our guide nor our light, if we do not walk in the paths which He has shewn us. No!" we have neither seen "His face, nor heard His voice, nor is His word "abiding in us," unless we keep His commandments. Hear his beloved disciple: he that saith he knoweth

Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, "and the truth is not in him." After this, Christians, who among us can boast of knowing Him? What have we sacrificed to his Gospel? What vices have we corrected? What passions have we subdued? What use have we made of the goods and evils of life? Are we not, alas! obstinate and incorrigible, reproved but not corrected, subdued but not humbled, severely chastised, but not radically reclaimed? Should such be our character, and we should dare to flatter ourselves that we have known Jesus Christ, that we have seen the Saviour whom God had promised, the Holy Spirit will proclaim us to be liars, and will assure us by the mouth of St. John, that "the truth is not in us."

Let us then, Christians, let us fear to die, if we have not seen Christ-if, in other words, we have not received the truths, fulfilled the precepts, observed the ordinances, of his Gospel. Woe unto those who shall die before Christ hath reigned over them! How dreadful will death be to them! how terrible will be its approach! how insupportable will be the consequences! In that day all their' pleasures will be annihilated; in that day all their projects will be blasted; in that day all their high thoughts will perish; in that day their punishment will begin; in that day the eternal fires will be lighted!

A good man will not be surprized at the approaches of death his soul is on the wing to heaven: it is, as

it were, detached from his mortal body: devout prayer and holy communions have raised it from earth to heaven; and when he shall see death approach, he will resign his spirit to God who gave it, and deliver his body to the grave, waiting the time when the soul and body shall be reunited, to be separated no more. O death! he will say, I do not esteem thee cruel and inexorable; thou wilt deliver me from this mortal frame, but thou canst not deprive me of the good on which my heart is fixed. "Lord, now lettest thou

thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen "thy salvation!" God grant that we may all die the death of the righteous, that we may find that rest which the pleasures of life cannot give; and to the end that, closing our eyes to whatever is passing here, we may open them to that which abides for ever, and be thought worthy to posses it, eternally, in Heaven!

The Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary-being the second day of February, instituted in memory and honor of the purification of the Virgin in the temple of Jerusalem, and the presentation of our Blessed Lord-is called Candlemas, or a Mass of Candles, because, before Mass was said that day, the Romish Church consecrated, and set apart for sacred use, Candles for the whole year; and made a procession with hallowed Candles, in remembrance of the divine light, wherewith our Saviour illuminated the whole Church at His presentation in the Temple.-TOMLINS' Law Dictionary.

VOL. III.

SERMON

SER MON V.

ST. MATTHIAS.

THIS day the Church keeps in memory of St. Matthias. He was, it is most probably thought, one of the seventy disciples, and was a diligent attendant upon our Saviour all the time of His preaching. (Acts i. 21, 22.) After the death of Judas, he was, by lot, chosen into the number of the Apostles (v. 26.) His first preaching was in Judæa; after which, it is said, he went to preach in Ethiopia the lesser, in the further part of Cappadocia here he continued long, and, it is believed, was murdered by some of the barbarous people.

MATTHEW Xi. 28.

Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I

WH

will give you rest.

HEREWITH shall I come before the Lord, "and bow myself before the high God;" was the language the Prophet Micah held to the Jews under the Law, when they felt themselves oppressed

Chatelain.

Not approving the sermon of Scattergood which appeared in the first Edition, I have substituted a translation from a French Protestant preacher, a preacher more to be admired for his good sense, piety, and zeal, than for striking thoughts and commanding eloquence.

with remorse of conscience, and were desirous of appeasing the wrath of an offended Deity. Such was the knowlege of the Jews that they could not persuade themselves, the justice of God would be satisfied by the blood of a few miserable victims; but they were not sufficiently enlightened to look higher, to pierce through the veil of the Law, and to discover the truth which was concealed under its shadows. They well knew that God could not be propitiated without a sacrifice and this sacrifice they sought, but could no where find. "Will the Lord," they enquired, “be "pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thou"sands of rivers of oil? shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body, for the sin " of my soul?"

Blessed be God, we, my brethren, are strangers to those doubts and perplexities to which the Jews were subject under the Law. The Gospel points out to us 1a means at once sure, prompt, and efficacious, calculated to obtain God's pardon of all our sins; to quiet the most alarmed consciences, with the assurance of comfort, and the promise of peace. It is the virtue of the death, of the sacrifice of Christ Jesus, it is the infinite value of His blood which He offers for us all as a relief and cure of all our spiritual miseries: a cure which we can find in Him only. "Come unto me "all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give

I shall first shew who they are whom our Lord addresses. They are those who " labor and are heavy "laden." Secondly, The rest which He promises them. Lastly, What we are to do to obtain this rest.

Holy Jesus! often have we gone to Thee, often have sought Thee in our distress and our afflictions, but too often with weariness and indifference. We this day, O Lord, return unto Thee, but we return to Thee with a new zeal, with an holy eagerness. Let us not go unto Thee in vain; but grant us to find with Thee the peace, the repose, the rest we seek, and which in mercy Thou offerest to us!

First. We are to consider who they are, whom our Lord calls to Him. They are those that "labor and "are heavy laden."

I. The words in the original are peculiarly expressive: they describe men fatigued, harrassed, exhausted by long and severe toil; ready to faint through failure of strength and depression of spirits. Our Lord had here in view, first, the Jews, burthened with the yoke of the Law, overpowered with the multitude of Mosaic Ordinances.

In the words following the text, Christ speaks of His yoke as easy, contrasting it with those imposed by Moses and by Tradition. Indeed the Law, accompanied with all its Levitical Ordinances, was to the Jews an oppressive and vexatious yoke," which neither they nor their fathers were able to bear." Ill-instructed by their teachers, they supposed they should be justified before God by the observance of the ordinances prescribed by Moses, and of the ceremonies enjoined by Tradition. In this deceitful hope they wearied themselves in fulfilling the whole Law; and all that they gained, by their fruitless exertions, was the conviction that their attempt was vain; and by consequence, that they could not, by these means, be justified before

God.