which they have chosen. The least consideration of their lives, recorded as they have been in the punctual page of Scripture, will serve to show this in the clearest manner. Look to the patriarchs of the first times. They led very simple lives; they passed their days in removing with their families and their flocks, from place to place; in shifting from the mountain to the valley, wheresoever the pasture was spread out for them, or where the wells of water had been opened for their use. Luxury could have no place in their tents; and envy and ambition, it should seem, were as little likely to invade their dwellings. But, alas! the tokens of misconduct are too plainly manifested in the annals of their history. The sacred volume shows the blemishes in their several characters, without extenuation, and without disguise. Their faults cannot fix a stain upon the cause of righteousness itself, nor will they be found to cast a shade upon the light of truth. They deplored, indeed, their own disgraces. They never failed to taste the bitter fruits which followed from misdeeds, and to find the woes which spring up in unrighteous courses. But the best men, in the happiest moments of proficiency, professed themselves to be but dust and ashes, needing pardon, and unable to claim forgiveness, or to demand a blessing at the hand of God. In due time the perfect Pattern of all Righteousness was indeed displayed. It was made good in all points in the Redeemer's person: and the text serves to remind us what our interest in it may be, if we will give heed to our own advantage, and embrace that blessing which is ever urged with importunity upon us, and if we will receive that gift, so excellent and precious, which is commended to our choice, with every suitable inducement. We learn, then, to whom the prize which is proposed to us, eternal life and endless happiness, belongs of right, and by whom it was procured. We know well that there hath been but one in any age, or under any dispensation, who could say with truth, Father, I have glorified thee upon earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do: and now, O Father, glorify me with thine own self, with the glory I had with thee, before the world was.'

Such, then, is the true scope, and such the perpetual obligation of the gospel-covenant. It is founded in righteousness; in the righteousness of God. His law, which had been broken,

is vindicated from exception by the sufferings and the merits of a righteous Mediator. It is founded in his righteousness, for whose sake the first forfeiture has been remitted. It is founded in his righteousness, for whose sake there is acceptance before God, for those whose recovery in this life does not exempt them from many measures of infirmity; which remind them from what quarter their help cometh, and teach them that the recompense of glory is now furnished in another's name, even where their own best efforts are required, and will be weighed, and where their own improvement, in the day of trial, is fulfilled. It was Christ the Righteous who was promised from the first hour of guilty shame and consternation, when sin entered, and death followed on the steps of man. It was Christ the Righteous who kept that law, which man had violated with an open trespass. It was Christ the Righteous who gave himself a victim, without spot or blemish, a pure oblation, infinite in worth and efficacy, where the need was greatest, and where the misery was past the reach of other remedies. It is Christ the Righteous, who, in every age, becomes the Saviour of all those, who do not blindly and obstinately cast off the proffered mercies of a gracious dispensation, and abuse the goodness and forbearance of the Lord. And of such men, what can be the hope? Remember what the plea was of old time with the house of Israel, 'what more can be done, that I have not done :' and consider also that in proportion to the light, the privileges and advantages of the gospel-day, the greater will be the guilt of folly and perverseness, where the call shall be despised. Consider at what cost the blessing was procured, and on what evidence the tender is proposed; and judge if it be possible that such things should leave men without obligation to attend to such a treaty, and with no prospect of a strict account to be rendered for it in the last result. To confess sin, and not to be willing to renounce it, or careful to fulfil that purpose; to be ready to take the gift of life and grant of glory, as the purchased blessings of another's righteousness, but to use no true endeavour to be righteous in our measure and proportion, in this term of our probation, or to keep the known and indispensable engagements of that state of grace into which a righteous Mediator hath admitted us ;-these are not sound applications of the text, and they who use them, will deceive themselves.

The fruits and earnings of a righteous Saviour's sufferings and merits, are not laid up for the careless and impenitent; for those who speak the truth only, when they charge themselves with misdeeds, but never when they promise better resolutions, or profess a purpose of amendment.

Thus, when understood aright, the text is a ground of the richest consolation, and the surest hope: but it yields no word of encouragement to those, who wish to keep their vices and ill habits together with their hopeful expectations. It will not speak peace to the wicked: it will not cast out the seeds of trouble and disquiet from their hearts. It speaks peace to the penitent, and to those alone, who love the coming of the Righteous Saviour.

Let us then, with the Roman centurion, who proclaimed the Righteous Saviour, from the foot even of the cross, exclaiming, as he gave God the glory, Certainly this was a righteous man;' let us honour and confess our Lord and Saviour in this life, and refer our cause to him in that day, when his righteousness shall put to silence the accuser's pleas, and when his blood shall speak better things than that of righteous Abel. Let us so strive to confess Christ, the Lord of glory, and the righteous Mediator, before men, not only in word and profession, but in deed and in truth, that he may confess us before his heavenly Father, who hath glorified him even with the glory which he had with him before the world was, and who will glorify him in all those, who shall be saved and accepted for his sake, and be received as adopted children of his household to his everlasting heritage.

[ARCHDEACON POTT.]

SERMON CXXX.

TWENTY-FIFTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

THE INCREASE OF THE LOAVES AND FISHES. ST. JOHN vi. 1-14.-1. After these things, Jesus went over the sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. 2. And a great multitude followed him, because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased. 3. And Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. 4. And the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. 5. When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? 6. (And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.) 7. Philip answered him, Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. 8. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, saith unto him, 9. There is a lad here, which hath five barley-loaves, and two small fishes: but what are they among so many? 10. And Jesus said, Make the men sit down. Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. 11. And Jesus took the loaves: and when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes, as much as they would. 12. When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain that nothing be lost. 13. Therefore they gathered them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above, unto them that had eaten. Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world.

[Text taken from the Gospel for the Day.]

It seems that during our Saviour's abode in the neighbourhood of Tiberias, the labours of his ministry had been attended with so much fatigue to his disciples, that some retirement was deemed necessary [Mark vi. 30, 33.] both for the refreshment of their bodies, and for his own spiritual devotions. For these purposes, our Saviour crosses the sea of Galilee, with the intention of retiring into the less-peopled region of Bethsaida. But can the sun conceal his beams, and his absence not be marked by a benighted world? Or can Christ, the benefactor of the poor, the physician of the sick, the instructor of the ignorant, withdraw, unobserved, from their notice? Hence it arose, that when Jesus had arrived at the appointed place, he found a great multitude waiting to receive him. That this concourse of people should have thus assembled, to the utter neglect of their own occupations, and even to the forgetfulness of their necessary food, who of us does not trace in these circumstances

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the providence of God, who so directed events, that witnesses should never be wanting to the miracles of his Son, and thereby to the confirmation of our belief?

The sight of the assembled people, and assembled from such motives, touched our Saviour with compassion, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd' [Mark vi. 34.]: careless of himself, and forgetful of that repose, which their unseasonable importunity had interrupted, he proceeds to speak unto them of the kingdom of God, and to heal them that had need of healing.' [Luke ix. 11.] When the greater part of the day had been thus occupied, our Lord then withdrew to the neighbouring mountain. Such indeed was the usual custom of Christ, whenever he designed to devote himself a while to the more abstract exercises of devotion. On a mountain, he was assailed by the temptation of the evil spirit; on a mountain, he delivered his great moral code; on a mountain, he was glorified; on a mountain, commenced his final passion. Our Lord selected this particular scene, either that he might be the less exposed to interruption; or that, by enjoying a freer sky, he might the more efficaciously elevate his soul into communion with his heavenly Father; or that he might sanction the custom of the holy patriarchs, who were wont to worship upon mountains; or that he might typically signify the success of his own spiritual kingdom, which was to be exalted above all the mountains of the earth.

Jesus, wearied with his labours, thus sat on the mountain; and with him sat his disciples' [v. 3], who, instead of the expected repose, had been summoned into new toils. But those whom Christ subjects to fatigue in his cause, those does he love to refresh by admitting them into a stricter communion with himself. His disciples sat with him, not as slaves but as friends; enjoying his gracious converse; and deriving fresh instruction in the mysteries of God.

As the evening approached, Jesus, whose beneficence equally extended to the sufferings of body and of soul, was unwilling to dismiss the multitude without refreshment. He intimates his intention by asking Philip, 'Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?' [v. 5.] The purport of the question was to draw from the disciples, through the lips of Philip, a confession of their utter inability to supply the exigencies of so extensive a want. Our Saviour's question thus tended to the