denial? You know you must, or else you refuse to be his disciples, deny his authority, and throw up your obedience to him. You must be blind and self-willed indeed, if you can hope to be blessed here or hereafter in opposition to his teaching. You will say, perhaps, that none come up to this perfection of holiness, and that his doctrine must be taken with a large allowance for human infirmity. No, not in any one instance; he is at a word with us, and will not suffer us to prescribe to him, much or little. Though you do not exactly fulfil your duty in every thought, word, and deed, you must not tamper with the exact rule of it; you must not diminish one jot or one tittle from the sacredness and perfection of the law; you must not call any thing that Christ says in question; you must not think that God is not in earnest in his commands; you must take them as they are set before you; and if you are breakers of them, as you certainly are, when they are rightly understood, suffer yourselves to be condemned by them. For it is one great design of Christ in opening the law in its purity, and full extent, to convince us of our transgressions of it; and, if he does but once bring us to this, he will find means to raise us up again; he will manifest himself to us as our Saviour from the guilt of sin, speak peace to our consciences, and settle us upon a right ground of obedience, by reconciling our hearts and wills to the strictness of his commands.

See, then, what you must do in the peril of your souls. You have not kept the law of God. You have not so much as been careful to inform yourselves what it is. You must now learn it of Christ. You must hear him calling you to repentance. You have heard that his name is Jesus, and that he was so called, because he saves his people from their sins. As you read on in the gospels, you will perceive how he made good his character of the

Saviour, and proved himself, by his mighty works, to be ordained of God to that office; and at last died upon the cross for our sins, rose again for our justification, ascended with our nature into heaven, and sent down the Holy Ghost to dwell in us. You must consider all these things well, and say, every one for himself, this is the very person I want; if what he has done and suffered for me will make my peace with God, I have great cause to accept and rejoice in the mercy. I see that I am received to it in a way of satisfaction to justice; Christ is my ransom, and his all-sufficiency is a full answer to all my doubts and fears. If you are come thus far on your way, what do you think will be the next step in your Christian progress? Will you slight your Saviour, who has done so great things for you? Will you refuse him your best obedience? Will you not suffer him to carry you on in the way of all his servants? Will you not hear him saying, "If ye love me, keep my commandments?" Yes, now ye can do it; now he has gotten a friend in your hearts; now your eyes will be unto God's eye upon you, and your only aim in all you do will be his favour and approbation; now you can pray in secret, fast, give alms, and perform all your acts of devotion with a single intention to live in communion with him, and for no other end but his honour and glory. You will gladly learn of Christ, receive all his commands without so much as wishing that they were less strict and pure than they are, and grieve for nothing so much as your coming short of them. Let him then first bring you to a sense of your guilt and danger, that you may come by conviction of sin to repentance, by repentance to faith, and by faith to a new state of obedience. And if you are not settled in a purpose of obedience, from a root of love, trace the matter up to its fountain head, and you will find it end in downright unbelief and hardness of heart; you never saw your want of Christ,

and therefore neither love, obey, nor beliève in him. O Lord, search and try us, that we may know what we should pray for, and come to thee in the name of Jesus, for the will and the power to do all such good works as thou wilt graciously accept, and mercifully reward for his sake.

PRAYER.

Blessed Lord, whose eyes are as a flame of fire searching the heart; grant unto us, we beseech thee, that, from a continual lively sense of thy presence, we may endeavour to approve all our thoughts, words, and actions to thee. Thou, who seest in secret, promisest to reward us openly for whatever we do in pure obedience to thee, and with a single eye to thy honour and glory. Lord, thy favour is life, thy acceptance of our imperfect services is far beyond our deserts. Our alms are the leavings of thy bounty to us; our prayers are thy own work in us; and if we have found grace in thy sight, to be faithful to thy gifts, to relieve thy poor, to spread our wants before thee in humble dependence on thy mercy, thine is the praise and the glory. Be thou, O God, the great object of our desires, and the ruling passion of our hearts, that we may study only how to please thee, and fear nothing so much as to offend thee. Deliver us from the wretched hypocrisy of making our alms a sacrifice to our vanity. Let not our religious duties be polluted and abominable in thy sight, by being performed with a view to the praise of men. Discover to us that pride of heart which cleaves to all we do; and humble us in the dust for our forgetfulness of thee, disregard of thy pure, all-seeing eye, and contempt of thy blessed rewards. And, O blessed Lord, who didst freely deliver up thy own Son for us all, bring us to the fountain opened in him for sin and uncleanness; let his teaching convince us of our sin and great impurity, that we may come

to him in repentance for washing in his blood, be revived with the hope of thy mercy, and from henceforth live worthy of it, by fashioning ourselves according to his rule, and be accepted for his sake, our only Mediator and Advocate. Amen.

SECTION XI.

ST. MATTHEW, vi. 9.

Not seldom in

AFTER this manner therefore pray ye.. these very words, and always according to the spirit of them. Drawing nigh to God in faith and filial trust, as to a gracious Father; but with reverential awe as to a Father in heaven, where our home and inheritance is, and where our hearts should be; giving him the honour due unto his name, which is great, wonderful, and holy, in thought, word, and work, in worship, heart, and life; praying for the enlargement and prosperity of his kingdom of grace, that it may come in our souls, and in all the world; desiring to do his will with the cheerfulness and love of the blessed angels, and to suffer it with humble resignation; forgiving, loving, and living in charity with all men; flying to him for strength in the hour of temptation; and for deliverance from the power and malice of the devil, and from the evil of our own hearts; ascribing all we have, all we do, and all we are, to him only, whose is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory; and as for the concerns of this life, leaving them in the hands of God, and being content with, and thankful for, such things as we have.

Ver. 11. Give us this day our daily bread.- What? No more? Only food and raiment? If you think this hard, put your prayer for more into some such form as this, and then see whether you will not be ashamed of it.

"Lord, thou givest, and wilt give me from time to time, what is needful for the body, and the support of those who depend upon me; but I cannot be content with this; I must have superfluities to feed vanity or pamper the flesh," &c.

Ver. 14, 15. For if ye forgive men their trespasses.-It should be carefully remarked what stress Christ himself lays upon this, when it is the only article of his own prayer, which he thought fit to repeat, and enforce with a particular caution.

Ver. 16. Moreover, when ye fast, be not as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance. This direction concerning fasting is needless, if men might choose whether they will fast, or no.

For they disfigure their faces. — Putting on forced looks, as if they were not the same men.

Ver. 17. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face. Appear as at other times; or rather more cheerful than usual, and as keeping a feast instead of a fast.

Ver. 18. That thou appear not unto men to fast. How much of our religion, and of all the good we do, has no better foundation than a regard to men, will one day be known. We should do well to think of the matter now; not only because every thing so done is hypocrisy, and worse than lost; but because, all the while, we are kept in wretched ignorance of our state.

Thy Father which seeth in secret. Observe, thrice repeated. Perhaps there is not any one truth better known, and more forgotten, than that God seeth in secret. But when we give alms, pray, and fast aright, is our religious character complete? No; the heart must be right in its deepest ground; and our Lord is now going to search it further in the great point of its earthly or heavenly bent.