behaviour to all them whom you love on earth and surely you will behave in the same manner to your best friend in heaven -to God. And consider again; God sees all your thoughts and ways. Darkness is no darkness to Him: but the night is as clear as the day. If therefore you love God as you ought, you will remember this, and attend to what passes in your hearts, and to what you do, when you are alone, by yourselves, and no eye of man can see you. So that, in short, if you love God with all your heart, and soul, and mind, and strength, you will indeed be all that your Saviour wishes you to be; you will be good here, and happy hereafter.

Again, if you love your neighbour (that is, every body with whom you have any dealings) as you do yourselves, do you think you will ever injure or hurt him? We are all very fond of ourselves: very unwilling to give ourselves any pain, though perhaps it would be well, if we did

so sometimes. We had better give ourselves a little pain by crossing our bad inclinations, when they lead us to evil. This shews us how much we can love ourselves. And if we loved our brother but half as well, we should be very unwilling to give him any pain, to hurt his mind, to wound his feelings, to make him unhappy. Think how much wickedness would be cut off by our doing so how many wrong actions we should forbear doing, by feeling a little more love than we do feel for others. And then you will judge how good an adviser our blessed Lord was, when he singled out this particular precept and said: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."

When our blessed Lord had thus answered the lawyer's question, and thus given him a good account of what his own law was, that is, that it consisted of two things, love to God and love to our neighbour-he proceeded to explain to them his own true nature. They thought him the

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son of David, who had been a man like themselves, and was formerly one of their kings. Our Saviour tells them, that David in one of his psalms calls him Lord; and therefore he could not be his son. He would never have called his own son God.

I would wish you to have right notions of your adorable Saviour, Jesus Christ. He lived indeed amongst men as a man : but he was no other than the Son of God, King of kings and Lord of lords. He stooped to take our nature upon him. He was born of a virgin, who had never known man. All this is past our understanding, but yet is true. There are many things, which we do not understand, but which are very true; and we should be very foolish to disbelieve them. Our blessed Saviour was with God, long before this world was made. He was in the beginning with God. But as man had sinned, and God is obliged by his justice to

Let us

punish sin, our Saviour came upon earth and suffered for sin, in order to save us from suffering. He suffered in our place. God was pleased to lay on him the iniquities of us all. Can we therefore love and obey the Saviour too much? Let us, my friends, from this time forward, give up ourselves, body and soul, to the service of our blessed Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Let us glory in being called Christians after his name. never disgrace that holy name. forth, says he, I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his master doeth, but I have called you friends. And he has proved himself our best friend, "Greater love, says he, hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." And that Jesus Christ has done for us. For us men, and for our salvation, He, the blessed and adorable Jesus Christ, laid down his life.

And now to God, &c.

Hence

LECTURE LXX.

ST. MATTHEW Xxiii. 13.

Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!

I SHALL turn your attention, in this evening's Lecture, to the whole of the 23d Chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel. I shall be able, I think, to draw from some parts of it, what may be of use to you in shewing you how you are to behave towards God and Christ as good Christians ought.

In this chapter our Saviour finds great fault with the Pharisees. I have often