for since we are so completely subject, in our efforts and our fate, to an overruling Power, which is above us and around us-since we have so little control over the most important circumstances of our lives-how unavailing a trouble it is to harass our minds with schemes for a future which may never be ours, and which will almost certainly be different from what we expect. One reason why men in general are so over-anxious in providing for the future, and rely so little upon a superintending Providence, is, that they do not sufficiently realize this truth of their own complete dependence upon God; they do not consider how very small an influence they actually exert upon the events of their own lives. And yet, if each one of us individually would ask himself the question, how much he has contributed to his own present circumstances and position, and how much has depended upon God's will, or (as he would perhaps call it,) upon chance, he will confess that his own plans of life have done less for him than he may have before imagined. How often have events. which have coloured the whole of our subsequent life, sprung from what at the time appeared the merest accident. How much has our character, our fortunes, our whole earthly destiny, depended on the companions among whom we have been casually thrown. What changes have been produced in our views of life, what alterations in the guiding theories of our conduct, by words which, but for some accident, we might never have heard, or books which we might

never have read. It is needless to insist upon the more obvious instances in which all our best-laid schemes are subject to sudden interruption, by unlooked-for disease, or by those other contingencies which are emphatically called the casualties of life. But surely the very triteness of the subject, the very notoriety of the fact that our tenure of life itself is so uncertain, is enough to prove the wisdom which dictated the maxim of the text.

In striking contrast with the useless distress and agitation which result from neglecting this precept, is the happiness and peace of a life conducted in its spirit. In nothing else is that assertion more conspicuously true, that "godliness hath the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come." By no other feature of the Christian life is that sneer more completely falsified, "that Christianity is so taken up with the care of our future happiness, as to throw away all the present." What, in truth, can more effectually tend to make us happy, than that which relieves us from all the harassing cares and distressing anxieties of life, and enables us to rely securely upon perfect Power and perfect Love! Even supposing our faith were founded in falsehood, even if there were no such thing as a superintending Providence, still such a belief would be a most comfortable error, a most blessed delusion. The habit of unburthening ourselves of all our cares, of dismissing from our mind all our perplexities, would still be most salutary for our mind's health, if

it were only a superstition. But we know that it is no superstition; we know that it is founded on the words of truth itself; we believe and are sure that there is a Supreme Power above us, who not only was the author of our existence, as well as of the universal frame of nature, but is also our guide, our protector, our comforter; that His love has given us all that we enjoy, and will continue to give us whatever is needful for us; that in Him we live, and move, and have our being. Let us, then, filled with such thoughts as these, begin now, if we have never done so before, to live in the feelings which they inspire. Let us endeavour by earnest prayer to seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and rely upon His goodness to give us whatever else is needful. Let us resign ourselves wholly to His providential guidance, and commend to Him alike the anxieties of to-morrow and the sorrows of to-day. Let us

“cast all our care upon Him, for He careth for us." And above all, let us never forget the great and surpassing proof of love which He has given us, at once the pledge and the medium of all His other gifts; while our hearts respond to the appeal of His apostle, "He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?"

SERMON XVI.

CARELESSNESS AND FORMALISM.

ST. JOHN I. 10, 11.

HE WAS IN THE WORLD, AND THE WORLD WAS MADE BY HIM, AND THE WORLD KNEW HIM NOT. HE CAME UNTO HIS OWN, AND HIS OWN RECEIVED HIM NOT.

WHEN yesterday* we kept in memory the birth of Christ, our thoughts were led by these words, taken from the Gospel for the day, to consider the causes which hindered the Heathen from knowing Christ, and the Jews from receiving Him. Such an inquiry was a matter belonging to history, as it might seem, rather than to Christian ethics; and were we to stop at the mere inquiry, and treat it as a speculative and not a practical subject of thought, it would no doubt tend but little to our edification. But we know, in fact, that no insight into the character of past generations of our fellow-men can be useless to ourselves; for we are sure that the seeds of their crimes, the

*

This Sermon was preached on the Sunday after Christmas day, 1841.

germs of their errors, must exist in our own hearts, ready to unfold themselves, if not already growing and bearing fruit. So it is, that whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning. And thus, by a light reflected from the past, we may see perhaps that our deeds are the deeds which caused the heathen world to scorn their Saviour, or that our thoughts are the thoughts which led the Jewish church to crucify their Messiah.

And first, as to the world. It knew not Christ, as we saw when we examined its condition,) because it was the worker of iniquity. It was plunged in vice, wrapped up wholly in things present, careless utterly of things to come. From its sight things temporal hid entirely the things eternal. Now it may be said that we are not of the world, for Christ has taken us out of the world; that so He told His first disciples, and so He tells us now. And in this sense it may be granted that we are not of the world; not of the heathen world, that is, not of those who are ignorant of Christ; differing from them wholly in condition, in privileges, in responsibility. We are of the church, and not of the world. But may not we be making another world of our own within the church; just like, in its principles and character, to the heathen world out of which God's grace has taken us? May not we be regardless of our condition, heedless of our privileges, negligent of our responsibility? Our citizenship, indeed, is in heaven, while their's was upon earth; but are we living as citizens of heaven? Is religion