does "GOD and the Father" reckon to be "pure religion and undefiled before Him?" even this: "to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Look at these words-look into them. "The fatherless and widows" mean all such as are desolate and afflicted, but especially the widow and the orphan. You who are CHRIST'S and desire to continue in Him, examine your life in the glass of this noble text, this clear mirror. Be not forgetful hearers of it, but doers. "Visit" your sick and afflicted neighbours. Perhaps you say, "I do sometimes send them a little present when they are in distress." Well but that is not enough for that is not "visiting" them.-Go and see them go and look upon their burdens : go and speak with them; and if the Lord give you a tongue and you can rule it, make it speak about JESUS, the great Gift of God to sinners: make it run on in language about the Father

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of the fatherless and the GOD of the widow. Go and visit them; for that will, with God's blessing, do your own soul good, as well as their's. It will quicken you in your heavenly way and hinder your own heart from cleaving so much to the dust of this world as it now does. But do not deceive yourself. Do not think you are certainly religious, because you visit the sick, and they love you, and because you send them gifts. The Almighty will not accept your gifts, if they be the offerings of a mixed and defiled religion. What! do you suppose that being kind to widows and orphans and the afflicted will "please the Lord," while you are still defiling yourself in the evil ways of the world and taking your pastime in the mire and dirt of sin? GOD knows that no man can say. "I have made my heart clean: I am pure from my sin: He knows that His own dear children have still their "spot," and will have it so long as they are in this present

world. But to have a spot on us, which we hate, and which we are praying and striving to get rid of, is a very different matter to going and willingly "corrupting ourselves" with the world. Being so spotted from the world, shews that the "spot is not the spot of GOD's children," but the spot of "the children of this world:" it shews that such are only hearers of the word, and not doers: it shews that they continue not in the perfect law of liberty: it shews that they only seem to be religious: it shews that they have not the true bridle on their heart and mouth: it shews that they deceive themselves: that their religion. is vain that it is not pure, not undefiled that it is not a matter "before GOD," but only a matter "before men.' Let me once more speak the last verse: "Pure religion and undefiled before GOD and the Father is this: to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction: and to keep himself unspotted from the world." Such a one was CHRIST. Look

at Him look into Him: hear Him: do His word take up His cross: follow Him: observe His conduct: His heavenly mind continue in Him: know yourself by Him: bridle your tongue, for it is not your own, but His: use it for Him, never against Him: visit the afflicted widow, the afflicted orphan, the afflicted sinner: CHRIST used to do so. May you go and do likewise, and be blessed in your deed. Use the world, but abuse it not be in it, but not of it. Be not a partaker of other men's sins, but keep thyself pure and may the GOD of peace sanctify you wholly and continually and wash your soul white in the blood of His Lamb; and present you unto Himself without spot in His eternal glory" through JESUS CHRIST. May the Holy Spirit give you clean hands and a pure heart, the tongue of the wise, a merciful soul, a heavenly mind: and make you stand up in His holy place in heaven, and never go out. Amen.

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SERMON XI.

CHRIST CRUCIFIED.

GALATIANS iii. 13.

It is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a Tree.

1. Let us see where in the Bible these

words are "written." We may find them in the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 26. "If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be to be put to death, and thou hang him on a tree his body shall not remain all night upon the tree, but thou shalt in any wise bury him that day (for he that is hanged is accursed of GOD.)" There we have the words which Moses, by the command of the Lord, spake to His people Israel, concerning the hanging of a man's body upon a tree. It was a custom among the Israelites, when any