tempt the fulfilment of the first. When a man is ill at ease with others, he is sure to be so with God. That much-abused proverb is most true, "Charity begins at home." It is but Pharisaism and selfdelusion for a man that is "a lion in his house and frantic among his servants" to make profession of prayer and fellowship with the Lamb of God.

Let this, then, be our token. Let us whose lot is cast in these latter times, when the Church has once more become almost hidden in the world, be of the holy fellowship of Him who to the eyes of men was only the carpenter, but in the eyes of God was the very Christ. Let us look well to our daily duties. The least of them is a wholesome discipline of humiliation : if, indeed, any thing can be little which may be done for God. If we were worthy of greater things, He would call us: if He do not, He bids us to know ourselves better, to mortify vanity and high thoughts of our own powers to do Him service. Every state has its peculiar graces. They who are blessed with full homes and many friends are called to goodness, mercy, longsuffering, tender affection towards the burdened and afflicted. The Jews would have no man to be a judge but one that had children, that he might know how to shew mercy as a father. There is a discipline of humanity in the cares and burdens of

Ecclus. iv. 30.

life which mellows the hearts of the just. Joseph is their type and example. Others are otherwise led and disposed of, and are thereby called to toil, hardness, deadness to self, patience, humiliation ; to be content with God alone; to have charity to God's elect, boldness for the truth, suffering for the Church, and to receive in the "body the marks of the Lord Jesus."

SERMON XIII.

THE WORLD WE HAVE RENOUNCED.

ST. JOHN Xv. 18, 19.

If the world hate you, ye know that it hated Me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you."

PERHAPS there is no word more commonly in our mouths than the world;' and yet hardly any to which we attach less clear and certain meaning. Indeed, the sense intended by it varies according to the character of the person that uses it.

denounce the world as unmixed evil;

Some people some say it is

for the most part good, or at least innocent; some profess to see its deceitful workings every where ; some will see them no where: some make their religion to consist in a separation from the world; some think the field of their religious duty is in the world in a word, there is little or no agreement or certainty but in this, that there is such a power and reality as the world, and that it is of great

moment to us to know what it is. Let us therefore endeavour to come at something better than these floating notions about it.

Our Lord here says to the apostles, that the world hated Him, and would hate them; and also, that they were not of the world, because He had chosen and taken them out of it.

Now to this it is sometimes said, that our Lord spoke of the unenlightened world before and at His coming, of the world by which He was rejected and crucified; that since He overcame sin and death, and cast out the prince of this world, it has been won to Himself; that now it is the Christian world. And again, that these words are spoken to the apostles, not to us; to those who had to encounter the world while unconverted, and by their words and sufferings to turn it to God that they were indeed taken out of it, all unchanged as it was then; but that when the world became Christian, our place was no longer out of it, but in it; and it was no longer opposed to Christ and His servants, but united to them; so that it is fanaticism, or spiritual pride, or a blind and shallow view, to speak of the world we see in the words spoken by our Lord of the world then and that it savours of some great personal faults, if we set ourselves in opposition to it, and bring ourselves under its censure and dislike. It is said with

;

much force, that the ages of polytheism and idolatry, of atheistical philosophy and sophistical schools, of impure and turbulent rites, lascivious and bloody spectacles in the theatres and the circus; of public tyranny, open political corruption, and all that complex spirit of lordly and daring enmity against God, which reigned in and through these things, has been cast out of Christendom; that it has been exorcised, and the unclean presence is gone out of it; that it now sits at Christ's feet clothed and in its right mind. We are bid to look at the visible Church throughout the world; at the holiness of saints, the devotion of princes, the purity of tribunals, the wisdom of legislatures, the multiplication of Christian states, the stedfast order of nations, their internal peace, the safety of the weak, the consolations of the poor, the reign of right and truth in all dealings of men, the sanctity of homes, and the high perfection of private life; the public honour of religion, the crowds that fill the churches and kneel at the altars of Christ. Can it be said that all this is the antagonist of Christ; that this is the world that hates Him, and out of which He has chosen you? Is not this to speak evil of His own work, and to set yourselves against Him in it? to slight His presence in turning from it, and to commit a kind of schism in separating from it? No one can deny that there is much