dwelt frequently upon our Lord's example, and compared it with our own conduct; while it filled us with humility, that most becoming feature in the sinner's soul, it would confirm us strongly in all virtue. What we have of evil would be thus mortified; what of good, prodigiously increased : sensible of having gone astray, we should thus shew ourselves to have indeed returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls, and should be permitted, though of the stranger Gentile race, to hear His voice, and find ourselves by the grace of God safe in the one fold, the Holy Catholic Church, under the care and government of the one Shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord.

SERMON XX.

Love the fulfilling of the Law.

1 COR. ii. 9.

“Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."

THE love of God is to keep the commandments

of God, for so our Lord said, "If ye love Me, keep My commandments." And the end of keeping God's commandments is the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, giving the blessed sense of the presence of God our Saviour, even of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Father abiding with us continually:-"He that hath My commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth Me; and he that loveth Me, shall be loved of My Father, and I will love him and will manifest Myself to him." And again :-"If a man love Me, he will keep My words, and My Father will love him, and We will come unto him, and make Our abode with him."

The indwelling of God by the Spirit is that blessedness of the Gospel in them that love God, i.e. who keep the commandments of God their Saviour, which the Prophet Isaiah speaks of in the words of the text quoted by St. Paul in his

Epistle to the Corinthians,-" Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him;" words which are with great propriety understood to include the future blessedness of the saints in heaven. For, if it be true of the happiness of our present state as members of the Church while warring upon earth, much more is it true of the future condition of the Church triumphant. And this indeed is altogether what is had in view in the Collect for the sixth Sunday after Trinity, where we are taught to speak of God's having prepared for them that love Him such good things as pass man's understanding, and to pray God accordingly to pour into our hearts such love towards Him, that we, loving Him above all things, may obtain His promises which exceed all that we can desire. And indeed it is most clear that love and obedience must go hand in hand,-that if we love God, we shall also keep the commandments of God.

For, first, if we believe that the Almighty God our Maker is also our Redeemer, who-as He delivered the Israelites of old, and brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, hath delivered us from sin and death, and that by taking our very nature upon Him that He might Himself submit to the pains of death for us, how shall we not indeed love Him, and, if we love Him, worship Him in spirit and in truth? how shall we fear any other than that God who is able to cast both soul and body into hell?

Again, if we love God as we ought, how shall we set up in our hearts the image of anything whatsoever belonging to this life to worship it by seeking our gain and pleasure and happiness here, (which is the true idolatry,) when He hath taught us the vanity of all earthly things used in this way, and the necessity of mortification and selfdenial, and even of death, that we may enter into life, following His example who made the doing the will of God the Father His sole object, and in pursuance of that will endured the cross and despised the shame, saying, "Father, not My will, but Thine be done," and now proposes to our faith a crown of glory that fadeth not away, and joys which, while they are such as "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard," shall have no end?

Again, how shall we lightly speak or think of such inestimable promises, or of the dreadful alternative that awaits those who shall be found unworthy to partake of them, if we love Him by whose willing sacrifice and offering up of Himself we hope to escape the one and share the other? How shall we take His holy Name in vain?

Again, how shall we not assemble ourselves together with all the faithful on the great festivals of the Church commemorating our Lord's resurrection, and on every other festival, when we call to mind with praise and thanksgiving the great events which relate to our redemption, and the holy powers of His saints by whose preaching and self-devotion we have been brought to the knowledge of His will and to participate in their calling, by whom He was pleased to set up His

Y

Church on earth, and deliver the apparent government and administration of it into their hands; on these holy days, I say, which are sanctified in respect of the greater festival of the Lord's day to which they look, and which by its return weekly is, in the spirit, a true observance of the Sabbath commemorating the rest of God after His work of love in creating, but much more His glorious resurrection after redemption had been made complete,-I speak of the Lord's day, itself a type of the "rest that remaineth for the people of God."

Again, how shall we not, if we love and fear God, love and honour our parents, serving them with our strength, and cherishing them with our sustenance, since our heavenly Father has been pleased to make them the means of bringing us into the world, and laid upon them the care and burden of maintaining us when we were weak and unable to help ourselves, and the charge of our whole instruction and education, giving them such love and affection towards us as might serve to shew His own divine and fatherly love for all; which, while it attaches on the other hand the feelings of all children to their own parents most strongly and necessarily, (so that a child will tell you that he loves nothing nor anybody in the world as he loves his father and his mother whom he obeys in all things,) shews with what sort of affection we ought to love God our heavenly Father, and the Church our spiritual mother, that is, above all other things whatsoever, (wherefore our Lord says, "Whoso loveth father or mother, or wife or