sence: these opportunities he eagerly embraced. As, indeed, the prophetic language had declared, he came suddenly to his temple; and when he had attracted the attention of those who heard his wisdom, he retired again to the obscurity of Nazareth, and dutifully obeyed that mother who had sought him sorrowing. The humility that was not dazzled by the applause of admiring rabbis, the filial affection that recognized the anxieties of a mother's love, can never be too much the objects of our esteem and imitation. Where was the rising thought of self-sufficiency and pride, that so often mingles with the more generous feeling of satisfaction, when youth hear their praises from their superiors? Where the preference for trifling amusements or childish follies, to which many of us may look back with sorrow, as the cherished pursuits of our earlier years? Where the impatience of rebuke, the unwillingness to submit to contradiction, the absolute disobedience to parental authority, which even the best of us must remember with grief, ast violating that duty towards our parents, which ought to have been the unbroken expression of our gratitude and love?

Let me then entreat the younger portion of those around me, to meditate on this occurrence of our Saviour's youth; let them make it the model of their own early years, both in the example of his affection to his heavenly Father, and

to his earthly parents. There is scarcely one excellence of our Saviour's character that is so truly amiable, or that appears at least so attractive from its universal application, as this filial love and duty. We may trace it through his life; we find it in the only recorded action of his early days; we see it in every narrative in which his mother's presence is mentioned; till at last, even amid the agonies of the cross, that mother finds a place within his heart. And if Jesus could thus acknowledge the claims of grateful affection; if he, who was God manifest in the flesh, reverenced her from whose substance he was made man; which of us shall refuse reverence and obedience to those, to whom it is due by every claim of blood and nature, as well as by every obligation of name and character? This example is worth ten thousand precepts, marking out the line and limit of that duty, to the performance of which Scripture invariably attaches a blessing and a promise. Neither, again, in the fulfilment of this promise, is the example of Christ deficient. Jesus himself "increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man." Jesus himself exhibited the blessed effects of that frame of mind for which he was so dis

tinguished. And so also shall each of you be blessed, who cultivate the holy disposition which he exhibited. So also shall you be blessed, if, with the earnest desire to grow in grace and in

holiness, ye seek indeed the knowledge of the word of God; if with the humble feeling of gratitude to your heavenly Father, ye give up your hearts to his service, and pay the earnest and first-fruits of your devotion to him, in dutiful affection to those, who are to you the representatives of his care, the commissioned ministers of his love.

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SERMON XI.

THE PRACTICAL TENDENCY OF THE GOSPEL.

TITUS iii. 8.

This is a faithful saying, and these things I will that thou affirm constantly, that they who have believed in God might be careful to maintain good works. These things are good and profitable unto men.

IT cannot be denied, that the great end which the apostles of the Lord proposed to themselves in the promulgation of the gospel, was the moral reformation of the world; the change of the principles, habits, and characters of mankind. It is impossible to survey the method which they adopted in the execution of their commission, without observing how completely they abstain from any thing approaching to a system of mere proselytism; a system of gaining over followers of their opinions, or adherents to their party, without reference to higher objects. What, in

deed, was there in the truths which they declared, that could possibly lead to their reception as mere matters of opinion? What was there in the power, or the prevalence of their party, that could induce those to join them, to whom the truth of their statements was a matter of indifference. If a system of doctrines contradictory to many of the acknowledged principles of theology, opposed in the main to the prevalent views of men, and the well-known feelings of the human heart, were calculated to attract the formal proselyte or the careless professor, then might Christianity have accorded with the principles of the Pharisees, and apostolic exertion might but have resembled that zeal which compassed sea and land to make one disciple. If peril, persecution, and the sword; if obloquy and contempt; if poverty and pain; if strict sanctity and unsparing self-denial; if these be the natural objects of human approbation, and the acknowledged principles of human policy, then might the spread of Christ's religion have caused no surprise in the breasts of his enemies, when they said, in disappointment and anger, "The world is gone after him."

As the apostles, in thus preaching the gospel under every disadvantage, must have been influenced by higher motives than the mere desire of notoriety, or the wish for the pre-eminence of a party; so also their followers must have been