the Almighty, if you entertain a trembling expectation that in the judgment of the last day you may not be found entirely wanting, draw near with humility and take this holy Sacrament to your endless comfort; join in our supplications with a new sense of piety; unite in our confessions with sincerity, and in our thanks with faith and gratitude, and you will return home from these holy mysteries with a chastened mind and a better disposition to all works of charity and godliness.

It was, my brethren, as upon this day, amidst the gloom and severities of winter, that our blessed Saviour came down from heaven, and took upon himself, together with a mortal body, all the vicissitudes, and sorrows, and temptations of our perishable existence. It has pleased the Almighty to convey through various types the revelations which he has vouchsafed to us. The sacrifice of Abraham, the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness, the lying of Jonas in the whale three nights, are familiar to your recollections. Amongst the types of our immortality which nature is perpetually presenting to us, there is none perhaps so striking, or so evidently intended as a guide to our imaginations, as the condition of the grub which crawls and feeds for a season on the herbs of the earth, and then buries itself in the ground in its web and shell, as if in its shroud and coffin, till the time of its glory arrives, and it breaks forth with its wings arrayed in all the beauty of colours, no longer requiring food as a necessary of life, but disporting itself as a spirit in the air. It was probably conformable to that scheme of the Almighty which has revealed his mysteries through various types to our understandings, that our Saviour came to visit us in the winter and death-like season of

the year, as well as in the winter and desolation of man's spiritual existence, and that he brought immortality and new hopes of glory to light by his resurrection, at the season when all nature is bursting from its temporary death to new life and animation. Let me beseech you to yield your minds to the animating impression of those beautiful and sublime similitudes, which seem to have proceeded from the very hand of the Almighty. Consider the dark and abject situation of humanity before the manifestation of our Saviour, without any certainty beyond the gloomy annihilation of the grave, without any intercessor at the throne of offended Majesty, without any hope or consolation under the oppression of insurmountable afflictions: --and elevate your thoughts from that view of desolation from the deep gloom of a cheerless and unprofitable mortality, to the bright prospects that are opened to you by the birth, by the sufferings, by the resurrection of your Redeemer. Let them be a light to your understandings, a beacon to the enthusiasm of your imaginations; let them arouse you to pure hopes, to a newness of life, to the sweet comfort of well-grounded and immortal expectations. Approach the table of our Lord with purified minds; with kindly and benevolent feelings, as if awaking from the gloom and winter of the soul at the sweet call of an incorruptible and balmy spring; return from this holy communion of praise and thanksgiving, not with dark terrors and imaginary apprehensions, but with the gentle consolation of having communicated with that blessed and all-merciful Being, who has himself tasted the sorrows and known the frailties of humanity; of that all-bountiful Benefactor, who quitted the glory of his Father, the kingdom of omnipotence and eternity, to wade through

the miseries of an abject condition under the scorn and oppression and violence of mankind, for the blessed purpose of raising his sinful and fallen people from the gloom of utter hopelessness to a bright participation of his inheritance in heaven.

SERMON V.

ON THE FAST DAY.

Preached at Spofforth, March 21st, 1832.-First printed (with permission) by some of his Parishioners, for their own use and edification.

His disease was exceeding great; yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the physicians.-2 CHRONICLES XVI. 12.

THESE words relate to the disease, which terminated the life of Asa king of Judah. The consideration of the circumstances of his life, and the brief memorial which has been transmitted to us of his death, may lead to reflections which would at all times be profitable, but are more especially suited to the occasion of our present supplications to the Almighty. At the commencement

of his reign he had turned with all his heart to the Lord his God, and taken away the idols of strange Gods, and cut down the groves, and broken down the high places in which they had been worshipped, and he had commanded Judah to seek the Lord God of their fathers, and to do the law and the commandment, and he had no war in those years, for the Lord gave him rest. And, because

his kingdom grew mighty and prosperous under the protection of the Almighty, Zerah the Ethiopian came against him with a million of fighting men. King Asa had a army of 580,000 disciplined soldiers, but he did not rely upon their valour, nor upon his fenced cities, to save him, but he cried to the Lord his God, and said, "Lord, it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many, or with few; O Lord our God, we rest upon thee !” So the Lord smote the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians fled; and, for six and thirty years of his reign, Asa relied upon the protection of the Almighty, and Judah at his instigation entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, and the Lord gave them rest. But, in the thirty-sixth year of his reign, Baasha king of Israel came up against him, and built Ramah in order to blockade the territory of Judah; and Asa sent to Benhadad the idolatrous king of Syria, to remind him of the treaty which had existed between their fathers, and prayed him to make a diversion in his favour by attacking the king of Israel; and Benhadad did so, and the king of Israel abandoned the building of Ramah, and Asa entered it, and destroyed it. Once more he had prospered against his enemies, but the victory had been gained by human aid, by the assistance of the idolators, by the arm of flesh, and not by the presence and might of the Lord of Hosts. And God condescended to send a prophet to admonish Asa, because he had relied on the king of Syria, and not on the Lord his God; and Asa was angered, and threw the prophet into prison; but the Lord was merciful and of long-suffering towards him, and not until the third year after this sinful act, did He afflict Asa with a disease in his feet. If the Almighty had sent upon him a more

grievous and immediate visitation, perhaps he might have humbled himself before the terrors of the Lord; but in its commencement he probably thought it a trifling inconvenience; he had habituated himself to imagine that he might prosper by the help of man, and instead of turning himself unto Him, by whose arm he had formerly experienced such a signal deliverance, instead of supplicating Him to remove the distemper with which he was visited for his iniquity, he sought after those whose skill was utterly unavailing against the will of the Omnipotent. He had recourse to the assistance of human physicians, and the consequence was such as might have been easily anticipated, that, under the care of those who were powerless for salvation, his complaint became very grievous, and he was soon laid in his sepulchre. Whether or not a sincere and heartfelt return to the Disposer of all events would have induced the Lord to remove the affliction which had been sent in consequence of his delinquency, must rest in the knowledge of Him alone to whom all secrets are open; but it is probable that the all-powerful Being, who had stooped to remonstrate with his servant, would have lent a willing ear to supplication and repentance. We know that the Lord is always nigh unto those that seek Him, and if the prayers of the meek and humble do not always appear to be crowned with success, it is because they know not what they ask, and the real effects, upon their ultimate and eternal happiness, of those things which now seem good to them, and are the objects of their most ardent wishes, are hidden from the penetration of beings so short-sighted and imperfect. We learn from this and numerous other passages in scripture, that sickness is