servant.

What! to owe thousands of pounds to his Lord, and have the whole debt forgiven him! then to go out, seize by the throat a servant like himself, who owed him only a small sum, a few shillings, and put him in prison till he should pay, though the poor servant begged and prayed him in his own very words, "have patience with me, and I will pay thee all!" What! not forgive when so much had been forgiven to himself! To be so hard hearted, when he had met with so much mercy! Shame on thee, thou wicked, unforgiving servant! I think I hear you cry out. Thy Lord served thee rightly in sending thee to prison, till thou shouldest pay all that thou owedst him! The measure, which thou so unjustly didst measure out to another, was rightly meted unto thee! Our Saviour says, God will treat us in the same manner, if after he has forgiven us our great offences against himself, we refuse to forgive others their offences against ourselves.

My friends and hearers! what an account you have all to settle with Almighty God, the great King of the whole earth, the Lord of us all! Well may you tremble to think of it. I hope you do tremble. You have cause to do so. We all have cause. We have been sinning since we were born. From our cradles our sins have begun, and gone on, many in number, heavy in weight. They are like the ten thousand talents in the parable, so great a sum that we could never pay it. And yet God has offered to forgive us this overwhelming debt. He sent his Son, the blessed Jesus, into the world, to die that we might live-live for ever. He is a just God. He could not forgive sin, unless some satisfaction was made to his awful justice, which justice is as necessary a part of his character as mercy. He has, my friends, many, many worlds to govern. Other creatures in those worlds might have been tempted to sin, when they knew that man had sinned, and was never pu

nished. His justice therefore required that sin should be punished. And how, my friends, has he punished it? not by sending all mankind to hell, but by sending Jesus Christ to die for them. Jesus Christ was punished for us, and in our stead. He bore our sins in his own body on the tree or cross-that tree, that agonizing cross, on which his limbs were hung, and he was put to torture and to shame. How dreadfully hateful and abominable must sin be in the sight of God, since he has punished it so dreadfully! But see, my brethren, his mercy at the same time: see your Saviour's love for you. God sent him, and he submitted to be sent to bear all this for you. For his sake, you are not delivered to the tormentors, still you can make satisfaction yourself for your sins. This you could never do. Had this been required of you, you must have lain in the prison of hell for ever.

And will you go out, and seize by the

throat a fellow servant-a person like yourselves of the same flesh and blood as your own, because he offends or injures you, and will you put him in prison, that is, will you revenge yourselves on him? It cannot be! If you had known the Bible, you would never have done so. Shall God for Christ's sake forgive you, and shall you not forgive others?

It is a very hard thing, my brethren, you will say, to forgive those who grossly injure us. But its hardship you must not mind. Christians must do a great many hard things, if they expect to go to heaven. You are not sent into life merely to enjoy yourselves. You are sent, that God may prove you and try you, whether you will keep his commandments or no. You must not refuse to do your duty as Christians, because it may be hard to be done. The road to heaven is at times steep and difficult; and on that account few find it. You should, therefore, labour the more dili

gently and exert yourselves the more industriously to deny your wrong inclinations of every sort, in order that you may find this difficult way.

In this chapter, our Saviour says: "Where two or three are gathered together, there am I in the midst of them." Yes! my friends, every time you meet within these walls, Christ is with you. You see him not, because he is a Spirit. You cannot see the air. And yet it must be here; else you could not breathe. So Christ is with us. He sees whether we are sincere, whether our hearts are right towards him, whether we come here full of repentance for the past, full of prayer that God will forgive us all our sins-the ten thousand talents we owe to him. And oh! my brethren, I pray to God, that you may repent, and believe, and be saved, that, turning away, each of you, from your evil way, you may henceforth live soberly, righteously and godly in this pre