This last may be more needful for one than for another; and we are not only not called on, but it is a very mistaken notion so to fast as to injure health. But Prayer is indispensable for all, without exception; and at this season, the Church very properly redoubles her call to this holy exercise, and her bell, as it sounds through the valley, seems to say: Oh, be not lovers of pleasure, of business, of idleness itself, more than lovers of GOD. Let not some household or other occupation which might with a little management be as well done sooner or later, serve as an excuse for absence when our Divine MASTER calleth. Be not as Martha, careful and troubled about many things; but as Mary, who came and sat at JESUS' feet, and of whom He said, that she had chosen that good part which shall not be taken from her.

Thus will your Charity be increased, your Faith strengthened, your Hope rendered sure and certain. A serious, not a gloomy-a prayerful, not a superstitious-Lent, will thus usher in a joyful Easter, and they who, as His disciples, have sorrowed for their sins, and prayed for their pardon at the foot of the Cross of CHRIST here, may look forward hereafter to see HIM coming in the clouds of Heaven with power and great glory, to give them the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

J. D. C.

SERMON XXVII.

SINS BROUGHT TO REMEMBRANCE.

First Sunday in Lent.

1 KINGS XVII. 18.

O, THOU MAN OF GOD! ART THOU COME UNTO ME TO CALL MY SIN TO REMEMBRANCE, AND TO SLAY MY SON?

THE Woman, of whom we read in the text, does not appear to have been a careless person. The whole history would lead us to suppose her to have been of godly mind. Consider the circumstances. She was specially selected to be a prophet's hostess. Our LORD's words bring out in remarkable relief the honour which she received:-"I tell you, of a truth, many widows were in Israel, in the days of Elias, when the heavens were shut up three years and six months, but unto none of them was Elias sent, save unto Sarepta, a city of Sidon, unto a woman, that was a widow." And when the prophet came, everything marked the piety of her character. To say nothing of the reverence which she showed to one, who had an especial appointment from GOD, consider in the first

place, the charity with which she received, and in the second, the faith with which she trusted him.

:

These two main qualities of the religious character were surely hers. But it pleased God that the coming of this favoured minister was not to exempt her home from those evils, which are the natural attendants of humanity. "It came to pass that the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, fell sick and his sickness was so sore that there was no health left in him." What a tale of sorrows is here:-her only son taken away, and she a widow. And what resulted? The visitation seems to have unlocked the gates of memory forgotten things arose to her mind; the affliction she takes as a punishment for past guilt; the presence of the prophet reminds her of a standard of holiness, of which she had not thought, or to which, at all events, she had not attained; and in the sins of her earlier life she sees the cause, which had provoked GOD's anger.

Now this example is the more worthy of attention, because it is singularly opposed to what is the common delusion of the present day. This woman, however earnest and religious, was led by the calamities which befel her to look back with penitence into her past life, and to confess and grieve for past transgressions. Whereas it seems the opinion of many persons, that, so soon as they have repented of their sins, or, at all events, have turned from them, they may straight dismiss them from their thoughts, like a settled account, which is to be put upon the file and forgotten. This notion proceeds obviously upon the idea that God is such an one as ourselves, who cannot look at or remember the whole course of our lives, but must judge us by our last acts and final determinings.

Now there is a measure of truth in this, and yet men sadly misapply it. True it is that we shall be accepted or condemned at last, according as we are found in CHRIST, or no. Our acquittal will not arise from the accumulated value of our actions, but from our union with HIM, through Whom only we can be justified. But then whether we are really united with CHRIST, or not, depends not upon the words and resolutions of our dying hour, but upon the whole course of our character.

Look at the thing in this manner. Suppose a man to have been guilty of some great sin, such as all his neighbours would cry shame upon. Let us fancy it was the effect of violent passion, or of lust, or of dishonesty. It seems hardly possible that directly after having committed such a sin, he should feel as comfortable in mind as before. Conscience must have some effect: the threats of God's Word cannot be altogether ineffectual; the common consent of men is not to be put aside without an effort: it must cost a man something to persuade his own mind that he may live in sin and yet be innocent. But suppose a few years to pass over the man's head, and that his sin is never repeated. He gradually turns his mind from it ; the vivid impression of his guilt dies away from his memory: the thing is past, and he will not revive it; ; he takes for granted that he has repented in common of this and all his crimes. Let a stream of water run into an empty pit, and it will fall into it with hurry and noise-such are man's thoughts when he looks upon his fresh sins; but let the pit be filled with water, and the stream will steal noiselessly along its surface, and leave the depths beneath undisturbed. Now this is an image of man's heart when it has settled, and is at

He knoweth ancient times, "All things are

rest. But is this a safe mode of acting? True, we forget such things, but is there any reason to suppose that God forgets them? Is HE so lacking in memory? Does not past, present, and to come stand before HIM at once? Are not all the acts of men spread out before HIM like a map? Cannot HE take note of them as we mark the extent of sea and land from some lofty summit? Just as all below us is gathered into a single bound of sight, so do the deeds of all flesh appear at once to their Ruler on High. the end from the beginning, and from the things which have not yet been. naked and open unto HIM, with Whom we have to do." And again we read, that " GOD requireth that which is past." Nay, for what we know, even we ourselves shall, one day, have this excess of knowledge. Το dying men it has sometimes happened to overlook, as at a glance, the whole history of their lives; to remember the past; to go over their thoughts and actions to be present, as in a moment, with their whole lives. Will not this befal us in the Day of Judgment? Will not every thing which we have said and done be as present as in its hour of action? What meaning is there, then, in trusting to the mere course of time, as though, like some running stream, it would carry us away of itself from what we have committed.

But then men will make this objection, that we read in Scripture of certain promises of pardon, which those who are truly penitent may obtain. No doubt such promises are found there in abundance. There are promises to those who were strangers to CHRIST'S Church, bidding them come into it, and telling them that God had appointed one Baptism for the remission