daily charities, the seed is no sooner sown than the harvest is gathered, and the fruit stored away in security. In such a course of life, sufficient for the day is the good thereof, no less than the evil.

But now, it may be asked, how can we secure such a life? We are engaged in various worldly occupations, which are undoubtedly our immediate and most particular duties,-which take up the greatest portion of our time, and oblige us many times to provide for the future, to live for much more than for the day. I said, in my former sermon, that we cannot, indeed, imitate Christ exactly in this point, but that we must find opportunity to do sometimes what he did always. The opportunities, of course, will vary greatly; and while, in some situations, like that of a clergyman with the care of a parish, Christ's employment may actually be ours, and our main business is just the same as his was,-yet in other professions and situations of life it is not so; and the opportunities for following his example must be carefully treasured up whenever they do occur, and multiplied by our own watchfulness. But, in whatever station or employment, we must find them or make them, if we would not deprive ourselves of what may well be called the salt of our daily living. We must, if we would keep ourselves unspotted from the world, acquaint ourselves with the dwellings of the poor. I do not say that we are all of us, and especially the very young, to go to them always with spiritual addresses: all are not fitted to give medicine for the soul, any more than medicine for the body; and, to say nothing of the great disorder and irregularity of every man taking up the minister's part, there are a great many who would not at

all know how to do it. But good may be done both to mind and body, and infinite good done to our own souls, without interfering either with the duty of the minister, or with that of the physician. To ourselves it is a great benefit to learn really what poverty is,— to see how it is borne, and to think, as we must think, how hard we should find it ourselves to bear it. To the poor, on the other hand, nothing is more welcome, nothing more soothing, than the mere proof of our interest in them, and Christian regard to them. We need not go with alms always, and it is far better that we should not; but out of mere friendliness,-to vary the sameness of a life which has far less of variety and amusement than our own,—to listen to their stories, to open their hearts to kindness, when the hardships of life may have well nigh utterly hardened them. Nor do I say that even this could be done generally with propriety by young boys here; but, at the same time, there is no boy so young as not to be concerned in what I have been saying: for, if not here, there is scarcely one of you who might not begin the practice of becoming acquainted with the poor under the care of your friends at home; and of thus learning, when here, to leave off every kind of wrong or insult to them, such as you know are sometimes committed. And certainly, as I said before, those among you of more age and experience might do more; and, without stepping in the slightest degree beyond what is proper and becoming, you might find opportunities, even here, of doing in this manner, much good to others, and much, very much more, to yourselves.

But God does more for us even than this.

He en

ables us, if we choose, to make a great deal even of our common intercourse with others,—an imitation of Christ's life, and an improvement to our souls. And here, at least, we all have our opportunities, unless we choose to neglect them. Even at the marriage feast at Cana, even at supper in the Pharisee's house, or when talking with the woman of Samaria, who came to draw water at Jacob's well, did Jesus glorify his heavenly Father. So too may we glorify him, not only in our visits to the poor, but in our intercourse with those of our own station; not only in more solemn occasions, but in our business, and in our intercourse of common civility. At school, in your common dealings with one another, how much rudeness and unkindness, and encouragement of evil and discouragement of good, would instantly be done away, if as Christ was, so were you in this world! How much happiness would be occasioned, where there is now, perhaps, only uncomfortableness; how many silent lessons of good would be conveyed, where evil is now taught so carelessly! And, in later life no less, how much proud or angry excitement,—how much mortified feeling, or encouraged vice, or folly, would be softened, and soothed, and chastened down,if we mixed with each other, in the common course of life with something of the spirit of Christ! As things now are, not only business but pleasure itself is often a weariness: we cannot take part in either without the tone of our minds being too often either hardened or irritated; the peace of the Spirit is not with us when the work of the day is over. It is useless, and not altogether true, to say, that the fault of this is in

others: others may be faulty, and, doubtless, are so ;— but how little would their faults affect us, if they were met by nothing bad within our own bosoms! For even supposing our charity to be ever so lively,-if we felt even as Christ felt for the evil of others, and for the ruin which they were bringing on themselves by it, and if we were wearied by it as he was, when he cried, "O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you, how long shall I suffer you?"-yet still, this sorrow and this weariness are not inconsistent with that peace of the Spirit which Christ gives, and which he himself declared to be far different from that which "the world giveth." It would be a sorrow and a weariness that would rather turn us more heartily to God, than a restlessness which makes us shrink from him. It would only make us long the more for that rest that remaineth for the people of God, and not drive us back to wander after our own ways in this world's wilderness.

idle,

Such, then, is Christ's daily lesson to us: not to be idle or slothful in our work; and to sanctify it by doing it as to him, and not as to man. Not to be -as those who have mere bodily faculties, who live only to eat, and drink and sleep; not to be too busily and carefully engaged in our own labour, and still less for its own sake, as those who lived only for themselves, and for this world,—and to whom God, and Christ, and eternal life, had never been made known. Let us work earnestly,—for so did Christ; but let us work also as doing God's will, and for the improvement of our own souls, or else our work will not be such as He will acknowledge at his coming.

SERMON XXV.

MARK VI. 31.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.

I AM now come to the conclusion of the subject which I have been dwelling on in my four last sermons. I said, that in the verse from which my present text is taken, there were three things deserving of our separate attention :-first of all, Christ's constant diligence and activity; "they had no leisure so much as to eat;" secondly, The nature of that employment: intercourse with other men, for the purpose of doing them good, in body or soul: and, thirdly, his thinking it right, from time to time, to have intervals of rest:-" Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." And, with respect to this latter point, I said that we knew from other places how our Lord employed these periods of rest; and that although, as partaking of the bodily weaknesses of our nature, he may be supposed to have needed rest as we do, in its common and simplest sense, yet his conduct teaches us what further use may be made of such seasons, and