querors.

And there is a God in Heaven ready to receive His faithful followers, the true Church in Christ, as they draw near to the kingdom of Heaven.

SERMON III.

LOVE TOWARDS EACH OTHER.

ST. JOHN XV. 17.

"These things I command you, that ye love one another."

THIS is a command given by our Saviour Himself to His disciples, a short time before He was delivered into the hands of wicked men, -a command, which should be observed by every successive generation. It was followed by an encouragement, which was the most likely to bear men up against the contentions and animosities of the world. "If the world hate you," said our Lord, be not mindful of that; "ye know that it hated me before it hated you." And why does the world hate

the chosen of the Lord? Simply because they are not of the world, but set apart from the world, chosen out of the world; therefore the world hateth them, as it despised and rejected their Master before them. And as He was persecuted, so His disciples were desired to expect persecution. What then, while the fury of imperial power, and the unbridled rage of an ungodly world were poured out on the rising Church, could have been so calculated to preserve its unity, and knit it together in strength, as the command, that we "love one another?"

When our Saviour appeared on earth, it was indeed at a time when He was expected: nevertheless the Jews refused to believe that He was the Messiah, because He came not, as their foolish imaginations had led them to presuppose, in martial triumphs and terrestrial glory. But He came as the meek and lowly Jesus, yet with ample manifestations of the Godhead, fulfilling every prophecy, and substantiating every type; and when He grew

up, veiling His essential glories in humanity, He performed a series of miracles, that proved Him to be GOD, and to be that Mighty One who should come, and gave evidence, that men need not look for another. But He was persecuted and hated by that world which He came to redeem; by His own to whom He came, for His own received Him not; by many who had waited for the revelation of the Messiah, but despised Him when He appeared. His humility in every way differing from their vain-glorious preconceptions, and His rebuke of sin, made Him a man of sorrows and well acquainted with grief, as He walked through the cities of Judah, or taught in the vicinity of Capernaum. "If I had not come and spoken unto them," said He, 'they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin." This, then, was the cause of that secret opposition which at last was sated with nothing less than the public crucifixion of the Son of God.

The first exhortation which our Saviour delivered unto men was, "Repentance" and

amendment of life. To the king upon his throne, and to the humble beggar, He gave the same exhortation. He made no distinction; He would accept of no compromise. No other terms than belief in His Gospel, evidenced by its fruits, would secure men from the terrible wrath, which He denounced upon the impenitent. To those who obeyed His precepts gave He power to become the sons of God; the lame, the halt, and the blind accepted them and were healed; the paralytic took up his bed, and walked; the dead burst forth from his resting-place, and again lived; the sincere believed, and received the promise of salvation. But it was conformable to the perverse spirit of the world, that He, who exposed man's fond notions of justification; who set at nought the ostentation of the Pharisee; and exalted the humble and meek; who assailed the scepticism of the Sadducee, and required an absolute belief in the divine oracles, should have been hated by those whom He exposed, and have been persecuted