vidual cases, and in no one case forget how the misfortunes of the virtuous ought with every generous bosom to place them on a higher elevation of respect than before, and to draw towards them a more affecting sentiment both of tenderness and veneration. But, on the other hand, you know as well as I do, that misfortune is not the alone cause of vicissitude in the history of business-that there is such a thing as a spirit of illegitimate adventure, which, being the very spirit of idolatry to the world, comes within the scope of those denunciations which ought to be thundered from the pulpit on every shade and degree of ungodliness; and that while we mean not the slightest insinuation against a single person concerned in these transactions, this general spirit ought to be contended with and exposed in all its culpability, and protested against not merely on account of its character, but on account of its consequences, as a spirit which in itself argues an utter devotedness to the creature, and which in effect robs many an industrious and deserving family of their just and equal expectations.

I conclude my present remarks upon this text with an observation which I think will recommend itself to your own experience of human life and character. You will perceive that the apostle is giving the advice of my text to his own formed and educated Christians. He is asking those who were masters among the members of the Church at Colosse to give such things as are just and equal to their servants, and he recommends this advice by a most affecting and at the same time an exclusively religious motive, "You know that you have a Master in heaven"-one to whom you are looking up for the reward of your services-one who as He has said that as you forgive others, so will you be forgiven, also says, that with what measure you mete it shall be measured to you again; and have a care lest by the act of withholding from your servants their just and lawful right, your Master who is in heaven shall on the great day of account lay upon you some awful visitation of remembrance and retribution. Observe, then, that all this right and becoming conduct which he is prescribing to masters, is conduct subordinated to the influence of a religious consider

ation, and the power of a religious motive. Now, it so happens that in this highly liberal and cultivated country there are many who require the operation of no such motive to incline them to all the more obvious and ordinary acts of justice towards their servants and inferiors. There is positively a very great number of men whom I could name, and whom I could not call Christians, and yet who at the same time could not find it in their hearts to disappoint the just expectations of their dependents, or to fall by a single iota behind the fulfilment of their more obvious and ordinary claims. I have seen men who, without Christianity at all, would positively quiver with indignation at the idea of a poor man and his family being reft of their dues. They, by a pure movement of generosity, would cheerfully undertake their cause-they would spurn with their whole soul taking any advantage whatever of a servant's helplessness or a servant's simplicity; and to them the meanness and the inhumanity of such a proceeding would altogether appear so odious as positively to revolt them against the imagination of it. All this, you will observe, without Christianity-without the impulse of any such motive as is supplied by a reference to God as our Master who is in heaven-without the mingling, in fact, of any religion in the business at all, but by the pure force of such a natural generosity of heart as is, to speak the truth, very prevalent in this our age among the higher orders of society. Now, for the sake of the important theological lesson upon which this question bears, let me observe, that the general spirit of one age is often more favourable to the growth of certain accomplishments of character than the general spirit of another age, and that such is the influence of this general spirit in the way of example and of repetition as to beget certain social and humane virtues, independently of the operation of any religious principle whatever; and that thus what would need the stimulus of a Christian motive in some former generation, might in the present generation be very extensively practised without the operation of any such motive at all. It marks a very rude and untamed state of society in the days of the apostle, that in his Epistles to

Timothy and Titus, he should find it necessary to lay it down, with the authority of inspiration, as one of the requisites of a good bishop, that he should be no striker. A Christian motive was necessary, it would appear, to keep a bishop of those days. from doing a thing which any bishop or minister now-a-days would be restrained from doing by a sense of its utter vulgarity and disgracefulness. A good bishop of those days would not do the thing because he saw a prohibition against it in the writings of the apostle, and to do it in the face of this prohibition. would be ungodly. But any bishop, good or not, of the present day, would not do the thing because, whether he saw the prohibition or not in the book of God, he feels all the power of a prohibition in the general standard of manners, and to do it in the face of this standard would be ungentlemanly. I bring this forward merely in the way of illustration. For the truth is, that in respect of the duty of my text, too, the sense of the age has undergone a wondrous revolution, and has been greatly softened and liberalized since the apostle's days. If the picture which James gives of the rich men of his time were to be realized on an individual now, it would have the effect of making that individual an outcast from society. Were a man only convicted of keeping back by fraud the hire of his labourers, it would bring down upon him the execration of his fellows as well as the denunciations of God's outraged law. The latter motive might be essential to the restraining of men from this cruelty in cases where the former motive had no operation; but where the former motive has operation, as it has to a very great and general extent in our own country, then without the operation of the latter motive at all-or, in other words, without one particle of homage to the author of Christianity, might we see men exhibit a most rigid adherence to the duty of my text, spurning with a quick sense of honour the idea of any departure from it, most faithfully acting up to all the ordinary claims and expectations of their dependents, and earning a character in society as the most humane and righteous and honourable of its members.

SERMON XXVIII.

[THE date attached to the original short-hand manuscript of this sermon is October 31, 1822. Between this date and that of the discourse immediately preceding, the reader will perceive that an interval of more than five years occurs an interval which he is to imagine as filled up by those discourses which have already been published.]

ZECHARIAH VII. 13.

"Therefore it is come to pass, that as he cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the Lord of hosts."

HE who cried in the first clause of this verse is the Lord Himself, as is evident from the verses that immediately precede this text. The thing which the prophet complains of is, that when the Lord of hosts spake to them on a former occasion, saying, Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassion every man to his brother-when He said this to the people of the land they refused to hearken, and stopped their ears that they should not hear; and "they made their hearts as an adamant-stone, lest they should hear the law, and the words which the Lord of hosts hath sent in His Spirit by the former prophets;" and therefore it was that there came a great wrath upon them from the Lord of hosts. And no doubt when visited with affliction, when brought very low because of their sins, when death and destruction stared them in the face, and the urgent desire of their hearts was for deliverance, they gave vent to

their desire by prayer. But mark the upshot of their having refused to hear God on a former occasion,-He refused to hear them on the present occasion. And this is the meaning of the text-"Therefore it is come to pass, that as He cried, and they would not hear; so they cried, and I would not hear, saith the Lord of hosts."

Now most of you who are here present are young in life, and perhaps scarcely have known what it is to be afflicted. At all events, there is nothing more likely than that many of you may have thought little of the time when the last sickness shall come upon you, and you shall have at last taken yourselves to the bed from which you are never more to rise. Full of life and vigour, and rejoicing perhaps in the prospect of many days, your imagination may never have seriously dwelt on that awful event which is certainly coming upon you, even as it has come upon all who have gone before you. Your hearts may have been altogether with lessons, and play, and companionship, and such work as parents or masters have put into your hand-and little may you have reflected that, after all, the end of the whole matter on earth is, that you shall die-and that every minute which you breathe brings you that minute nearer to the time at which you shall die-and that this terrible day is coming upon you with a speed and a certainty from which there is no escaping. These are simple truths, my young friends; but it is just from the want of being impressed by plain and simple truths that there is so much of sin and suffering in the world. It is just because men will not take heed to the near and the obvious matters that lie before them, that they have gone so far astray in wickedness, and that so many are on the road to ruin everlasting. The great and practical error of man does not lie in his being ignorant of what is difficult to understand, but in his being heedless of that which is familiar to all understandings. It is not so much because my people will not learn, but because my people will not consider, that they are found on the path which leadeth to the chambers of hell. And so it is with many of you. You do not need to learn that you have to die; for this is what you all know as well as I can tell you.