mote, the noblest, and most exalted, and the most acceptable to God: for it is, of all means, the most likely, humanly speaking, that God will make effectual to the salvation of sinners, and the perfecting of his saints.

Beloved brethren, let not this be thought a stronger assertion than may be borne out by truth. Surely I may apply the observation to many that surround me, and say, Is not your own parish a living illustration of the argument I am pressing? Can you not testify, that since that revered individual whom God has exalted now to such a vast scene of ministration (may that God, who has called him to it, give him strength in proportion to his day, that like a fine setting sun, his last days may be his brightest)—can you not testify, that since that revered individual, in the providence of God, had the oversight of the affairs of this vast population of your, at that time, destitute, and very much neglected parish; and since, the good hand of his God with him, he has been able to give willingly himself, and you, his people, were enabled to give willingly also, and cheerfully, to the service of God, and you have seen on the right hand and on the left hand, the houses of prayer, with their heaven-pointed spires and their decent turrets, and you have heard the sound of the Sabbath-speaking bell, inviting your wandering and Sabbath-desecrating population to bend their steps to the holy waters-can you not witness that since then, there has been a mighty reformation within your parish; and can you not say yourselves, that many of you, then strangers to the method of salvation, have been gathered home by the great Shepherd; and that many who laughed at religion, now fear it; and that many who blasphemed the holy Jesus, now praise his holy name; and many that were hastening to hell, are now travelling to heaven; and many that were dead in sin, are alive to God; and that many that were without God and without hope in the world, are now children of God, and heirs of everlasting life? And I may appeal to yourselves, whether you have not a plain, an ocular demonstration, that there is no charity to be compared to that which furnishes houses of prayer, if those houses of prayer be occupied with ministers that speak according to the oracles of God. Beloved brethren, it is the truest charity for time, as well as for eternity; for the body as well as for the soul. There is a liberality, a prudence, a forethought, a truth: let there be uprightness, and these will all follow in the train of the blessed Gospel of Christ Jesus. Let there be but this in any population, and you diminish the amount of poverty, destitution, and crime, and the amount, consequently, of evil, and ensure the amount of social happiness: you make more little cottages bright and happy; you make more fathers and mothers to train up their children in peace and love, in uprightness and honour: and thus, my dear brethren, you leaven the mighty mass of our population. Every church where the Gospel is faithfully preached, is, as it were, a little pool of Bethesda, from whence go forth healing waters to heal the salt desert, and to cure the corrupting marshes, that before stagnated around that locality. Therefore we may appeal to your own observation, and to the matter of fact in this parish, whether the erecting of temples to the glory of God, and for the ministration of the Gospel, be not the most sublime and noble charity that can engage the heart and the hand of the Christian man.

Beloved brethren, our brethren without the pale of the establishment in this parish, I believe, have also set you an example. I wish not that their temp.es were fewer, I wish that yours were increased ten-fold; and that, instead of

keeping behind the population, as is usually the case, the places of prayer went before the congregation; and that thus there were ready furnished the apparatus of spiritual and moral improvement. Then indeed there would be hope that we should have our population springing up in the fear of God. Then we should have more hope that that blessed exhortation of the Apostle, that was read in our ear this morning, would be carried into effect, that all men would be loved, that God would be feared, and that the king would be honoured

Beloved brethren, let me remind you, the Church of England has been verily guilty in the restrictions as to places of worship, which, up to a very late period disgraced her. I say advisedly, disgraced her. Had it not been for those suicidal restrictions, a large proportion, I might venture to say one moiety, of all the chapels now without her pale, would have been within her blessed inclosure; we should have had their little turrets, and we should have had the Sabbathspeaking bell echoing from them. She has driven many from her bosom by not providing room for them: for, however you may think you have provided sufficiently, there are individuals in the situation of one who has borne testimony that she has been long resident here, and has sought in vain a solitary sitting for herself, in the Church of England. If that individual had been driven into the arms of dissent, we could hardly have blamed her; though she would have done a hundred times better, by waiting till it had pleased God to open a door for her. You see, therefore, that however you may think it well supplied, in reality there is at this moment urgent necessity for more room in the Church of England. Hear her crying to you, her children," Lengthen my cords, and strengthen my stakes, that I may gather to my bosom the multitude of my multiplied children." If the Church of England had allowed the principle of voluntary charity in her breast more liberty, you may rest assured, that it would have wrought more powerfully within her; and we might have looked to our temples, and said, Here are the fruits of voluntary love in the Church of England. So far is an establishment from overlaying and swamping that principle, that it does but regulate its extravagances, supply its deficiencies, and give it direct and permanent energy.

Therefore, brethren, let us now prove, that greater enlargement is given to us for furthering the interests of the church by multiplying her sanctuaries, that that principle, though it may seem to have been dormant, when not attended to, that the fire was there, and only needed to be allowed to kindle, that it might blaze forth in its beauty and splendour. I am led, therefore, beloved brethren, in bringing the subject home to your minds, to speak to you thus plainly and publicly. If those who are rich-not poor in heart, not with the poverty at which God looks, but with that poverty which makes a man spend all on himself, who has not so much nobleness or generousness of heart given him, that he can feel any happiness in giving to God, but spends all upon his own paltry self, and can have no conception of the duty of giving to the Lord who gave him all; if any such are here, I would say, O, you are the objects of pity; you are, indeed, the mendicants—the individuals that are indeed poor for eternity. O, never rest satisfied till you, by the grace of God, taste the love of Christ; making you love one another; until you are led to feel the impulse and the power of that motive of the Apostle, "The love of Christ constraineth us;' and until you can feel the appeal of that disciple whom Jesus loved, “Beloved, VOL. IIL

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if God so loved us, then should we also love one another." You must find the love of God as it is manifested in the cross of Christ, the love of God in choosing you, calling you, redeeming you, accepting you, sanctifying you, glorifying you: and then, brethren, it cannot be but you will love one another.

To the poor I would say, to my Christian brethren who have little to give, Give of that little, and God will esteem it much. If you give it to him with a heart overflowing with love, a heart which he has given to many a poor man, then may your Saviour say to you, as he said to the poor church of Smyrna, “I know thy poverty; but thou art rich." O blessed the poor man of whom his Saviour can say, "Thou art rich;" for if Christ make us rich, we are rich indeed. But without him, though the universe were ours, we were poor, poor and perishing. O, then, let the poor man be rich in faith, rich in Christ, rich in contentment, rich in love, rich in charity; and he has no cause to envy his richer neighbours; but rather to bless God that he has not put him off with the riches that perish, but given him the imperishable riches of his grace.

Christian brethren, I would plead with you on behalf of that house of prayer, which you, through the liberality that God has given you, have so far raised, and, I trust, by your liberality, will fit and furnish as becomes the temple of God. You have well done in that which you have done; and assuredly whatever you have given for that object, will not cost you a pang upon your deathbed. You have spent much in other ways that you will look back on then with shame, alarm, and contrition; but for what you have given to God, from love to God, in order that your poorer brethren might become rich through the knowledge of Christ Jesus, you will thank God and say, "Who am I, and what am I, that I should be enabled to give thus willingly to please my God? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have I given thee."

I am told, brethren, that the locality where that new structure is raised, is one where it is especially needed. I am told that the poor around it are casting time towards it many a fond look of expectation, and are gladly expecting the when it will open its doors to welcome them to hear the glad news of salvation. I may add, too, without presumption, from considerable personal knowledge him on whom the choice of your minister has fallen-that he who is to minister in your sanctuary, is one that loves, I believe, loves to preach the Gospel of Christ with a fervent and devoted spirit; and one that, from his long ministration amongst you, his acquaintance with your habits, his sympathy with your sorrows, has especial aptitude to serve in that especial ministration to which he is called. So that I can indeed assure you, as far as we may judge of man, he will indeed serve the Lord Christ amongst his poorer members with devotedness of heart and soundness of doctrine. May the Great Shepherd and Bishop of "ouls, that has called him to a post of higher responsibility, so succour him by his grace, and guide him by his wisdom, that he may save himself, and those that hear him!

Christian brethren, I invite you then to the honour and privilege of giving something to the great God and Saviour that has given you all that you have. Whatever of intellect, whatever of calling, whatever of strength, whatever of riches, whatever of comfort, whatever of domestic endearment you possess, ali this give him; and you may be assured you will not have too much to give to God. What you keep back unduly for him, that you lose; what you give, out

of love to him, that you save. O, be misers there; be avaricious there: you cannot have too much treasure before you in heaven. For a man to have it said of him when he dies, "Such a man has left behind him hundreds of thousands"-how would angels read this on his tomb? They would view it as a mill-stone that sunk him deeper in hell, if he had saved it by robbing his God, and thus robbing his own immortal spirit. Angels would read it—if Christian humility would allow it so to be written there-with joy and gratitude, if it were said, He died poor, for he had given all to God; and yet rich, for God had given all to him—given him his grace, and, in giving him that, given himself. May you so give, and may God so give to you, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

THE SOLICITUDE OF CHRIST FOR INCORRIGIBLE SINNEKS.

REV. G. SPRING, D.D.

TABERNACLE, FINSBURY, MAY 24, 1835.

"And when he was come near, he beheld the city, and wept over it."-LUKE, xix. 41.

THIS affecting declaration, as you will recollect, is made concerning Jesus Christ. As he was going to Jerusalem for the last time, just as he was ascending the Mount of Olives, which lay over against the city, a multitude of ineffably tender thoughts rushed on his mind, and he wept. Long before his incarnation was this favoured city the place of his occasional habitation among men. Here his glory rested above the mercy-seat upon the ark of the covenant. Here he had dispensed his law, and the memorials of his grace; and from this radiating point were his truth and mercy to go forth to the ends of the world. Here, too, he was to establish the first Christian Church, and accomplish the promise of his Father in the long expected effusions of his Spirit. At a little distance before him also lay the garden of Gethsemane. From the Mount of Olives likewise he could look across the city to Calvary, where, in lingering and excruciating agony, he was so soon to pour out his soul unto death. And yet it was not for himself he wept; it was over that ill-fated city. His own sorrows were lost sight of and forgotten in theirs: "O Jerusalem," he exclaimed, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not!"

It is worthy of remark, that the individuals towards whom the sympathies of Christ were here so tenderly directed, were men whose habits of sin, and love of sinning, were incorrigible. They had filled up the measure of their iniquity, and the cry of it had gone up to heaven: the wrath of God was just about to descend upon them in the destruction of their city and temple, and in the sufferings and overthrow of his scattered and abused people: a people that were to be a hissing and a by-word, a living miracle of the truth of what they denied; an awful memento of the fearful consequences of disregarding the time of their visitation. Jesus saw that the time of their repentance was gone by; that the day of grace and hope with them was gone by for ever: and as he beheld the city he wept.

There is much, my brethren, in the condition of such men, to interest every benevolent mind. There is indeed every thing over which angels and men, and Jesus, the Lord of angels and men, might weep. What we propose in the present discourse, therefore, is, to specify some of the more obvious charac