tianity; but its realities are no realities to them; they set aside the question of salvation, as a thing which they do not like to enter upon. And thus they live in ordinary times peacefully enough: but if danger comes near them, either personally or to the state of society around them,—if they have reason to think that death is near, then they find their peace troubled: it is not proof against all assaults; it must be secured not only by setting aside the Gospel of Christ, but by trampling it under foot. The neutral state is no longer possible; the question is brought to an issue: and they, who have hitherto not been the friends of Christ, are tempted to become his open enemies: they, who hitherto have not thought of his Gospel, now boldly deny and revile it. So, on the other hand, with those who are living in the peace of God.-I call it the peace of God, when a man, having endured for a time the struggle between his sins and God's will, is enabled by the Holy Spirit to end it, by making his sins give way to his principles; by altering his heart and life, in conformity to his Saviour's image. Then the man is justified and sanctified, and, in St. Paul's strong language, confidently anticipating that what has so well begun, will end no less happily, he is saved. But St. Paul himself explains his meaning, by saying, that "he is saved in hope," not actually: and where there is hope there must be uncertainty, and there may be fear. The sins that were overcome will rise again to the struggle; or, as life goes on, and older years bring other temptations, it will not be the sins which he once overcame, and which he may more easily conquer again, from having conquered them once al

ready; but it will be others, whose strength he has not yet tried; an appeal to passions within him, of whose force he never till now had cause to be aware. And here is the need of watchfulness and prayer, that such a danger may never find us unprovided; never find us without a just suspicion of our own weakness; never without a deep and lively knowledge of our Redeemer's strength. But, at any rate, the peace of our hearts is broken; and struggles and dangers, for a time at least, interrupt it. Nor may we be sure that it will be only for a short time; it may go on for years: not so, indeed, as that our peace is altogether lost, or that we are ever tempted to wish God's word untrue; but yet, so as that our perceptions of its truth may be less keen; and though our will to subdue our sins to Christ be unvaried, and its efforts continual, yet it may always find it opposed by the law in our members, and sometimes be overcome by it. Surely if it were not so, St. Paul would have had no need to bid us put on the whole armour of God; for armour cannot be wanted if we are never to go into battle.

I have gone on to things in life far beyond what your experience has yet reached to:-nay, inasmuch as I have carried forward my thoughts to the very end of our earthly course, I have anticipated my own experience also. But so it is, that when we have reached the top of the hill, we can look down it before us as well as behind us,—and while the ascent is yet fresh in our recollections, if not actually in our sight, we can see the path by which we have to go down to the conclusion of our journey. Nor can the map, if I may so call it, of any part of the journey of life, be

without its uses to you, by whom, in the natural course of things, it must all be travelled over. Would to God, that while your age yet renders it impossible for you to be settled in the peace of death, you might shelter yourselves in the peace of God; that, being children of light, you would walk as such; that having everlasting habitations prepared for you, you would early prepare yourselves, by an entire turning to God, for entering into them.

SERMON XXIX.

GENESIS XXXIV. 30.

And Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, Ye have troubled me to make me to stink among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites: and I being few in number, they shall gather themselves together against me, and slay me; and I shall be destroyed, I and my house.

SUCH are the words which Jacob addressed to his sons after the slaughter of the Shechemites. We see that he does not speak to them of the guilt of their action, but of its rashness:-they had provoked by it all the people of the land who had hitherto suffered him and his house to sojourn amongst them; but if they found these strangers guilty of such acts of violence, they were likely to join together and destroy them as a common enemy. Mere prudence, however, weighs little against the impulses of strongly excited passion. The answer of the young men was ready: "Should he deal with our sister as with an harlot ?'

Were we

coolly to think of the future danger to ourselves, when we had sustained so gross an insult? Let the con

sequences be what they may, we have avenged the honour of our house, and we do not repent of the deed." To this Jacob made no reply, for it is seldom that mere considerations of prudence can stand their ground against an excited sense of honour; they seem so cowardly and so unworthy, when urged on such an occasion, that we feel ashamed to press them.

There came a time, however, when Jacob was taught to judge the action of Simeon and Levi differently; when he no longer blamed it as imprudent, but detested it as wicked: not speaking of it as possibly affecting his own interests, but as being in itself, under whatever show of honour it was veiled, cruel and accursed. Hear how he judges of it as his words are given in Gen. xlix. 5, "Simeon and Levi are brethren; instruments of cruelty are in their habitations. O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honour, be not thou united for in their anger they slew a man, and in their self-will they digged down a wall.

Cursed be their anger, for it was fierce; and their wrath, for it was cruel; I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.” Now what was it that made Jacob now form so much truer a judgment of an action, of which before he had spoken so differently? The time and the place at which these last words were uttered will explain this. Jacob was now going the way of all the earth; the words were uttered from his death-bed. Then not only was the spirit of prophecy poured out upon him, that he should foretell the future fortunes of his posterity; but something better still than prophecy, a truer knowledge of what was really good