scriptural standard, and we must measure, we must examine every thing by it —we must take a right view of evil, else we shall never depart from it.

Now the evil of the world is sometimes so latent, as not to be discernible; and let me tell you, my brethren, that that evil which is least discernible, is very often the most dangerous. We see, for instance, the gross vices of intemperance and debauchery-our eyes are disgusted with the sight; and the thing is so plainly evil, that if we are not sunk almost to a level with the brute creation, we shrink with abhorrence from the foul pollution of vices so monstrous. But there is an evil that we do not so easily see, and, therefore, are the more likely to be hurt by it-it exists in books, which we read for their sentimentalism, for the information which they give us in science, in history, or which we take up simply for the beauty of the poetry; perhaps they were written by some man, who wishing to make infidels, thought he should best succeed by presenting his false doctrine in such a pleasing, insinuating form, as might procure for it an easy admission into the minds of the unwary; and thus imperceptibly and by degrees, we become contaminated, and before we are aware of it we imbibe the moral poison. It exists, again, in those partics of pleasure, where there is nothing said and done but what savours of earthliness, and which, because they dissipate the mind, and make it forgetful of better and nobler pursuits, are highly injurious to those who frequent them.

Now, here I would observe, that if our Lord, who was well acquainted with the world, and who also knew what harm his poor, weak, peccable, and unsuspecting creatures might get to their own souls, by unguarded intercourse with the things and with the men of it, prayed his Father, that he would "Keep them from the evil;" surely we who are the subjects of temptation, ought to pray against it ourselves. The Christian feels it, and therefore, it is the point upon which he is most earnest at the throne of grace: but the man of the world thinks but little of the evil of it. His chief wish is, that God would keep him from affliction, from loss, from disappointment. His chief anxiety is, that he may not be injured by slander or misrepresentation in his own character, and in that of his family; but the thought seldom occurs to him of the possibility of his being hurt spiritually, of his being contaminated by moral evil—and do you wonder then, that he talks with such an air of unsuspecting confidence, of his being able to go here and there, without getting harm from it? Do you wonder that he pleads for those things, which you are taught to consider objectionable, because presenting a variety of temptations, calling them innocent? And do you wonder that he takes a part in most of the fashionable follies, that he enters without reserve into the gay circles of society, and that he gratifies his love for worldly pleasure, by participating in the common amusements of life? The fact is, he has not your feelings, nor your apprehension-he does not see things in a clear scriptural light-he takes a very different view of the world from what our Lord and his disciples took of it. He is in such a state of mind, so thoroughly incapable of thinking as you do, because completely destitute of all spiritual understanding, that to argue with him as to the impropriety of the course which he pursues, would be, perhaps, to spend breath to no purpose-you leave off where you began, you cannot convince him. Wait awhile, and the light of heaven may break in upon his soul-and then he will take a different view of things: he will then see harm where he cannot discover

it now. The things of the world will, one after another, drop off from him, and he will willingly renounce all hurtful pleasures for the pleasures of religion.

I come now secondly, to consider in connexion with our text, THE DUTY THAT DEVOLVES UPON THOSE WHO HAVE IN ANY WAY THE CARE OF OTHERS. It is drawn from the example of our Lord, and it consists in their using every endeavour to preserve them from evil. It speaks to parents and guardians, to heads of families, and to ministers; and it tells us, that whether we have individuals, or households, or large flocks, committed to our care, we are to consider ourselves as having an important, responsible charge, and that we ought to think of them with anxiety, pray for them, and do all we can, with the view of promoting their best, their highest interests.

Now this is, alas! in very many cases, very sadly forgotten. Much will be done, for instance, by the parent, (and who can blame him for it?) to promote his child's temporal welfare; but then little or nothing will be done to promote the well-being of his soul. He is allowed to mix with the thoughtless, to read books of an evil tendency, to go to places where, to say the least of it, there is much injurious association. He is brought up in the habit of paying little regard to the sanctity of the Sabbath; his parent profanes the day by reading the newspaper, by having worldly company, or by conversing with his family upon subjects purely of an earthly nature-and what can that parent expect will be the result of it? There is no anxious eye directed to his spiritual welfare, no holy books set before him, no pious example-he is trained up to walk according to the course of " this present evil world," he is not trained up for heaven! The mother, too, though she does it, as she thinks, for the good of her child, acts too often most unchristianly. She allows the young mind to be occupied by the silly tales of romance, instead of endeavouring to have it early impressed with the great truths of religion. She allows her child to follow the bent of her own inclination, never checking her desire for gay pleasurable amusement, by telling her that in religion there is far more of what will conduce to her happiness; and her greatest pride is (so she tells you) to see her in after-life do credit to the training she received from her mother in all fashionable accomplishments!

Oh! ye parents, stop and consider whether ye are doing the best for those dear children whom God hath committed to your care. Do not be anxious, ye fathers, that your sons should be heirs of a large earthly estate, but rather that they may be heirs of that rich and glorious inheritance which God "has laid up for those who love Him," in heaven; and you, ye mothers, be careful to train up your daughters more for eternity than for time. Beware where ye take them, or where ye give them liberty to go. Above all, take heed what sort of example you set before them; God has placed them in your hands, he has intrusted them to your care, you are responsible for their well-being in this world, but far more for their well-being in the next. And oh! what a heartthrilling thing, what a dreadful consummation of all anxieties concerning them, if by bad advice and bad example, or else by entire negligence, you prove yourselves their destroyers, and have your misery heightened in the world of lost spirits by the tormenting accusation of your poor children's upbraidings!

Go then, I pray you, to your chambers, and there upon your bended knees, present your offspring to the Lord. Say with the aged patriarch "Oh that

these my children may live before Thee." Yea, call them to you, let them pray with you. One of the first acts you should teach them is that of prayer. go further you are heads of families, you have servants under you, whose souls are as precious in God's sight as those of your children. Well then, let a family altar be set up in the midst of your households, and do ye, your children, and your servants, all bending around it, offer upon it your morning and evening sacrifice, presenting it to God through the blood of the Redeemer. If you do this, you and yours will be blessed. Oh! that prayers offered in this way, and offered in a proper spirit, were to come up before God, from every family in England! Then God would smile upon us and we should be happy. There would be no pestilence, no fears of dangerous innovations, 66 no complaining

in our streets." Our righteousness would exalt us, and we should be able to say, with confidence, at all times and under all circumstances, "The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge."

Let us now pass to our third and last division. It brings before us a most important truth, and that is, that IT 18 GOD ALONE WHO CAN KEEP US FROM EVIL.

Our Saviour asks his Father to keep his disciples from the evil, to which he himself by going from them, would, in a great measure, leave them exposed; and it becomes us, learning a lesson from what our Saviour did on this occasion, to look above ourselves, above all created helps, and to place our sole, our entire dependence upon God. Now there is no doctrine more necessary, in my opinion, to be urged upon man's mind, than that which relates to his weakness; I ought to say to his helplessness; for he is naturally a very proud creature, he loves a spirit of independence, even in matters of religion; he thinks himself better and stronger than he really is; and he does not sufficiently recognize the hand that first formed him, and can alone preserve him.

We talk of our principles, thinking them firm and steadfast: and we sometimes venture to go even where we ought not, vainly imagining that, though we do place ourselves by going there within the sphere of temptation, we yet have sufficient power to resist. But who that knows himself, will ever trust himself? Where is the man who confidently tells me, that he can go any where and get no harm? I will not believe him. I would not believe even a man of God, however spiritually-minded, however strong in grace, if he said so; for that passage of Scripture, proves at once the folly of self-confidence, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?" Let God withdraw from us his protecting arm, let him remove from us those ramparts of his grace with which he now shelters us, and we are at once laid open to the attacks of our enemies. Let him leave our little bark, frail and perishable as it is, to pursue its voyage on the sea of life, without his presence to guide it, and with every "wind of doctrine" it will deviate from its course, it will fall upon the quicksands, or be driven on the rocks; it will not be able to bear up against the winds and waves of strong, violent temptation; it will soon go down into the bowels of the deep; it will perish for ever. My brethren you are safe, only so long as God keeps you from evil. Oh! then look up to him. In these times, especially, when you see so many of your brethren departing sɔ strangely from the truth and simplicity of the Gospel, I feel it my duty to give you this advice. Remember "thou standest by faith." "Be not" then "high-minded but fear." Now the subject upon which I have been dwelling, is closely connected with

another, which it is my duty to bring before you to-day. I have to advocate the cause of the National Schools, established in this parish; and I do so most cheerfully, because, I am quite sure, that the most likely means, under God, of preserving our youth of both sexes from evil, is, the giving them sound scriptural instruction. I would not have you think, that I am the friend of education to whatever degree it may be carried, or in whatever way it may be given; for it may be carried too far in the case of poor children, and then it becomes an evil rather than a good and you may give it without any reference to religion, and then it becomes a curse rather than a blessing to mankind: for unsanctified reason begets pride of intellect, and pride of intellect is a near step to the rejection of revelation. But though I take this view, this cautious, scriptural view of it, I oppose most strenuously the argument which goes to keep education altogether from the children of the humbler classes of society; for I hold that mental ignorance is a moral degradation, and I cannot but think, that the man, who says, he would not teach poor children to read, is very few removes from him who says, in the language of cold-hearted infidelity, that he would not give them the Bible. I hold that education is important in a high degree— important for this world, but far more for the next, and when I see it carried on, as it is in these schools, upon such a principle as I cannot but admire; when I go into these schools, take the Bible in my hand, and find from the answers which the children give me, that they are taught the knowledge of their God and Saviour, and are thus trained up for eternity as well as time: oh! I do look upon such education as a thing of incalculable value. I see, in the present race of children so educated, materials that may form a beautiful edifice, a holy temple for the Lord: and I hail such early instruction as the harbinger of a holier, happier day, when "our sons" (as the sweet poetry of the Psalms expresses it)" shall be as plants grown up in their youth, and our daughters as corner stones, polished after the similitude of a palace.”

Yes, brethren, it is to the young we look to give health, and strength, and new life, I may add, to the constitution of our parishes-it is to the young we look to form a good-principled, a well-regulated, a sound-thinking, and a useful population—it is to the young we look, to become in after years, the pillars of our establishment, and what is more, to fill up, in the Church of Christ, places vacated by saints departed to glory. Yes, it is to the young we look for all this, and, therefore, what can we give them half so important, as sound scriptural instruction. I need not tell you, how peculiarly this age is marked by a spirit of infidelity. The cry of liberalism is heard all over our land. That doctrine which our Church in her service, has, this day, been so strongly and so properly insisting on; that doctrine of a Trinity in Unity, and other doctrines equally important, because equally fundamental, are most unblushingly objected to and denied; and shall I go too far in saying, that our own scriptural Church is attacked, just now, by very many of her enemies, with this sole purpose in view, that by working her ruin, they may throw down with her her settled form of faith, her standard of orthodoxy? Brethren, these things are going on-our children are likely to be infected by the evil spirit of the times-and, therefore, I say again, let us give them, what will fortify them against seduction, viz. sound, scriptural education. With these observations, I leave the cause of these schools to your sound judgment and Christian feelings, being well assured that you will answer my appeal on their behalf with your wonted liberalitv.

MYSTERIES IN RELIGION.

REV. H. M'NEILE, A.M.

PERCY CHAPEL, CHARLOTTE STREET, FITZROY SQUARE, JUNE 19, 1834.

Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour."-ISAIAH, xlv. 15.

"BE still," saith the Lord of heaven and earth, "and know that I am the Lord." "I will be exalted among the heathen; I will be exalted in the earth." "O taste, and see," saith the Psalmist, inviting the people of God to the enjoyment of their privileges, "taste and see, that the Lord is good." And again: "To know thee," saith the Saviour, in his prayer to the Father, "is eternal life; to know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent." Among all the objects by which the human understanding can be exercised, or the human affections engaged, the most important beyond comparison, and, with all who believe that there is a God beyond dispute, is God himself God in the mysteriousness of his person and existence, God in the sovereignty of his creation and providence, God in the riches of his atoning love in Jesus Christ, God in the energy of his saving power by the Holy Ghost.

My dear Christian brethren, I gladly avail myself of this renewed opportunity of calling your attention in this place, to this the highest of all themes which can occupy the tongue or the attention of human beings. "Verily, thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour." Such was the exclamation of the prophet, when sinking under the weight of the revelation that had been given to him. Something of God was made known to him; but much remained unknown. A beam of light had fallen upon him, but it was only sufficient to make him intelligently conscious of the unfathomable depth of the Fountain of Light itself. More light hath fallen upon us, and, with the New Testament in our hands, we might truly say, "Verily thou art a God that revealest thyself, O Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour." And yet, when that revelation is examined, and examined, if possible, with apostolical skill, we must exclaim, in unaffected apostolical humility, in ignorance, conscious and confessed, "O the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! His ways are past finding out! Who hath known his mind? Who hath been his counsellor?" "Of him, and through him, and to him, are all things; to whom be glory for ever and ever." I am persuaded, my brethren, that one of the most important features in the subject which I desire now to bring before you, is the indispensable' necessity that exists for a mystery. The indispensable necessity of a mystery: for the human mind is so constituted, that either it abuses the mystery into superstition, or it rejects the whole truth because of the mystery, and plunges, however unconsciously, into infidelity. To recognise, without abusing, a mystery, is the attitude