all sorts and conditions of men? We must be filled with that disposition which shews itself in alms-deeds and sympathetic acts for CHRIST's poor or what mockery is it to pray to that GOD who uses us as His instruments in His dispensations of providence, that He would succour, help, and comfort all that are in danger, necessity, and tribulation; and that HE would defend and provide for the fatherless children and widows, and all that are desolate and oppressed! To forgiveness of temper and meekness of spirit we are also enjoined, by our supplication that GOD would forgive our enemies, persecutors, and slanderers, and turn their hearts. Nor is our sympathy to be confined to the temporal wants of our brethren. The Churchman who is devout, in accordance with the spirit and temper of his Prayer Book, will be imbued with a desire to extend and strengthen the Church's influence at home and abroad; and his heart will burn that the glory of the LORD may cover the earth as the waters cover the sea.* To this he will be urged, not only by the frequency with which he is urged

*Habakkuk ii. 14.

to repeat the petition, THY kingdom come, but also by the fear of mocking GOD, when he asks of GOD to give to all people increase of grace to hear meekly His Word, and to receive it with pure affection, and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit; and, in another place, to strengthen such as do stand, and to comfort and help the weak-hearted, and to raise up them that fall, and, finally to beat down Satan under our feet. For, is it not for these gracious purposes that GOD has placed His Church in the world? And, is not the efficiency of the Church made by HIM to depend on human co-operation with Divine grace? He, then, cannot pray aright that GOD would be pleased to make His ways known unto all men, His saving health unto all nations, who does not, to the best of his power, contribute of his exertions and his wealth to make the Church efficient at home and abroad, so that all HE has made may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one Shepherd.*

And, in conclusion, this grand lesson is

* Collect for Good Friday.

taught us by the Prayer Book, that our sufficiency is of GOD.* There is not a peculiarity in our condition, nor an incident in our lives, nor a circumstance which affects us, however remotely, which does not demand our gratitude, as proceeding from our merciful FATHER, who has ordained it for our ultimate good, and HIS gracious purpose will assuredly be attained if we strive reverently to promote it. Now we are taught in the Prayer Book, that these and all our other blessings come of the free favour and bounty of GOD, and for these we thank HIM, as well in the noble expressions of gratitude with which the Prayer Book is interspersed, as more especially in that matchless Thanksgiving, wherein we bless HIM for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, but, above all, for His inestimable love in the redemption of the world by our LORD JESUS CHRIST, for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.

* 2 Corinthians iii. 5.

N

LECTURE X.

HOLY SCRIPTURE AND THE CHURCH CALENDAR.

PSALM LVI. 10.

In God's Word will I rejoice, in the Lord's Word will I comfort me.

EVERY man of a cultivated mind, must be prepared to admit that some of the most chastened of our delights are to be derived from the study of those works of eloquence and imagination which have, for a series of years, age after age, contributed to the enjoyment of mankind. Many men who have been the untiring devotees of those empty pleasures of sense and the world, which are hardly less successful in enfeebling and vitiating the taste, than they are inadequate to the satisfaction of the higher principle in man,-many such flutterers in the

sunshine of frivolity have yet in their hours of loneliness and self-retirement drunk freely of the nectar of literary enjoyment. They have at times stood forth as the most enthusiastic admirers and the most successful followers of the poets and orators of antiquity. Now, to a mind capable of appreciating all that constitutes the charm of language and sentiment, where can so rich a feast be offered as in the volume of the Scriptures,-that Word of GOD of which the Psalmist in the text declares that it is his rejoicing and his comfort? Where shall we find such various and such natural descriptions, such touching tenderness, such beautiful simplicity, such terrible sublimity? The lover of poetry may find the most admired human compositions surpassed in the hymns of triumph scattered throughout the Pentateuch; in the devotional effusions of David; in the sublime descriptions of the book of Job. The admirer of impassioned eloquence may find in the addresses of the Hebrew Prophets, and especially in the writings of St. Paul (take, for example, the fifteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, which the Church has adopted as her funeral sermon), instances of a