have any heart, and not a heart of stone, would delight in the opportunity of celebrating their Lord's death, and complying with his dying request. A friend just about to die, seldom asks in vain any thing that is not very hard and unreasonable; but if that friend were dying for us, what would be thought of one who should refuse to comply with his desires? And what, if his last injunction were entirely (as is the

But the difficulty

case here) for our benefit? which, I believe, usually deters men, is not the act itself of attending the Lord's table, but the duty supposed to be consequent on that, of self-examination, repentance, forsaking of sin, and devotedness to God. And that there is difficulty in these things, I allow; but the mistake is in supposing that these are duties to a man who attends the Lord's table, but are not equally so if he stays away. There cannot be a more groundless and absurd notion. Those who celebrate the holy communion are undoubtedly bound to have a Christian heart, and lead a Christian life; but they are not at all more bound to this than they were before. They are the more likely, indeed, to do this,

if they thus apply for divine grace in the manner our Lord has enjoined us ;-they are the more likely, but not the more bound. The faith and the life of a Christian are clearly described to us in Scripture; and we are plainly taught that these, and these only, will lead to eternal life. No where are we taught (indeed the very idea is childish) that we can be saved without these duties, provided we absent ourselves from the Lord's Supper; - that our neglect of one duty will atone for our neglect of the rest.

All the difficulties, then, of the Christian's life must be encountered, through the promised aid of God's Spirit, if we would attain the Christian's hopes. All the will of Christ must we strive to fulfil, and "to adorn (as the Apostle says) the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things," if we would, indeed, have Him for our Saviour, and embrace the offers of the Gospel.

Those of you who have been partakers of that holy Sacrament, the nature of which I have been endeavouring to explain to you, I earnestly exhort to console yourselves by his

gracious promise that He will dwell in them, that He and the Father will "love them, and come and make their abode in them;" remembering constantly to endeavour after that piety, and purity, and uprightness, and singleness of heart, which will make them fit habitations for such a guest,-fit portions of the Temple of the Holy Ghost. And those who have hitherto absented themselves from this holy ordinance, I exhort to repent deeply of their sin in so doing; I exhort them (now that there is sufficient leisure before them) to reflect fully on what has been said, and not to let another opportunity go by them of obeying God's gracious invitation, lest they be "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.”

Between this and the next celebration of the Lord's Supper, there will be ample time, indeed, for the devil to "come and take away the seed" now sown in your hearts; but he cannot do this unless your heart be hard like the trodden highway. I pray God, and I entreat you to join with me in praying, that his Spirit may guide

* Matt. xiii. 19.

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you instead, may increase your faith, enlighten your minds, and strengthen you with "his might, in the inner man," and feed you with the true bread from heaven that will sustain your spiritual life;-that He may bring into the way of truth such as have erred and are deceived," and fortify the timid and doubting; and that it may please Him to "strengthen such as stand, and comfort and help the weak-hearted, and raise up them that fall, and, finally, to beat down Satan under our feet."

SERMON XI.

MATTHEW Xx. 16.

Many be called, but few chosen.

THE parable I am now about to consider is one of no small importance in many respects, and, especially, as having sometimes been misunderstood in such a manner as to make it lead to results practically dangerous.

You should observe, in the first place, that this parable is introduced by our Lord in explanation of what He had been saying just before; viz. in the latter part of the nineteenth chapter. The last four verses of that, should always, in your private study of the Scriptures, be read along with the first sixteen of the twentieth chapter. And indeed, universally, in