times not only to stand still, but even to go backwards, as often as particular circumstances in the affairs of the world draw away the attention of men from the doctrines of the gospel, or rouse an extraordinary opposition of their passions to its precepts. Our Saviour in the text apprizes his apostles that this would be the case in the season of the Jewish war; and St. Paul has foretold an alarming increase of wickedness in the latter days. The use of these prophetic warnings is to guard the faithful against the scepticism which these unpromising appearances might be apt to produce; that instead of taking offence at the sin which remains as yet unextirpated, or even at an occasional growth and prevalence of iniquity, we may firmly rely on the promises of the prophetic word, and set ourselves to consider what may be done on our own part, and what God may expect that we should do, for the furtherance of his work and the removal of impediments.

This we are taught pretty clearly, though indirectly, in the words of the text; which, though they were uttered by our Saviour

with particular reference to the Jewish war, remind us of a general connexion between the " abounding of iniquity" and the decay of that principle by which alone the abounding of iniquity may be resisted: "Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold."

"The love of many" is understood by some expositors (by St. Chrysostom among the ancients and by Calvin among the moderns) of the mutual love of Christians for each other;-which indeed will be very apt to languish and die away when iniquity

abounds and choaks it: But as this discourse of our Lord's is an express formal prophecy, and the style of prophecy prevails in every part of it, I am persuaded that love is to be taken in the same sense here which it manifestly bears in the Apocalyptic prophecies; where it denotes not brotherly love, but a much higher principle

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the root of brotherly love, and of all the Christian virtues the love of God and of Christ, or, which is much the same thing, a devout attachment of affection to the religion of Christ, and a zeal for its inte

rests. This will naturally decay under the discouragement of the abounding of iniquity; because many will grow indifferent about a religion which seems to have no permanent good effect. Whatever opinion they may retain in their own minds of its truth, they will think it of no consequence to be active in the support and propagation of it: Their love therefore will grow torpid and inactive.

Such will be the conduct of many; but since religion (by which I mean the Christian religion, for no other has a title to the name) is the only sure remedy against the growth of iniquity, the wise conduct would be the reverse of this. The more iniquity abounds, the more diligent it becomes the faithful to be in calling the attention of mankind to religious instruction; for sin never could abound if the attention of men were kept steadily fixed upon their eternal interests. Eternal happiness and eternal misery, the favour and the wrath of God, are things to which it is not in the nature of man to be indifferent, when he seriously thinks about them. The success therefore

of instruction is certain, if man can be made to listen to it. It is the more certain, because we are assured that the Divine mercy interests itself in the conversion of every individual sinner, just as the owner of a large flock is solicitous for the recovery of a single stray; and because there is something in the doctrine of the gospel particularly adapted, to work upon the feelings of a sinner, — insomuch that publicans and harlots were found to be readier to enter into the kingdom of God than the scribes and Pharisees.

But here lies the great difficulty, that in seasons of a particular prevalence of iniquity, those who the most need instruction, being the most touched with the general infection, will be the last to seek it or to bear it. General public instruction at such times will never prove an effectual remedy for the evil: Means must be found of carrying reproof and admonition home to the refractory offender, who purposely absents himself from the assemblies where public instruction is provided for him, and

refuses the general invitation to the marriage-feast.

It is the singular praise of the charitable institution of which I am this day the advocate, that the founders of it have been the first in this country who have endeavoured to meet this difficulty, and to supply the necessary defects of general instruction, by an immediate special application of the benefits of a sober godly education to those miserable outcasts of society the children of convicted criminals and of the profligate poor, accidentally picked up in the public streets of this metropolis, or industriously sought out in the lurking-holes of vagrant idleness and beggary, and the nightly haunts of prostitutes and ruffians. Such children had been too long indeed overlooked by the virtuous; but in no propriety of speech can it be said they had been neglected. Under the tuition of miscreants old and accomplished in the various arts of villany, they had been in training, by a studied plan of education, well contrived and well directed to its end, for the hopeful trades of pilferers, thieves,