your own. You have been bought with a price, that you should glorify GoD in your body and your spirit, which are God's. There is not one here who has any right and power over himself,-who is not altogether God's, and pledged to think, and speak, and act for God. You have been purchased for this by the blood of Christ your Lord. You have been pledged to this in your baptism. You bear the seal of this upon your forehead. You are reminded of this by your Christian name. You are called to the consideration of this by the very first question of that catechism with which, I trust, you are well acquainted. Now, then, I entreat you, all that you are already, ecclesiastically, without your own co-operation, previous to your conscious concurrence-that, become now, personally, by your own solemn act and deed; that, address yourselves to with manly purpose and determination; that, seek to be set apart for deliberately in your own conscience, and openly before the church, in this consecrating ordinance of Confirmation. Every Christian is privileged to be a king and priest to God, Every Christian is an anointed one. Come and receive the rite of inauguration. Come and be installed into your glorious office, you may be holiness to the Lord!

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And, do you shrink from this, because you feel yourselves incompetent and unfit, and therefore are

afraid to commit yourselves? Do you think yourselves too ignorant to make intelligent resolves for God? Or too weak and wavering to dedicate yourselves to his service? Nay, and are you even too cold and careless, too hesitating and reluctant, to pluck up courage to renounce the world, and crucify the flesh, and fight against the devil, for God? Then, just for all these very reasons, come to this ordinance on this occasion, that you may find it, not only benedictory, not only consecrative, but, yet more, communicative of the Holy Ghost-the Spirit of decision and of strength-to your souls. Are you indeed ignorant? HE, says our Confirmation Service, is, "the Spirit of wisdom and understanding," to inform your minds, to throw a new light on your whole condition before God, and to make you wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. And are you indeed weak? HE, it says again, is "the Spirit of counsel and ghostly strength," to supply the very power you need, to shed abroad in you a new life of energy and force, to make you strong men for Christ. Nay, and are you even wavering?—defective in religious feeling and desire?—languid ?—not awake to the solemnity of your relation to God and Christ? mere babes in piety? Still, now is your time to rise up into manly earnestness, and to become alive to God! For this same Holy Ghost is, as the Ser

vice says yet further, "the Spirit of true godliness and holy fear," the Lord and Giver of life, the Nourisher of every good thought, the Confirmer of every wavering purpose-the Power that can snatch you from the world and from yourselves, and seal you firmly for your God!

Address yourselves, then, my youthful friends, to this ordinance as to that which will confirm your best desires illumine what is dark in youraise what is low- and diffuse throughout your mind a heavenly energy. Think not for a moment that it may become a snare to you, or commit you to a spirit and a conduct which you might otherwise without blame neglect. It introduces not new obligations. It simply brings to you new grace and power to fulfil the obligations under which you already lie. As servants of Christ, as creatures of God,―nay, even as rational beings,—you are bound already to a life of holiness and piety, and whether you recognize those bonds or not, they are still indissolubly twined around you. You may free yourselves from the remembrance of them, or the reverence for them, but you cannot cast them from you. And whether, therefore, you respond to this invitation, and seek this grace of Confirmation, or shrink back from it, still, the same demand is made upon you; the same obligation rests upon you; the same intelligent, deliberate, conscious

dedication of yourself, your soul, and body, to be a reasonable, holy, lively sacrifice to God, is required of you. Come forward, therefore, cordially, at the call of the church, to make this dedication. Seek gladly, in the rite of Confirmation, the Encouragement, the Resolution, and the Grace by which the vows already made for you in your baptism, may by yourselves be personally fulfilled. And God shall bless you in your deed!

Nor let any of this congregation forget that such a personal self-consecration and reception of the Spirit of God is equally needful for us all. The whole of every Christian's character sums itself up in this that he serves the Lord Christ. And the whole of his duty, therefore, day by day, consists in recollecting this, and acting in consistency with this. "Take heed," said Moses to the Israelites, in our text "Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God!" Take heed, we may say to every Christian man, lest you forget your covenant that has been made with you- the vows that are upon you the family to which you belong — the high calling wherewith you have been called! For to us, as Christians, Sin assumes a blacker character, and Holiness puts forth a stronger claim. To us, as Christians, Sin, lukewarmness, worldliness, is not merely being wanting to ourselves, or to our

character in the world: it is being wanting to our God, to our engagements with Him, our promises and vows to Him, our high relation to Him in His Son. And to us, as Christians, Holiness is bound upon the conscience and the heart, by every tie of gratitude, and honour, and consistency, and love. "Walk worthy of God," says St. Paul, “who hath called you to his eternal kingdom and glory." "As obedient children," says St. Peter, "not fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts in your ignorance, but as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation because it is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy."

And let Parents and Teachers recollect, that the very essence of Christian Education consists in the training up their children on the principle, and according to the covenant, of their baptismal vow. The daily business of a Christian parent is to look back to what his child was consecrated to in Baptism, and forward to what he is to take upon him in Confirmation. And the whole intermediate time between these sacred epochs of our children's life is to be filled up with that steady and continuous preparation, not of the mind only, but the heart,

and not of the heart only, but the will,—in the truths, the duties, and the hopes of the Catechism, that they may come, with all the new-born energies of youth, to yield themselves in solemn earnestness

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