be with the Christian body. All its members should be helpers, and comforts to each other, and thus promote their mutual welfare and happiness, and the glory of Christ, the head. Once more, consider,

Third, That in seeking the glory of God and the good of your fellow-creatures, you take the surest way to have God seek your interests, and promote your welfare.-If you will devote yourself to God, as making a sacrifice of all your own interests to him, you will not throw yourself away. Though you seem to neglect yourself, and to deny yourself, and to overlook self in imitating the divine benevolence, God will take care of you; and he will see to it that your interest is provided for, and your welfare made sure! You shall be no loser by all the sacrifices you have made for him. To his glory be it said, he will not be your debtor, but will requite you an hundred-fold even in this life, beside the eternal rewards that he will bestow upon you hereafter. His own declaration is, "Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands for my name's sake, shall receive an hundred-fold" (the other evangelist adds,

"in this present time"), "and shall inherit everlasting life," Matt. xix. 29; and the spirit of this declaration applies to all sacrifices made for Christ, or for our fellow-men for his sake. The greatness of the reward for this life, Christ expresses by a definite number; but he does not make use of numbers, however great, to set forth the reward promised them hereafter. He only says, they shall receive everlasting life, because the reward is so great, and so much exceeds all the expense and self-denial persons can be at for Christ's sake, that no numbers are sufficient to describe it.

But

If you are selfish, and make yourself and your own private interests your idol, God will leave you to yourself, and let you promote your own interests as well as you can. if you do not selfishly seek your own, but do seek the things that are Jesus Christ's, and the things of your fellow-beings, then God will make your interest and happiness his own charge, and he is infinitely more able to provide for, and promote it, than you are. resources of the universe move at his bidding, and he can easily command them all to subserve your welfare. So that not to seek your

The

own, in the selfish sense, is the best way of seeking your own in a better sense. It is the directest course you can take to secure your highest happiness. When you are required not to be selfish, you are not required, as has been observed, not to love and seek your own happiness, but only not to seek mainly your own private and confined interests. But if you place your happiness in God, in glorifying him, and in serving him by doing good, in this way, above all others, will you promote your wealth, and honor, and pleasure here below, and obtain hereafter a crown of unfading glory, and pleasures for evermore at God's right hand. If you seek, in the spirit of selfishness, to grasp all as your own, you shall lose all, and be driven out of the world, at last, naked and forlorn, to everlasting poverty and contempt. But if you seek not your own, but the things of Christ, and the good of your fellow-men, God himself will be yours, and Christ yours, and the Holy Spirit yours, and all things yours. Yes, "all things" shall be yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are

Christ's; and Christ is God's, 1 Cor. iii. 21, 22.

Let these things, then, incline us all to be less selfish than we are, and to seek more of the contrary most excellent spirit. Selfishness is a principle native to us, and, indeed, all the corruption of our nature does radically consist in it; but considering the knowledge that we have of Christianity, and how numerous and powerful the motives it presents, we ought to be far less selfish than we are, and less ready to seek our own interests and these only. How much is there of this evil spirit, and how little of that excellent, noble, diffusive spirit which has now been set before us. But whatever the cause of this, whether it arise from our having too narrow notions of Christianity, and from our not having learned Christ as we ought to have done, or from the habits of selfishness handed down to us from our fathers, whatever the cause be, let us strive to overcome it, that we may grow in the grace of an unselfish spirit, and thus glorify God, and do good to men.

LECTURE IX.

THE SPIRIT OF CHARITY THE OPPOSITE OF AN

ANGRY OR WRATHFUL SPIRIT.

"Is not easily provoked."-1 CORINTHIANS Xiii. 5.

HAVING declared that charity is contrary to the two great cardinal vices of pride and selfishness, those deep and ever-flowing fountains of sin and wickedness in the heart, the Apostle next proceeds to show, that it is also contrary to two things that are commonly the fruits of this pride and selfishness, viz.: an angry spirit, and a censorious spirit. To the first of these points, I would now turn your attention, viz.: that charity "is not easily provoked." The doctrine here set before us, is,

THAT THE SPIRIT OF CHARITY, OR CHRISTIAN LOVE, IS THE OPPOSITE OF AN ANGRY OR WRATH

FUL SPIRIT OR DISPOSITION.-In speaking to this