blessed, and I am blessed, and we are all happy together." And now you will see her one of the most respectable women in the village, with a little money in the savings' bank: on the Sunday all the children are catechised, and the husband delights to read and pray with his wife and children. Is not this an exhibition of the renovating power of Christ's grace? And this is not a solitary instance; you yourselves know instances like this in the neighbourhoods wherein you reside, where Christ's renovating power has been manifested.

Brethren, you are to look at this for a pattern, if you are ever downcast for any individual. Here see what the power of Christ's grace can do. In the first place, corruption has a power over the individual, and makes him a blasphemer, a persecutor, injurious, and a Pharisee: and now the grace that has renovated his heart makes him an humble seeker of the Saviour, a zealous disciple of Christ, an anxious neighbour, desirous of the good of others, and pondering the way to heaven, and walking in it.

To conclude: if this is the pattern which is here presented to our view as an example to us, who "should hereafter believe to life everlasting," let me just say, that it teaches us two things-that we are not to despair of the conversion of any, nor to presume on the grace of Christ.

It teaches us not to despair of the conversion of any. Sometimes thy heart is almost cast down, almost given up to despair, about thy husband, about thy wife, about thy friend, about thy child. Never despair; this is the pattern that is to teach thee not to despair. That grace has reached, and that grace has conquered, the foulest sinner on the earth; and, therefore, what you have to do is chiefly this-to bring these individuals under the sound of the Gospel, to awaken their attention to hearing the truths of Christ's word, and to endeavour as much as possible to pray with them and for them. Augustine tells us, that when any body reproved him for his sins, he could withstand that; but when his mother took him aside and prayed for him, and read him a chapter from the Word of God, and exhorted him to believe it, it broke his heart, he could not withstand that; he was obliged to retire to get rid of the effects which such a holy teaching produced. I say, despair not of the conversion of any, but, at the same time, use every means to bring every sinner into the house of God.

It may be, some are saying, while I have been preaching, "Well, I see that Christ's grace can convert, and, therefore, if I sit still, he will convert me; I have no occasion to trouble myself about my salvation.” And do you expect to be miraculously converted, my fellow-sinner? The cause of Saul was an extraordinary and sovereign operation of grace: you may just as well expect to be caught up, as he was, into the third heaven. No sinner ever enjoys the blessedness of Christ's redemption, but in the same way that Paul did; he believed, he rested on the merit of Christ, and he was saved; he embraced the welcome news of the Gospel, and he was saved. Therefore, O my hearers, presume not. And presume not as to time: a friend who would have been worshipping with us this day, is kept at home on account of an aged parent being burnt to death. I mentioned this in the morning; I mention it again this evening, to show that, to both aged and young, accidents frequently happen to hurry an individual to eternity ere he is aware. If this should be your present condition, I merely ask of you, Where will you go? What will become of

your poor souls? Are you ready to meet your Judge? And if you are not ready to meet your Judge, how will you stand before him? Condemned, abashed, and confounded. O give me your hand, to-night, dear young man, dear young woman, and let me lead you into the presence chamber of the King of kings: go, bow down to him, and say, "I have been a rebel all my life; now, Lord, pardon me: I have been a despiser of my Saviour, and a neglecter of his salvation all my days; now, Lord, make me receive it to life everlasting."

I have now done: I may never preach to you more: 1 am now taking my farewell of this congregation; and the sermon which you have heard to-night shall bear me witness that these garments are pure of your blood. I have warned, I have exhorted, I have presented a Saviour before you, I have told you of the riches of his grace, I have exhorted you to come to him. What have been the imperfections of the representations I am fully aware; but, O sinners, there is truth in them, there is eternal truth in them; and if you perish in your obstinacy, they will be a millstone about your neck, to sink you to the lowest hell. And must this voice witness against you at the last day? Shall I never see you again till we come to the judgment; and then must I bear witness against you? Would it not, do you think, rejoice my heart more, and would it not be infinitely more beneficial to you, for me to say of you, "Here am I, and the children whom thou hast given me?" I can conceive nothing more distracting to a minister's feeling, even now, than to suppose that that countenance which he has repeatedly seen before him in the house of prayer, he should see in the judgment, and that on the head of that individual he must see poured the vials of wrath, while he clasps his hands and says, "Just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!" Time is short, eternity is approaching; and now, or perhaps never, is your opportunity. Behold now is the accepted time; to-day is the day of salvation.

THE TEMPTATION OF CHRIST.

THE first attempt which the adversary made on the virtue of our blessed Lord was by au artful and forcible appeal to his natural appetites, at a time when they were more than usually sharpened and increased by circumstances. During his miraculous fast of forty days, Christ had been miraculously supported from above; the common feelings of nature had been subdued, and they were relieved from all the misery which humanity experiences from the want of food. But

" he was afterwards an hungered." The superior power which had overruled the general laws of the material frame was suddenly withdrawn; the sense of his bodily appetites as suddenly returned; and would of course be more severely felt from the immediate transition, than they could possibly have been by any gradually increasing appetite. The fierceness of opposite extremes it is difficult in every instance to bear; but where those extremes are made yet more fierce by the rapidity of a total change, the weakness of mortality must always necessarily sink under the trial. Yet the quickness of vicissitude from satiety to want did not form the only aggravation of our Saviour's sufferings and hunger. He was in the midst of the wilderness-far distant from all the ordinary means of sustenance-he was without a vestige of cultivation to gladden the eye, and with a body so worn out with fasting and prayer, that the life and strength he did possess would have failed him before he could have reached a human dwelling. And surrounded as he was by the wild beasts of the forest, their terrors were sufficient to drive away every friendly footstep, and tear from him the last gleam of comfort, and deprive him of the possibility of any assistance which might have been afforded by any passing traveller.

He was oppressed by hunger, his body was bending with weakness, he was destitute of God, and he was hopeless of relief. At this dangerous moment, and under these unfavourable circumstances, when the courage of the boldest might have shrunk, and the confidence of the most faithful might have been shaken; the tempter approached, and said, "If thou be the Son of God, command these stones to be made bread."

The peculiar force of the temptation, lies in the application it makes to Jesus under the character of the Messiah, and the great and manifest advantages which would have been the result of so small and trivial a deviation from duty;-a deviation which to a mind less endowed with wisdom and rectitude, would scarcely have appeared a transgression at all. For a voice from heaven had declared this peasant of Galilee to be the beloved of God, and the contest within him bore testimony to the truth of the declaration. Prophecy had revealed that this beloved of God should come to preach the Gospel to the poor, and establish a kingdom of righteousness on earth. All these bounties, however, seem now about to be lost to the world by the death of him in whose person they were to be accomplished, who was in the extremity of want without the prospect of supply. "If thou be the Son of God," then said the devilwith an air of affected doubt, with a view to work on the feelings of our Lord"if thou be the Christ, and dost indeed wish to fulfil those gracious purposes the Almighty intends to perform by thy ministry, exert that power committed to thee as Christ, and preserve by a miracle that life which is to be given for man." The temptation was undoubtedly strong, and sought to remove the supernatural aid which had hitherto supported our Saviour in the days of his fasting; and it would have seemed to a common understanding, to intimate

that he was left to the discretion of his own will, and that he might innocently employ for the important object of his own preservation, the power with which he was intrusted by God. The temptation was strong, but the answer to it was just. "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God." Jesus knew that all he possessed, he possessed for the welfare of others; that his miracles were never to be directed to the gratification of his own personal desires, or his own bodily necessities, but only to alleviate the wants and sorrows of his brethren: and so rigidly did he adhere to this rule in his conduct, that we find him not in any one instance partaking of the food which he created for others. When he fed the five thousand with a few loaves, he blessed the bread, and brake and gave it to his disciples, and they distributed it to the multitude: he then commanded them to gather up the fragments that remained, that nothing might be lost; and then he himself retired to solitude and prayer. Our Lord reflected also, that if the God of truth had promised to work such great things by his hands, he would protect his servant in all his dangers, and safely lead him to the performance of those promises. What God hath said, that God will himself accomplish. Such was, therefore, the substance of our Lord's answer, and had he yielded to the counsel of Satan, it would have implied either a doubt of the will, or a distrust of the word, or a diffidence of the power, of the Almighty to save him.

That which is stated to us as the second temptation of our Lord, is founded upon the answer by which he resisted so triumphantly the first." Then the devil taketh him into the holy city and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, and saith to him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down :"-if thou hast such a firm reliance on the word of God, that thou wilt not work a miracle for thy salvation when no human hope is presented to thee-if thou still maintainest a sense of thy danger, and of the dignity of Christ, and such entire reliance on the promises of God-think still further on those promises, trust your life entirely to his care; for it is written in that Word on which you so strongly rely," He shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." "Here," said the tempter, "is a promise unequivocal, the words are without obscurity, and the protection perfect and universal. He shall give his angels charge over you; nothing therefore can destroy you; he will give them charge not only once, but every where-not only to snatch thee from destruction, but even to guard thee against the slightest injury, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone." No artifice could have produced a passage more simple in its terms, more suitable to the purpose, or more admirably calculated to betray a common understanding, or a weaker faith. When he considered, too, that all the citizens of Jerusalem were worshipping in this temple from whence he was to cast himself down-that they were all looking, not only for the consolation of Israel, but expecting him to descend in visible glory with a host of holy angels in his train from heaven-and that Jesus might have actually fulfilled a miracle, and have made his first appearance among them with this strongest testimony of which any doctrine was capable in the performance of a miracle, and the fulfilment of a promise; when he considered these things, and how easily he might have gained an acceptance of his doctrines by this glorious first appearance,we say, it is no wonder that the devil hould have selected this as his second and severer trial.-REV. C. BENSON.

THE BRAZEN SERPENT.

REV. E. TOTTENHAM, A.M.

KENSINGTON CHAPEL, BATH, SEPTEMBER 27, 1835.

And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole, and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live."NUMBERS, xxi. 8.

MERCIES which are calculated to soften, are often, through the perversity of human nature, the means of hardening the human heart. It is a melancholy thing that the history of our globe can furnish many instances of this truth: but we need not at present go beyond the case of the Israelites which is brought before us in the books of Moses. They had been the recipients of multiplied mercies; they had been chosen out of all the tribes and families of earth as God's peculiar people: they had obtained honour before Pharaoh and all his people; they had been delivered by the mighty and the outstretched arm of Jehovah; and in their passage through the dreariness of the wilderness, they had received blessings and mercies innumerable from the hands of their God; and yet, instead of being softened and melted as it were under the receipt of those mercies, it very often happened that, apparently at least, the mercies were made, through the perversity of their nature, instruments of hardening them.

Now, when thus they constantly rebelled against the Most High, and notwithstanding the various blessings which he bestowed upon them, we find that inasmuch as sin always brings after it fearful consequences, and inasmuch as God is a God of justice as well as a God of mercy, so when the Israelites forgot their Maker, and when they sinned before him and against him, and rebelled against his authority, the history informs us that invariably some awful punishment was visited upon them.

We have a case quite in corroboration of these remarks, in that portion of the book of Numbers which stands connected with our text; for we read that "the Israelites journeyed from mount Horeb by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way." Then they were tempted to rebel. "And the people spake against God, and against Moses, Wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? for there is no bread, neither is there any water, and our soul loatheth this light bread." Here was their sin, this was their rebellion, this was their forgetfulness of that God who had given every blessing which they required: and consequently, the penalty was visited upon them; "and the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the