quite true and quite deserved: and then confounded indeed he would be, by his own conscience and by God, as well as by man. All he can do is, to cry to God, like

him who wrote the 119th Psalm,—I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O Lord, confound me not. I know I am weak, ignorant, unsuccessful; full of faults too, and failings, which make me ashamed of myself every day of my life. I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost. But seek thy servant, O Lord, for I do not forget thy commandments. I am trying to learn my duty. I am trying to do my duty. I have stuck unto thy testimonies: O Lord, confound me not. Man may confound me. But do not thou, of thy mercy and pity, O Lord. Do not let me find, when I die, or before I die, that all my labour has been in vain; that I am not a better man, not a wiser man, not a more useful man after all. Do not let my grey hairs go down with sorrow to the grave. Do not let me die with the miserable thought that, in spite of all my struggles to do my duty, my life has been a failure, and I a fool. Do not let me wake in the next life, like Dives in the torment, to be utterly confounded; to find that I was all wrong, and have nothing left but everlasting disappointment and confusion. of face. O Lord, who didst endure all shame for me, save me from that most utter shame. O God,- in thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.

Wake in the next life to find oneself confounded? Alas! alas! Many a man wakes in this life to find himself that; and really sometimes by no fault, seemingly, of his own so that all he can do is to be dumb, and not to

open his mouth, for it is God's doing. For a man's worst miseries and sorrows are, too often, caused not by himself, but by those whom he loves.

Consider the one case of vice, or even of mere ingratitude, in those nearest and dearest to a man's heart; and of being so confounded through them, and by them, in spite of all love, care, strictness, tenderness, teaching, prayers-what not-and all in vain.

No wonder that, under that bitterest blow, valiant and virtuous men, ere now, have never lifted up their heads again, but turned their faces to the wall, and died: and may the Lord have mercy on them. Confounded they have been in this world; confounded they will not be, we must trust, in the world to come. The Lord of all pity will pity them, and pour His oil and wine into their aching wounds, and bring them to His own inn, and to His secret dwelling-place, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.

One word more, and I have done. Do you wish to pray, with hope that you may be heard,-O Lord, confound me not, and bring me not to shame? Then hold to one commandment of Christ's. Do to others as you

would they should do to you. For with what measure you measure to your fellow-men, it shall be measured to you again. Have charity, have patience, have mercy. Never bring a human being, however silly, ignorant, or weak, above all any little child, to shame and confusion of face. Never, by cruelty, by petulance, by suspicion, by ridicule, even by selfish and silly haste; never, above all, by indulging in the devilish pleasure of a sneer, crush

what is finest, and rouse up what is coarsest in the heart of any fellow-creature. Never confound any human soul in the hour of its weakness. For then, it may be, in the hour of thy weakness, Christ will not confound thee:

8

K. S.

SERMON VIII.

THE SHAKING OF THE HEAVENS AND THE EARTH.

HEBREWS XII. 26-29.

Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and golly fear for our God is a consuming fire.

THIS is one of the Royal texts of Scripture. It is inexhaustible, like the God who inspired it. It has fulfilled itself again and again, at different epochs. It fulfilled itself specially and notoriously in the first century. But it fulfilled itself again in the fifth century; and again at the Crusades; and again at the Reformation in the sixteenth century. And it may be that it is fulfilling itself at this very day; that in this century, both in the time of our fathers and in our own, the Lord has been shaking the heavens and the earth, that those things which can be shaken may be removed, as things that are made, while those things which cannot be shaken may remain.

All confess this to be true, each in his own words. They talk of this age as one of change; of rapid progress, for good or evil; of unexpected discoveries; of revolutions, intellectual, moral, social, as well as political.

SERM. VIII.] THe shaking ofF THE HEAVENS, &c. 85

Our notions of the physical universe are rapidly altering, with the new discoveries of science; and our notions of ethics and theology are altering as rapidly. The era assumes a different aspect to different minds, just as did the first century after Christ, according as men look forward to the future with hope, or back to the past with regret. Some glory in the nineteenth century as one of rapid progress for good; as the commencement of a new era for humanity; as the inauguration of a Reformation as grand as that of the sixteenth century. Others bewail it as an age of rapid decay; in which the old landmarks are being removed, the old paths lost; in which we are rushing headlong into scepticism and atheism; in which the world and the Church are both in danger; and the last day is at hand.

Both parties may be right; and yet both may be wrong. Men have always talked thus, at great crises in the world's life. They talked thus in the first century; and in the fifth, and in the eleventh; and again in the sixteenth; and then both parties were partially right and partially wrong; and so they may be now. What they meant to say, what they wanted to say, what we mean and want to say, has been said already for us in far deeper, wider, and more accurate words, by him who wrote this wonderful Epistle to the Hebrews, when he told the Jews of his time that the Lord was shaking the heavens and the earth, that those things which were shaken might be removed, as things that are made-cosmogonies, systems, theories, prejudices, fashions, of man's invention: while those things which could not be shaken might remain,