before us, to shew us, that when we loved not God He loved us; and to set off the more our rebellion and ingratitude towards Him.

But I cannot conclude without reminding you, that the main end and object of all this, is to bring you to Christ. Seeing your own emptiness and renouncing yourselves is indeed the first step; but it is nothing, unless you make it accessory to that other, which is, to see the fulness of Christ, and His willingness to save you; to see your baptismal privileges and your baptismal duties; to accept Him by faith for your Redeemer; to commit your souls into His keeping; and to yield yourselves up, souls and bodies, to Him as a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service. Humility is only valuable as it leads to all this; and all the blessings which I have enumerated only belong to it, as it is the introduction to a life of faith on the Son of God, and of progressive holiness under the teaching of His Spirit. This is the light in which I wish to recommend it.

Are there any here who feel their spiritual energies deadened, and their souls cleaving to the dust, for want of animation and fervour in the things of God? To you this subject is peculiarly applicable. You have tried perhaps to lift up your hearts and affections by thinking of the glory that is to come, and of the love of your Saviour; but all will not do. Try another method, for in these cases we must try every thing that may rouse and awaken us: look into yourselves, examine and see what you have in you that has deserved the commonest mercies of God; make your deadness towards Him a motive for humiliation and abasement in His sight, and He will ere long make His goodness pass before you, and look on you with the light of His countenance.

Are there any who seem to have the hope of Christ's salvation in them, and yet dare not think on death; but shrink

from it, they cannot tell why, as if they had no hope beyond? Be sure you want humbling; you are too much wrapt up in something here in this world: pray God to shew you what it is, and even to remove it from you, rather than suffer it any longer to stand between you and your desire to be with Christ.

Am I addressing any, who after the fashion of the religion of the present day, are walking in the sight of their own eyes, and selecting their own path, disregarding the great duty of simple obedience to the Church in which God hath placed them, in all things lawful and good? Persons to whom the sacred seasons of the Christian year are no times of profit; the Holy Sacraments no means of grace; to whom baptism brings no assurance; the Lord's Supper no refreshment; Lent and Advent no earnest repentance; Easter and Christmas no holy joy? Let me remind them how much they are losing; let me entreat them to cultivate poverty of spirit, and cast out this inward pride, the very essence of schism which makes them unwilling humbly to walk by the course of God's ordinances. Let all try then to cast off the hard yoke of rebellion and self-seeking, and take on them the easy rule of Christ, even the blessed ordinances and helps of His Holy Church: so shall they find rest unto their souls.

Are there any here who are utterly careless about the whole matter, who neither see, nor wish to see, how all this affects them, or what it has to do with their thoughts or practice? It is the hardest duty Christ's ministers have, to speak to such persons. What language shall we use, or how shall we make you understand your own sinfulness, or the desirableness and sufficiency of Christ? Alas we know not, we can only pray you, which we do most seriously and earnestly, to enquire of yourselves whether all this be not worth a thought or two; whether as you value peace on your dying bed, or after it,

you are not bound to take these things to heart, and to think very differently of them, from that which has been your manner of thinking in times past.

Thus have I endeavoured to explain to you, in reliance on the blessing of God, and the help of His Holy Spirit, this most important declaration of our blessed Saviour.

In a few years time we shall all of us be summoned before the throne of God: I, to give an account of my ministry; you, of your opportunities. May God grant that these sermons may not, at that solemn hour, rise up in judgment against either of us,

SERMON IX.

66 BLESSED ARE THEY THAT MOURN : FOR THEY SHALL BE COMFORTED."--Matt. v. 4.

I HAVE begun explaining to you some of the peculiarities and excellencies of those characters whom our Saviour pronounces blessed. I need not say, that such an enquiry and explanation are very instructive: for these declarations were made by Him in the very out-set of His ministry, and seem to have been intended to set forth the distinguishing marks which made His doctrine differ from other systems which had been given to the world. And they form, therefore, a short list of those dispositions and graces which will be more particularly manifested in the christian life. I have on two former occasions explained to you the blessedness of the poor in spirit. We now come to the second class in that goodly company, who are the sharers of the promises and the privileges of the gospel. "Blessed are they that mourn." This seems an extraordinary declaration; for the very idea of mourning implies misery: and yet, those who mourn are blessed. In our former meditations, we saw that God's thoughts were different from man's thoughts; that the strength of the world was weakness in His sight; and that persons who were poorly esteemed by the world, were of high price in the sight of God. Thus He casts contempt on the world's pride: we shall now see that the joy of the world, is as different from that of God's people,

as its glory is from theirs. "Blessed are they that mourn." But then you will say all men are blessed; for all have mourned. Man is born to sorrow, as the sparks fly upward. There is not one who has arrived at the years of manhood, who has not suffered some painful reverse, or wept over some bitter bereavement, or languished in some severe disease, or had the pride of his spirit wounded by some cruel neglect; and then we have all of us mourned. But we shall search in vain to find any blessedness connected with our times of mourning, considered only as such. In fact, what is our life but a continual occasion for mourning? every day something is going wrong, something is reminding us of our mortal lot of uncertainty and suffering. Our very occasions of greatest joy are accompanied with mourning; our days of marriage are days of parting from our fathers' homes; a wished-for increase to our families, is accompanied with anxiety and danger for those we love: the joy of inheritance begins in the mourning for a near relation; and there is no where that we can cast our eyes, where the cry of the mourner does not go up from the world.

In such a state of things as this, the assurance, "Blessed are they that mourn," must be a comforting one indeed. But are all these mourners blessed? May every one who mourns lay to his heart this comfort, and cure his inward pain? If so, all the ways of sin and profligacy would be blessed for they lead to mourning. It becomes therefore, important to distinguish, and clearly to ascertain, what sort of mourners they are who are here called blessed.

And notice first, that there is a sorrow which is unto death: the sorrow of this world. And there is a sorrow unto life: a sorrow of a godly sort. We will first consider those mourners, who are not entitled to the blessing here mentioned.

And first among these, because the most common, those who