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SERMON III.

THE SURE FOUNDATION.

S. MATTHEW vii. 24-27.

Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of Mine and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came and the winds blew, and beat upon that house and it fell not, for it was founded upon a rock: And every one that heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house; and great was the fall of it. THESE are the words with which our blessed LORD concluded his teaching, which we commonly call "the Sermon on the Mount," and are evidently to be taken by us as a summing up of the intention of all that had gone before, namely, that it was the practice

of Christian morals, not the exclaiming of LORD! LORD? and other professions in words alone.

In a very familiar parable He places before our eyes the situations of the two sorts of people who are found in the world, namely, the hearers who are also doers, and the hearers who are not doers: familiar, I say, because the meaning is so plain as to require no explanation: no one reading this parable can doubt of the persons of whom it is spoken.

I. What then is hearing, and how do we who now live hear. To be taught Christianity is now the same thing to us, that to hear CHRIST was to the Jews then. All of us therefore are hearers; we have been born in a land which has been Christian for centuries of years, nay, as some have thought, a land in which S. Paul himself founded a branch of the Catholic Church. All round us speaks of Christianity. We can no where travel many miles without the sight of many churches, some of venerable age, some new. Round

each of these, we know there is a circle of Christian teaching, in which the young and old are living and dying. We ourselves have been reared in one or other of these circles, have been baptized with the water hallowed in the name of the REDEEMER, and have been placed within the reach of instruction. So we are hearers.

And it must not be allowed to weigh with any one, that practically, and in effect, so large a number of our countrymen are not hearers, that is, know nothing of the religion of the SAVIOUR-no SAVIOUR to them,-know nothing of the thing which they have to save, their soul,

-nor of what they might gain for themselves, Heaven. They are hearers because they have, or may have, the instruction they are those who are hearers only, and not doers also.

II. Let us, therefore, see what manner of men are those who hear and do the sayings of the LORD. It does sometimes happen that the Christian life is begun

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with the first opening of the mind of a child, to take in and hold the Faith. He grows up in the nurture and admonition of the LORD, retaining, it would seem, all the heavenly influence of his Baptismal Grace, freshly shed upon his soul: the very tempers of infancy and childhood seem chastened and humbled: he is regular in devotion, and views his death through the length of years which may lie before him with plainness, and yet without fear. But we know that such persons as these are very few in number, compared with those who pass their earlier years in a way unworthy of their profession; who are not doers of their LORD'S will.

But, on how many thousands who have been forgetting, and by their lives denying the LORD who bought them, does the long hidden Grace of God work a change, and renew their hearts to some present degree of the spotlessness with which they were clothed at the Font. Sin is gradually checked by their attentive hearing of their

Master's teaching, by their fervent appliance to the means of Grace as the chief part of attentive hearing, and step by step they are found walking in all such good works as He has prepared for them and for us all to walk in.

Now these two classes of persons, namely, those whose childhood and youth have by the especial blessing of GOD been spent in conformity with their infant Regeneration in Baptism, and those who by the HOLY SPIRIT are again renewed to the profession from which they have fallen away, these two classes make up that part of mankind who are hearers and doers also; and have always made it up.

We tread on holy ground when we

come, as now, to contemplate the walk of the Saints on earth, to see how they do the will of their Heavenly FATHER; and the sight is one which may, with God's blessing, lead many a doubting and hesitating mind to decide, and will surely confirm and strengthen those who are in the same path, seeking to obey the LORD in the same way.

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