accident has disabled, or that mother, who, with wasted cheek, entreats succour for herself or her child. It is literally with you to determine whether the doors of the Hospital shall be closed on that emaciated thing; and you have only to be scant in your donations, and there shall soon be a widow, to whom a little more liberality might have preserved the husband of her youth, and an orphan who, had you shown yourselves more benevolent, might still have enjoyed the protection of a parent. The case therefore is peculiar. I could almost wish that I had not undertaken the advocacy: I have the sick and the dying actually in charge; and if I do not thoroughly adduce the motives to relieving themfor I know that you need nothing else to the being stirred to give largely-I shall literally have to accuse myself of depriving numbers of medical succour, and of consigning them to unassuaged pain, and perhaps even to an untimely grave.

No marvel, then, if I dare not conclude without another allusion to the dread things of judgment. The sick and the dying will not acquit me of unfaithfulness, but will rather haunt me reproachfully, if, with such a subject of discourse, I do not again bring you before the great white throne, and implore of you now to act as you will wish to have acted, when the trumpet shall have sounded, and the sea and the desert shall give up their dead. Not that you are to purchase Heaven by deeds of benevolence -perish the thought-there may be founders of

Hospitals, and builders of Churches, in that outer darkness, where there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. But though no man can be saved by his works, every man shall be judged according to his works. If he have believed upon Christ-and this is the single ordained mode of salvation-the sincerity of his faith will be proved by his works; and therefore, in being appointed to everlasting life, he will be judged according to his works. If he have not relied on the merits of the Saviour, the want of faith will be evidenced by the deficiency in works; and therefore will he also, in being consigned to everlasting misery, be judged according to his works. It is then quite possible that a man may be liberal to the necessitous, and not from the Scriptural motive, but from ostentation, or at best natural kindliness; and assuredly his liberality shall not open for him that gate which is closed against all but true followers of Christ. But if a man be not liberal, according to his ability, to the necessitous, it is quite certain that he wants what alone will gain him entrance into Heaven; and we may pronounce him excluded because he closed his ear against the cry of the poor.

Thus, with no compromise of sound Protestant doctrine, but leaving in its integrity the great truth of justification by faith, we can go with you to the tribunal of God, and declare your portion determined by the mode in which you responded to such appeals as the present. This our assembling will not termi

nate when, a few minutes hence, this congregation shall disperse. Sabbaths die not; sermons die not. They pass away, but only to be entered in the great register of God, and to revive on the strange day of the Easter of this creation. The voice of the destitute and suffering, which is now heard only as the plaintive moan, and the faint cry of pain, supplicating succour, shall be heard once more amid all the magnificent confusion of falling stars and dislocated systems-heard as a wild call for vengeance on the penurious, who were not to be moved to the showing kindness to the afflicted. Yes, it shall be thus heard, and the vengeance which it invokes must descend upon many-but not, we think, upon you. The sick may be comforted: they are not to be deserted; they are not appealing to the churlish and hardhearted. We have pleaded their cause feebly; we have omitted many motives, and not given to others all their strength; but ye have hearkened to words borne to you from the far depths of the future, words syllabling the rule by which the last trial shall proceed-and what were these words? Great Judge of quick and dead, we have heard Thee calling to those who have fed the hungry and visited the sick, and saying to them, "Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

SERMON X.'

THE LOST SHEEP.

LUKE XV. 3—5.

"And he spake this parable unto them, saying, What man of you having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing."

You may remember that another parable is added to that which we have just read, and of precisely the same import. A woman, possessed of ten pieces of silver, is represented as losing one piece, and as searching with great diligence till she find it. She then calls together her friends and her neighbours, that they may rejoice with her at the success of her enquiries. The truth which Christ infers from each parable, or rather the truth which He illustrates by each, is the same-namely, that there is greater joy

1 Preached at St. Olave's, Southwark, on the 18th of June, on behalf of the Merchant Seamen's Orphan Asylum.

in Heaven over one repentant sinner, than over a company of the righteous who need no repentance. In the Gospel of St. Matthew, where the parable on which we purpose to discourse is somewhat differently put, the express assertion is, that if the man find the lost sheep, he rejoiceth more of it than of the ninety and nine which went not astray. We shall take the statements of the two Evangelists promiscuously, according as they may best suit our purpose. We may safely assume that these parables are to be regarded as illustrative of God's dealings with our race; descriptive in some respects of that plan of Redemption which Christ came to execute. It is sufficiently evident that Christ designed to point out Himself as seeking the sheep that had gone astray, or the piece of money which was lost. And therefore we cannot doubt that He also designed to fix attention on the whole scheme of human rescue, as arranged for the gathering back a solitary tribe into companionship with the unfallen ranks in creation. We ask your serious attention to a simple review of the parable of which we have read you a part, and of the truth which it inculcates, on the supposition that the design of its delivery was what we have just stated.

Now we are always to remember, that out of condescension to the weakness of our faculties, and not because of the accuracy of the delineation, God is often represented to us in Scripture as acting on human principles, and moved by human affections.