good lives for the future-and trust in your Saviour. Have faith in him, my friends. Believe, that if you

try to be

good, he is able to save you. And he will save you, if you thus believe in him and thus behave. He will give unto you everlasting life and happiness. And you know what everlasting means.

And now to God, &c.

LECTURE LXXV.

ST. MATTHEW, xxvi. 3, 4.

Then assembled together the Chief Priests,

and the Scribes, and the Elders of the people, unto the palace of the High Priest, who was called Caiaphas, and consulted that they might take Jesus by subtilty and kill him.

WE have now come to a part of our Saviour's life, to which I wish you to pay particular attention. I mean the last days of that life which he lived on earth. And when you think, that he suffered all the things I shall tell you of in order to save you and every body else from hell, I am sure (and let me not, I beseech you, find

myself mistaken) you will think also, that you cannot feel too much love for him, who so loved you, as to die for you.

A short time before our Saviour suffered death, namely two days, we read that the Chief Priests, and the Scribes, and the Elders of the people, that is, all the great men among the Jews, held a council together, and consulted with one another, how they might catch Jesus, and put him to death. Jesus Christ was a great favourite with the people. They had seen his excellent life, his holy and good behaviour: they had heard his heavenly wisdom, and were certain that so good a person could not mean to deceive and hurt the people. The great men among the Jews were vexed at our blessed Lord's being so humble and so poor a person. They thought that he ought to have been a king, and to have made them like kings of the earth. They were therefore disappointed, and were ready to do him every

mischief, because he had disappointed them in this way. They did not wish, however, to put him to death on their great feast day, because all the people would be met together on that day, and perhaps would make a great uproar, and attempt to release him. However, God turned all their plottings to his own 'glory, and so brought it about that his own dear Son, the blessed Jesus, was put to death at that very time in the sight of the whole nation, and made himself an offering for sin in the presence of those very sinners for whom he suffered and died.

While our Lord was just on the point of being so cruelly used, he met with a very kind and attentive treatment from a certain woman, a poor sinner, whom he had recalled from the error of her ways, had taught to repent of all her misconduct, and to walk in newness of life. She came to him, as he was sitting in the house of one Simon, and poured a rich ointment or per

fume on his head. This was a mark of very great respect, and at this time, just before his death, a very affecting one too. It showed how she honoured and how she loved him. She honoured and she loved him, my friends, because he had saved her soul alive, because she had had much forgiven her. Some of the disciples, and Judas the rest, who was among a very bad man, and meant to betray him, were hurt and offended at this poor woman's conduct. They had nothing else to say against it, but that it was a waste-that the ointment, which had cost so much money, ought not to have been thrown away. Our Lord tells them, that it was not thrown away--that it was just as if she had poured it on his dead body (how affecting was this!) that he was soon to die, and that instead of using it on his body after death, which was generally done, she had only been a little premature, and used it beforehand. And he assures them, that this respectful behaviour of the woman would