him and trained him through all the struggles and storms of early life; and so to become vainly confident, worldly and hard-hearted, undevout and ungodly, even though he may keep himself respectable enough, and fall into no open sin.

Therefore it is, I think, that while we see so many lives which have been sad lives of poverty, and labour, and struggle, end peacefully and cheerfully, in a sunshiny old age, like a still bright evening after a day of storm and rain; so on the other hand we see lives which have been prosperous and happy ones for many years, end sadly in bereavement, poverty, or disappointment, as did the life of David, the man after God's own heart. God guided him through all the dangers and temptations of youth, and through them all he trusted God. God brought him safely to success, honour, a royal crown; and he thanked God, and acknowledged his goodness. And yet after a while his heart was puffed up, and he forgot God, and all he owed to God, and became a tyrant, an adulterer, a murderer. He repented

of his sin but he could not escape the punishment of it. His children were a curse to him; the sword never departed from his house; and his last years were sad enough, and too sad.

Perhaps that was God's mercy to him; God's way of remembering him again, and bringing him back to him. Perhaps too that same is God's way of bringing back many a man in our own days who has wandered from him in success and prosperity.

God grant that we may never need that terrible chastisement. God grant that we, if success and comfort come to us, may never wander so far from God, but that we may be brought back to him by the mere humbling of old age itself, without needing affliction over and above.

Yes, by old age alone. Old age, it seems to me, is a most wholesome and blessed medicine for the soul of man. Good it is to find that we can work no longer, and rejoice no more in our own strength and cunning. Good it is to feel our mortal bodies decay, and to learn that we are but dust, and that when we turn again to

our dust, all our thoughts will perish. Good it is to see the world changing round us, going a-head of us, leaving us and our opinions behind. Good perhaps for us-though not for them to see the young who are growing up around us looking down on our old-fashioned notions. Good for us because anything is good which humbles us, makes us feel our own ignorance, weakness, nothingness, and cast ourselves utterly on that God in whom we live, and move, and have our being; and on the mercy of that Saviour who died for us on the Cross; and on that Spirit of God from whose holy inspiration alone all good desires and good actions come.

God grant that that may be our end. That old age, when it comes, may chasten us, humble us, soften us; and that our second childhood may be a second childhood indeed, purged from the conceit, the scheming, the fierceness, the covetousness which so easily beset us in our youth and manhood; and tempered down to gentleness, patience, humility, and faith. God grant that instead of clinging greedily to life,

and money, and power, and fame, we may cling only to God, and have one only wish as we draw near our end. From my youth up 'hast thou taught me, Oh God, and hitherto 'I have declared thy wondrous works. Now I also that I am old and grey-headed, Oh Lord forsake me not, till I have showed thy goodness to this generation, and thy power to those who are yet to come.'

E

SERMON V.

GOOD FRIDAY.

HEBREWS IX. 13, 14.

For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?

THE

HE three collects for Good Friday are very grand and very remarkable. In the first we pray :

Almighty God, we beseech thee graciously

to behold this thy family, for which our Lord 'Jesus Christ was contented to be betrayed, and 'given up into the hands of wicked men, and to suffer death upon the cross, who now liveth ' and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost ever one God, world without end. Amen.' In the second we pray :