But this deliberation is important, aside from the principle of obedience. It will save ourselves and others many and great mortifications. A temper which kindles into flashes almost without a touch, is a perpetual self-annoyance. It is like burning at the stake. The victim of this irascibility should be pitied. His soul hath a cutaneous disorder, which fills and defiles it with uneasy inflammations. Or it hath St. Vitus' dance, and for its own sake should hurry after a cure,

Others, also, are annoyed. It is a spreading, as well as an uncomfortable sickness, touching with unclean contagions the undiseased around us. One petulant spirit in a community of thousands, will contrive to work half the number into a state of fretful discords. It is a drawback on one's bliss to fall into a street, or ward, beset by such a nuisance. One can bear sights and smells of every disagreeable sort better than proximity to such a moving shell of mischiefs, overcharged with mortal mixture of missile and combustible, and ready, you know not when, for unprovoked explosions. For these, and many more reasons, how needful the Scriptural caution, "slow to wrath." 2. As anger must be slow in its beginnings, so must it be quick in its decline. "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." That is, quench the intemperate fervors of your anger. For the mild and firm tokens of displacency may last as long as the offender is relentless. But, so far as a great heat of passion is concerned, let it cool before night-fall into quiet, holy principle. The "wrath" of anger must not stay with us. An electric shock or two is all that we can bear. will turn to a deep and burning malice.

Long continued, it

Would you sleep

in contact with a battery, whose strong galvanic force distorts the very limbs and features? Make haste to pacify thy rage. Quench these lightnings of the soul. Before thesun goes down, seek and find that "peace which passeth

all understanding;" then go and take thy rest. That is sinless anger, whose risings and whose quietings agree with these divine warnings.

Having pointed out the qualifications of Christian anger, it may be profitable to observe,

1. That such anger is rare. In this all will agree, even though they should affirm that other forms of this passion are innocent. Of the anger here described, where shall we find examples? They may be more frequent than volcanoes, and may create less surprise. But shall we, on this account, lower the standard of Christian affection? We are aware it may be urged, that "unless we resent injuries, a proud world will trample on us." Doubtless it will. But did it not trample on Christ and his apostles? Happy for the bleeding cause of Christ, when its adherents shall "have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them!" Happy for the cause, when Christians shall pursue a course so unlike the world, that the world will find in their nonconformity a provocation to trample on them as it did on saints of old!

2. Sinful anger is very common. This, we presume, will not be disputed. For what a world of rage this has been, from the days of Cain until now! War is the grand feature of its history. If all the resentments and wrongs of six thousand years could be snatched from their oblivion and wrought into living chronicles, who but demons could endure the mere recital of them? This is, indeed, an angry world. Yet if the Church were placable, it would afford a shade of relief to this dark picture. But is she? As a general rule, even among professing Christians, is not anger a resentful passion, rather than a Christ-like indignation? Her members often forbear revenge; but, alas! it is often more from a dread of retribution than from the restraints of holy charity. Perhaps revenge is sought, not tragically, but in the subtil whispers of detraction,

poured into the willing ears of connivers at the mischief. Forgiveness, full and free, is little practiced in the Church, except for selfish ends. Many seem to forgive; but it is often the suppression of a curse, not the hearty pouring forth of blessings, as it should be, to merit that designation.

3. Sinful anger is a great evil. It is injurious to the soul. To this how many backsliders owe their fall, and how many reprobate apostates their ruin. Their history warns us of Satan's devices. Well may the apostle add, in close connection with the text, "neither give place to the devil;" for whoever surrenders himself to the dominion of resentful passion, moves Satan to take the plenary seizin of his heart.

The Church, also, suffers. How deep her wounds. inflicted by the rancorous altercations of her children! Schools of theology have waged against each other wars of wordy wrath, and from the heated dialectics of their ambitious strife, have found their way to each other's bosoms, and finished with bloody steel, or martyring fires, what was commenced in polemical disputation.

4. We should watch against anger in our own hearts. This especially becomes us in the midst of strong provocations. It is assumed by many, and may be true, that we have now strong provocations, and should be filled with "holy indignation." If the provocations do exist, we need to exercise an answering care and caution. In quiet seas, trust a careless helmsman; but on a lee-shore, under the pressure of a storm, take care who is at the helm.

Let it be granted that this is a day of rebuke-that men's passions are let loose, and threaten to lay waste and destroy-do we not need a calm and guarded temper to meet so dread a crisis? It may be safer to stop short, than to reach the utmost limits of Christian anger. It is said there is a call for "holy indignation." It may be there is

a louder call for holy caution, lest our indignation become unholy. And have we not experimented in holy indignation? Let us turn awhile to holy self-abasement, and get into the dust. Prayer may help us where indignation fails; and prayer is out of the neighborhood of danger; while they who use that weapon, "indignation," are like men battling on the brink of a precipice in a dark and stormy midnight.

Let all men be angry, as Christ was, on suitable occasions. But is there not, just now, too strong a tendency in this direction. It is easy to be angry. It may come of existing provocations; but we must not forget that Satan is wont to go, and stay, and mix with all things; and why not, then, with these very provocations? When in Job's day, the sons of God would present themselves before the Lord, he must needs go along, though the errand seemed forbidding. He went, too, with a bold parable, and sued out a bold commission. May not that evil spirit whose work was then so subtil and so formidable, contrive to seize on these many provocations, and use them to our disadvantage and discomfiture? "What I say unto you, I say unto all, WATCH !" is the warning of our Lord.

5. Sanctified anger is always safe. On the words, "Looking round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts," Mr. Wesley says, "Angry at the sin, grieved at the sinner-the true standard of Christian anger. But who can separate anger at the sin, from anger at the sinner? None but a true believer in Christ." To do it with assurance, we need mature grace. Feeble faith brings too small a measure of the Spirit. If any sinful taint remains in our affections, will it not show itself in anger? If so, we may not hope to be angry without sin, unless we are "crucified with Christ." He who has the mind of Christ-who can say, "I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me," may, like Him whose life

then reigns over a crucified nature, be "angry at the sin, and grieved at the sinner."

May He circumcise our hearts to this end. May "the very God of peace sanctify us wholly," and teach us what changes his almighty power can work in our very worst passions. Let the whole Church plead for this as the voice of one man. And let each of her members look to Christ, and be "healed of whatsoever disease he has." Look thyself, O reader! look to the ALMIGHTY SAVIOR! Look to him as ready to save-ready to "save to the uttermost." Say not in thine heart who shall ascend into heaven." The Purifier is near at hand, and not afar off.

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Already his arm is revealed. "Believe the report," precious soul, believe now and be saved; believe, and thou shalt be blessed indeed. "Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us; unto him be glory in the Church, by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages, world without end. Amen."

SERMON V.

BY REV. EDMUND S. JANES, D. D.,

ONE OF THE BISHOPS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.

THE AGENCY OF THE SPIRIT IN THE PROMOTION OF CHRIS

TIANITY.

DELIVERED ON OCCASION OF THE CELEBRATION OF THE CENTENARY OF WESLEYAN METHODISM.

"Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts," Zech. iv, 6.

We are assembled this day, in accordance with the recommendation of the authorities of the Church, simultaneously with our brethren throughout our wide-spread connection, to commemorate a great moral event: an event,