he was actuated by deliberate wickedness or the impulse of madness.

But there is a lesson which the whole matter should read to us, a lesson which we must not leave the subject without doing our best to learn. The Uncertainty of Life is a lesson of infinite importance to all, from the throne to the humblest cottage in the land. On what a slender thread does such an event as that which the additional Prayers of this Morning's Service have brought before us, shew that eternity hangs, with its inconceivable happiness or misery. Well might the Psalmist say, Verily, man at his best estate is altogether vanity. We rise in the morning strong and cheerful, warm with hope, full of high resolutions, and busied with well-laid plans; but where is our warrant that, before the sun goes down, we shall not have passed into the other world? The sullen resentment or capricious displeasure of some misguided fellowcreature, the sudden and unaccountable fury of some of the inferior animals, the fall of a tile from the housetop, or some carelessness on the part of those who prepare for us the food which is necessary to prolong life, any one of these, or a thousand other chances, (as men are wont to call them,) may, for you or for me, if it so please God, rend the thin veil which at present stands

between us and Heaven or Hell, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

We may refuse to attend to the one great work which our Maker has given us to do on earth; but Death is not idle nor unmindful in doing his part. In the course of the weeks during which it pleased Almighty God that I should be prevented by illness from ministering among you in holy things, surely you had many a warning. Every fresh hillock that rose in the churchyard during that interval, ought to speak loudly and piercingly beyond any preacher's voice. The interval was not long; but it sufficed for death to mow down the man of grey hairs and the babe of a span long. It was long enough for the sun of more than one life to go down while it was yet day; and the bodies which were warm with life at the beginning of that interval, were, at the end of it, mouldering in the grave. Where are the spirits? that we trust they are in peace?

Shall we say

Well may we

so say; for we are yet in the body, beset by temptation, prone to sin. But we know that they have passed away, that their day of grace and hope is over, over for ever and ever; that they have gone to give an account of the deeds done in the body. Before their funeral knell had rung, before the opened sod had been replaced over

their graves, they had answered for the deaf ears which they had turned to the "sound of the church-going bell," for their staying away from this house of prayer, for their idleness and irreverence and drowsiness when they were within these sacred walls; for their forgetfulness of the warnings which were given them by Holy Scripture and by Sermons, for their habit (if such it was with any of them,) of turning their back on the Table of the Lord, and refusing to obey the last command of Him who died for them. Oh, let us be wise in time: let us know the day of our visitation: let us watch and pray, that so, at whatever hour our summons may come, though it should be most short and sudden, we may by God's grace and mercy be ready for it.

SERMON XVI.

PREACHED ON THE FOURTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 1839.

ST. LUKE vii. 16.

And there came a fear on all; and they glorified God, saying, That a great Prophet is risen up among us; and, That God hath visited His people.

THE Evangelist has here told us the effect which was produced by that exertion of our Lord's miraculous powers of which we have read in the Second Lesson of this morning's Service.

The raising of the son of the Widow of Nain from the dead, is one of the facts in the Evangelical history which is found only in St. Luke. The resurrection of Lazarus is peculiar to St. John. It is only by comparing the four Gospels, therefore, that we shall be possessed of all the instances in which Jesus Christ showed His authority over the world of spirits. The soul of the daughter of Jairus was called back almost as

In the case

soon as it had left its house of clay. before us, Death had held his victim much longer before it was torn from his grasp. And when Lazarus was raised again, decay had already begun: the body was actually passing back into its original elements, "earth to earth, and dust to dust." So very true were those words of our Blessed Lord shown to be: I am the Resurrection and the Life. It mattered not how long the King of Terrors might have been allowed to assert his gloomy prerogatives: it mattered not how far Corruption might have done her hideous work: the dead needed only to hear the voice of the Son of God; and they arose and lived.

It came to pass the day after, we read, that He went into a city called Nain: i. e., the day after He had cured the servant of that Centurion who was pronounced by Him who knew what was in man, to have greater faith than He had found even in Israel. Few and far between are the notices of the life of our Blessed Saviour which have been preserved for us. It is of a few only of His days that we have any record whatever. And yet what abundant proof we have that no single day was allowed by Him to pass unim

a St. John xi. 25.