no display of the love which was this evangelist's special characteristic?

We appeal to the inhabitants of the town: they are urged by every possible motive: this church is erected for their fellow-parishioners, whose condition they cannot improve without improving their own, whom they cannot neglect without bringing themselves in a measure under the anathema of St. Paul, "If any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel." We appeal to the visitors, if such there be present, those who are sojourning here for health or recreation. I always feel as if we owed a large debt to the destitute of places to which we resort, when worn with sickness, or wearied with toil. We ought not to be gladdened by their landscapes, without striving in return to scatter the precious seed of God's Word. I feel as if the dwellers in the Alps and Pyrenees had a claim upon me for the glorious lessons in the magnificence of the Creator which have been given me in their fastnesses. I feel as if the Norwegian might call upon me to pay thankfully for the notices of divinity which have been thrown to me from his mighty pinnacles, his vast forests, his everlasting snows, his rushing cataracts. And I cannot tread the romantic parts of our own fair land, and not feel that its wild and beautiful scenes, its tangled glens, its sunny hills, its sparkling

waters, summon us not to show ourselves ungrateful for the having gazed on its pictures, but to strive, in return, that the inhabitants may be all led to the river of life, to the garden of the Lord. And ye come hither to draw health from the waters of the great deep, to awe and enchant yourselves with gazing on that sublime image of the Eternal One, glorious and wonderful, whether the skies glass their azure in its unruffled mirror, or the tempest have lashed it into madness. Will you enjoy the sea, and care nothing whether those who inhabit its shores know, or know not, of the "anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, which entereth into that within the vail?" Again, we bring against you the evangelist to whom you have dedicated this church. We are told by St. John, that in the new heavens, and the new earth, there shall be "no more sea." The sea remains till the general judgment, gives up its dead, and then disappears from the renovated system. Yet ere it departs, it may combine with the rest of creation in witnessing against us. The sun shall witness, if we have abused the brilliant daylight to works of iniquity. The darkness shall witness, if we have employed its mantle to shroud wickedness. The corn and the wine shall witness, if we have indulged inordinately our appetites. The gold shall witness, if hoarded avariciously, or squandered profligately. And the sea shall witness, witness with its roaring thunders, and its crested billows, if we have enjoyed its beauty

and its blessing, and done nothing to gird its shores with the rock of ages, to plant the cliffs against which it breaks with those spires which often serve as landmarks to the mariner on its surface, whilst they point him moreover to a haven of everlasting rest.

SERMON VII.'

THE WORD IN SEASON.

ISAIAH 1. 4.

"The Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary he wakeneth morning by morning; he wakeneth mine. ear to hear as the learned.'

It is generally admitted, that the speaker of these words is the Messiah, the second person of the ever-blessed Trinity, who anticipated, as it were, his assuming our nature, and spake as though He had already appeared in the flesh. The chapter commences with an address from Jehovah Himself: "Thus saith the Lord, Where is the bill of your mother's divorcement, whom I have put away? or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you ?" The address, you observe, is in the first person-Jehovah Himself speaks, not the prophet in his name. And since this form of address is

1 Preached at the Festival of the Sons of the Clergy, St. Paul's Cathedral, 1844.

continued throughout the chapter, there being no discoverable change in the party who speaks, we must conclude that it is Jehovah who gives utterance to our text, however inappropriate, at first, the words may seem to a person of the Godhead.

But if the speaker be Jehovah, He must evidently be Jehovah in some very peculiar position and character; for not only does He represent Himself in our text as a scholar-and even this appears incongruous with Deity-but He goes on to represent Himself as a sufferer, a sufferer in no ordinary measure. "The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned away back. I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair; I hid not my face from shame and spitting." If you took away all knowledge of the scheme of our redemption, it would be utterly inexplicable how, in a chapter where there is no change of person, it should be said in one part, "I clothe the heavens with blackness, and I make sackcloth their covering ;" and in another, "I hid not my face from shame and spitting." But all difficulty vanishes, when we have in our hands the history of a being who is described as "over all, God blessed for ever'," as "the Word" that "was in the beginning with God"," and that "was God," and of whom nevertheless we find it recorded, "Then did they spit in his face, and buffeted him, and others smote him with the 1 Rom. ix. 5. 2 St. John i. 2.