustain you, until your course here shall have ended; and then for the sake of the Blood of Christ you will be accepted, and there will be joy among the angels of heaven.

These are thoughts which the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ hath laboured and hoped to plant in your bosoms, when she placed in your lips the collect for this day:-"O Lord, we beseech Thee mercifully to receive the prayers of Thy people which call upon Thee, and grant that they may both perceive and know what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

The Lord grant, my brethren, that you may utter

many such honest and humble prayers from true and watchful hearts, and may God of His grace accept them in mercy, and bestow His blessed answers upon such petitions in all the rich abundance of His loving-kindness towards you.

SERMON IX.

Second Sunday after Epiphany.

ISAIAH liii. 10.

It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief: when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.

THE

HE fifty-third chapter of the Book of the Prophet Isaiah is a prophecy of the character of Christ's life. The feelings in the bosom of the Lord Jesus, His habits, His crucifixion, and the benefits also which would spring from His crucifixion, are all strongly foreshadowed in this remarkable chapter. It is a chapter so full of description, that it seems more like a history than a prophecy; and it is so exact and minute, that it could hardly have been written with more accuracy and closeness if it had been composed after the death and the ascension of the Lord, instead of having been given forth to the world by the Spirit of the Lord God about 750 years before our Redeemer visited His creation. When we read in this chapter such exact foreshadowings, such close portraitures of the Lord Christ, our minds are ready to ask, "How can these

things bea?" How can it be that all these statements, so exact in their truth, should have been foreseen and foretold so long before?' When we are told that, more than seven centuries before Christ appeared, He was foreseen "to be despised and rejected of men," and then look to the scorn of the Pharisees, the contempt of the Romans, the stonings and the crucifixion of the rabble; when we see that He was "a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," and then look upon His condition of want, His continual journeys, His nights of prayer, His forlorn and homeless state, without a place in all His creation where He could claim to lay His head; when we reflect upon that heaviest grief of all, the sins and the lost condition of mankind, the foul cause which brought Him forth from the throne of God to suffer as "an offering for sine," then we are tempted to ask, 'How could so plain a description of the Lord Jesus be given to the world so long before?'

So again, when we remember the fruits of His sacrifice of Himself; when we are told, in the words of the text, that after the Lord had offered up "His soul an offering for sin, He should see His seed, He should prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord should prosper in His Hand;" and, reading these words, then call to mind that the spread of the Christian faith, which, spiritually, is the seed of Christ the

a John iii. 9.

b Isa. liii. 3.

c Ibid. 10.