I were to go through a list of the most respectable poor families in this place, few of you, I am afraid, would know any thing about them;-but if I were to name those persons who are least respectable, your knowledge of them, I fear, would be far more intimate. So again I have been more than once struck by observing how much eagerness many of you have shown in giving things to beggars, evidently of the very most undeserving sort, because they amused you by their tricks and buffoonery; while the same hands, which were so lavish to the worthless, had, perhaps, never learnt to relieve the real necessities of the honest and uncomplaining. Nor let it be thought that these are little things, unfit to be spoken of in the house of God. It is a most vain superstition, and most mischievous, as all superstition ever is, to think that the mention of little common things is unworthy of this holy place, when out of these little things our hearts and lives are daily forming into a fitness for eternal happiness or eternal misery. The things of which I have now spoken,-that contemptuous word by which you call the poor,that want of acquaintance with the respectable among them, that familiarity with the profligate, that encouragement given to the idler who makes beggary his trade,-that neglect of those real sufferers, in whose persons Christ himself vouchsafes to ask our charity; all these things help to

form that disposition towards the poor in after life, from which our country is at this moment so fearfully suffering. It is not hard-heartedness— much less is it wilful oppression,-but it is an absence of that true feeling of Christian brotherhood which Christ's words in my text inculcate : "Ye call me Master and Lord and you say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; you ought also to wash one another's feet." It is those little words, “one another," which express so much, and which we are so apt to lose sight of. These words show, that the rich and the poor are members one of another, not two distinct castes,-I had almost said two distinct races. These words ought to take away that feeling of merit which we are but too apt to attach to our charity. No man is proud of being kind to his brother or his near friend; he would only be ashamed of himself if he were not kind. So, if we felt aright to the poor, that they are, in the highest of all relations, our brethrenchildren of the same heavenly Father, called all alike brethren by Him who, having taken part of our flesh and blood, was not ashamed to call all God's earthly children by that name; if we so felt, should we not, indeed, think that the words, one another," might well describe the relations of the rich and the poor; should we not fully enter into the spirit of the Apostle's words: "Be

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loved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another?"

But, in conclusion, I must remember that after hearing all that I have said, the practical question may yet be asked, "What must we do?" How can we, each of us, bring home to ourselves the lesson which Christ teaches us? You can do it by leaving off what is contrary to it, at any rate; by ceasing from words which are contemptuous and insulting to the poor; by breaking off familiarity, by forbearing to encourage that unworthy portion of the poor, who are likely to give you a most unjust and hard impression of the whole body. But I am sure many amongst you, to say the least, must have opportunities of doing much Many amongst you must have poor neighbours around you at home, from whom you may learn what poverty is, how great, how awful a claim it has upon all, and much more than all that we can do for it. Many amongst you must have friends who would be delighted to encourage you in the disposition to know the poor, and to love them; and whose experience would teach you how to avoid all extravagance and folly, which an ignorant zeal will naturally fall into. But it were foolish, in this case, to dread the effects of over zeal; much more is it to be dreaded, that there should be no zeal at all; that your holidays should be devoted only to your own pleasure; that, amidst

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the joyousness and festivities with which wealth surrounds itself at this coming Christmas season, you should bestow no thought on that large body of your neighbours to whom Christmas is only a season of suffering, a season of cold, and darkness, and dreariness. If such be the case, it is most awful to think that a curse is on all our enjoyments; that our mirth and our festivity are but those of the rich man in the parable, who, when he died and was buried, found himself instantly in eternal torments, and was told that all the good things which he could expect throughout eternity, he had already received: all good was gone, and all evil was in store for him for ever. May God give us a better mind,-better for the worldly comfort of others, much more, infinitely better for the eternal welfare of our own souls.

SERMON XVII.

REV. xxii. 10-12.

And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still: and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him be righteous still: and he that is holy, let him be holy still. And behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

So much presses upon the mind in reading these verses, that I hardly know how to put in order, or how to limit within any fit bounds, the various thoughts which they suggest. There is so much in the separate parts of them, and so much in them when taken together; there is so much in the particular time at which they were written, and in the very place which they hold in the volume of the Scriptures, that they seem better fitted to be the subject of a course of sermons, than to furnish matter for one only.

The place which they hold in the volume of the