ascertain the number of those to whom the last year hath been the year of summons by death, into a condition which never can be altered. Let not the reflection be lost upon us. We have been, thus far, spared. Draw nearer to HIM That is most willing to receive, to justify, and to pour a fresh supply of that Divine life into our souls, which we once received of His free grace, in Holy Baptism. His pleasure it is to enrich us with more grace, as we value and employ the gifts of His SPIRIT. Increasing resemblance to the Divine Image will be attended by experience of Heavenly peace and blessed communion; till our earthly existence will melt away into that life, wherein is the fulness of joy; and at GoD's right hand, where there are pleasures for evermore.

J. H. P.

SERMON XIV.

THE CHRISTIAN'S REASONABLE SERVICE.

First Sunday after Epiphany.

ROMANS XII. 1.

I BESEECH YOU THEREFORE, BRETHREN, BY THE MERCIES OF GOD, THAT YE PRESENT YOUR BODIES A LIVING SACRIFICE, HOLY, ACCEPTABLE UNTO GOD, WHICH IS YOUR REASONABLE

SERVICE.

THIS verse is the point from which St. Paul, having completed the doctrinal or argumentative part of his Epistle, commences a series of practical exhortations on various important subjects; and in this verse, therefore, we are to look for the connection between the two, which it is not to be expected that such a writer as the Apostle could fail to maintain.

The great difficulty generally attending those parts of his Epistles which treat of doctrine, is (for us,) to carry ourselves back to the times in which they were written; to understand them, as, all circumstances considered, it is likely he must have meant them to be understood by the persons to whom they were addressed. The religious controversies of our own day are those which are generally uppermost in our minds, and it is often with reference to the decision or

fomenting of these only, that we open the volume of Scripture; we do not sufficiently inquire what was the object of the sacred writer in this or that particular expression or argument, but content ourselves with repeating his words, when, by dint of ingenuity, they can be rendered applicable to the support of that class of opinions which we favour. It is a most undeniable truth that the humble and honest searcher of the Scriptures will find them profitable to him for instruction in every question that is of real importance to his spiritual welfare; if any thing is proved by Holy Writ, according to the fair and legitimate rules of proof established amongst men, we believe it, although it be not anywhere expressly asserted: but, we do not, or, at least, we should not, believe a thing in our own sense, unless also we are convinced that the sense of the author, from whom we take it, was the same. St. Paul had been discoursing largely upon a subject which now occupies the attention of very few, but, in those days, was one in which every man who read him felt a deep interest, a species of intense party sentiment, which it required all the foreknowledge, and eloquence, and authority of the Apostle to keep within proper bounds. The labour and zeal expended on this argument show plainly how necessary he judged it to impress upon both the Jews and Gentile Christians, a proper sense of their relative situations: to show the former that, as a people, they were not unjustly treated in the deprivation of those privileges, of which they had proved themselves unworthy; and the latter, that they had no cause to be high-minded, or to boast o the advantages which they enjoyed, seeing that, in the fulness of time, exact equality should be restored between them, they should be made one fold under

one Shepherd, GOD having concluded all in their turns in unbelief that He might have mercy upon all. But though the consideration of this wonderfully gracious system excluded pride, the Apostle well knew that it encouraged, in the highest degree, that spirit of zealous obedience, with which it was most his wish that his readers should be animated; he well knew that he could ground his exhortations to moral duty upon no surer a foundation than the mercies of GOD; and, therefore, by a natural and effective transition, he passed from informing the understanding to exciting the will; from teaching them what their GoD had done for them, to setting forth what answerably they ought to do for their God; not barely indeed setting it forth as proper to be done, but beseeching them to do it; beseeching them, moreover, not upon any ordinary or selfish motives, but upon the noblest which can actuate the heart of man,-gratitude for undeserved favour. To express more forcibly the nature of the duty called for upon this sacred principle, he used terms, which, though figurative, were perfectly familiar, as well to the Gentiles as the Jews, representing the conduct required of them, under the image of a sacrifice, which they were to offer to GOD; and as it was the lusts of the body, or, as he elsewhere calls it, the flesh, that were most to be renounced and mortified by the true worshippers, so here he considers their bodies as the victim especially to be sacrificed,—not, however, excluding the notion in which he sometimes puts the body for the whole man, comprising all the faculties of his soul, and whatsoever gives what he does its title to be styled a reasonable service.

Some peculiarities in this sacrifice are also pointed out, which may claim our attention.

In the first place, it is to be a living sacrifice. According to the Jewish law, and even the Heathen principles of immolation, the victim was to be brought alive to the altar; and in the Christian's spiritual presentation of his body to GOD, so also it must be. Brethren, how often according to your experience is it presented thus? is it presented thus upon the deathbed, in the season of alarm and agony, when the mortal, compelled by inward feelings which none can understand but he, knows that his days are drawing to their close, and lies trembling on the brink of dissolution? Can we call that a living sacrifice, which he makes, if he does make it, of a body which a few hours shall mingle with the earth from whence it sprung, over which, whether he will or no, he soon must lose his power, which is already stricken by the avenger-and only dedicated now to God, because available no longer for the purposes of man? Is the case much better when it is presented thus only in extreme old age? When the too often renewed pleasures of vice have satiated the enfeebled appetite, when the body's languor has reached the soul, some men make a merit of their attention to the demands of piety and virtue; they have then leisure to look out for some other form of happiness, having exhausted that which pleased them most, and are content to look forward to the next world, because they have lost the power of gratifying themselves in this. O! if such men knew what an early attention to the lessons of righteousness would have made that life, which they cannot now look back upon, if the memory of it be left them, without severe remorse and wretchedness, if they knew how sweetly they might then have hailed the coming of age, as the not unforeseen termination of their consistent labours,