This is ever be We may

passion, and felt no grief and no repentance: how often have we attended his service on Easter-day, and felt no joy. I speak not of the observance of these particular days for any especial sacredness in themselves; one week in itself is but like another: but I speak of the opportunity which it offers; I speak of the necessity, if we ever hope to see God, of feeling at some one time or other of our lives what is contained in those few words, "Christ crucified, and Christ risen;" of letting our minds embrace the reason why he was crucified, and for what he rose; of learning what it is to be a sinner, and what it is to stand acquitted before the throne of God, forgiven and beloved. faith, and by this, and this alone can we acquitted, or ever overcome the world. have a deep knowledge of divinity, still more may we have a deep knowledge of earthly things ;-we may have many qualities which our friends dearly love, many which even our enemies cannot refuse to honour; we may live in comfort, with large enjoyment of the pleasures of sense, the pleasures of understanding, and the delights of affection, and our names may be repeated in after times as men who did worthily in their generation to their neighbours and their country;-all this may be; and yet we may awake from our graves, when earth falls in ruin around us, and hear from Him, whom we must hear as a Judge, though we may reject

him as a Saviour, that we have had our reward,— that in our lifetime, or at least in earth's lifetime, we have received our good things, and that the cup is now empty for ever. All will have passed away, as a thousand worlds, with all their interests and pleasures, may have passed away already, in infinite space and in infinite time. But of eternal life, and of eternal happiness, there is but one fountain, even God: and to sinners such as we are, that fountain is for ever closed, unless we have access to it through Christ, and for his sake are regarded by his Father as "clean every whit.

SERMON XIX.

LUKE, xvii. 36, 37.

Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left. And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.

THE question here put to our Lord by his disciples, seems to partake somewhat of the spirit in which the prophecies of the Scripture are generally read, and by which their usefulness is very greatly lessened. Nor is this spirit confined to the prophecies only it is often seen in the explanations given of the parables of our Lord, and indeed of every other part of Scripture. What I mean, is the habit of making the prophecies or parables allude to one thing only, when in fact they allude to many; the making them relate to particular places, persons, and nations, when, in fact, they relate to particular sins, temptations, and states of mind, which have existed in a great many different places, and in many different persons and nations.

Thus we lose the benefit of what we read in two ways: first, by understanding it as speaking of past times, or of other persons, we keep our own lives and consciences out of its reach; and secondly, we absolutely turn our food into poison, by using such passages as weapons of controversy, wherewith to triumph over others, instead of turning their edge, as we should do, to cut off what is evil in ourselves.

To apply this to the words of the text. It is very true that Jerusalem was the immediate occasion of our Lord's discourse, and its destruction was the first illustration of the truth of his prophecy. When he declared that "in the days of the Son of Man, two men should be in the field; that one should be taken, and the other left," it was a natural question, on the part of his disciples, to ask him where this would be: in what country, and upon what persons, was this sudden and searching judgment to fall? Let us mark the words of Christ's answer: "Wheresoever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together." The words are clearly a sort of proverb; but their meaning cannot be doubtful. "You ask where this judgment is to fall-upon what country, and on what people. I tell you, everywhere. Wherever there is sin and carelessness, there will be the judgment; even as there are surely found birds of prey, wherever there is a carcass to devour. Do

not then deceive yourselves by giving to my words a local and personal meaning, which would cripple their general usefulness. If they applied to Jerusalem only, in less than forty years, when Jerusalem will be destroyed, the lesson they contain would be useless. But their truth and their force shall last for centuries after Jerusalem is in ruins; and after the nation by which Jerusalem is to finish, has been cut off from the face of the earth in its turn. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away;' and till heaven and earth do pass, there never will be a time, there never will be a country, there never will be an individual, to whom they will not be as useful and as applicable as to the Jews at this moment."

6

Such I conceive to be the purport of our Lord's reply to his disciples, when he said, "Wheresoever the body is, there will the eagles be gathered together." And it is according to the lesson thus conveyed, that I would wish to dwell upon the words of the preceding verse, "Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left."

I take them as applying to ourselves who are this day here assembled. We are "all together in the field," engaged in the same daily business; living, in a manner, to ourselves, during the greatest part of the year; and so much engaged amongst ourselves, that we have little time or in