godly in Christ Jesus will more or less sustain a damage by it in their temporal interests. Yet he promises, that "if we seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, all those things" that are necessary for our support and consolation in our pilgrimage shall be added to our lot, by him who feeds the fowls of the air with grain which they neither sow nor reap, and arrays the lilies of the field in a more elegant apparel than the East manufactures for her kings. On this promise it is fitting we rely; and in the effect of this charity, and of similar institutions in different parts of the kingdom, the clergy of the Church of England see its daily verification.

As the Providence of God for the most part effects its purposes by secondary causes, the charity of the church is the means which it hath appointed for the relief of her suffering ministers. The same authority which commands us to be ready to forego the enjoyments of the world, hath commanded that the faithful bear one another's burdens. The same authority which promises the faithful minister support in this world and enjoyment in the next, promises an equal weight of glory to him who shall administer relief. Relying on these promises, secure of our unwearied attention to the commands of our invisible but not absent Lord, our departed brethren (not insensible in death to that concern for their surviving families which they knew to be sanctified by Christ's own example, when in his agonies he consigned his mother to his favourite disciple's care) submitted with composure and complacency to the stroke which severed them from all which in this world they held dear; trusting to us, as to God's instruments, for the support of their unprovided families, destitute of other aid. Thus we who remain are the guardians of the widows and the orphans; appointed to that sacred office by no violable testaments of mortal men, but by the inviolable will of the Ever-living God. Let us see that we be faithful, as the deceased were in their day, to a trust which we may not decline; looking forward to the

joys of that great day when tears shall be wiped from every eye, and " he that hath received a prophet in the ' name of a prophet shall receive a prophet's reward,”when his recompense in nowise shall be lost " who shall have given but a cup of cold water only to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple." In that day shall these sons and daughters of the prophets be gathered round the Son of man, seated on his throne of glory; and, in the presence of the angelic host, bear their testimony to this day's work of love. What then shall be the joy of those to whom the King shall say-"I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; naked, and ye clothed me; sick, and ye nursed me. Verily, I say unto you, as much as ye have done it to the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the beginning of the world!" O rich requital of an easy service!-love the duty; heaven the reward! Who will not strive to be the foremost to minister to the necessities of the saints; secure of being doubly repaid,-here, in the delight of doing good; hereafter, in a share of this glorious benediction!

SERMON XXXVI.

I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die. Believest thou this?-JOHN xi. 25, 26.

EXCEPT the cure of the two blind men at Jericho,some cures in the temple in the Passion-week, the malediction in the fig-tree, and certain manifestations of our Lord's power upon the seizure of his person in the garden of Gethsemane-except these, the raising of Lazarus from the dead was, I think, the last public miracle performed

by Christ during his abode in the flesh. It was undoubtedly among the most considerable which we read of in the whole course of our Lord's ministry; and was an apt prelude to that greatest miracle of all, the seal of his mission and of our hope, his own resurrection from the dead. Accordingly, we find him preparing himself for this exhibition of his power on the person of his deceased friend with particular care and solemnity. He was at a distance from Bethany, the place of Lazarus's residence, when Lazarus first fell sick: the alarm of the Jewish rulers, excited by his cure of the man born blind, and by his open claim to be the Son of God and One with the Father, having obliged him to retire to Bethabara. When he received the news of his friend's illness, notwithstanding his affection for Lazarus and his sisters, he continued two days in the place where the message found him; that the catastrophe might take place before his miraculous power should be interposed. He had indeed already restored life in two instances: the daughter of Jairus was one; and the widow's son of Nain was the other. But in both these instances, the evidence of the previous fact, that death had really taken place, was not so complete and positive as our Lord intended it should be, and as it really was, in the case of Lazarus. Accordingly, it is remarkable, that our Lord's apostles, although they had been witnesses to these miraculous recoveries of Jairus's daughter and the widow's son of Nain, entertained not at the time of Lazarus's death the most distant apprehension that their Master's power went to the recovery of life once truly and totally extinguished. This appears from the alarm and the despair indeed which they expressed, when he informed them that Lazarus was dead, and declared his intention of visiting the afflicted family. They had so little expectation that the revival of Lazarus could be the effect, or that it was indeed the purpose of his journey, that they would have dissuaded him from leaving the place of his retirement; conceiving, as it should seem,

that the only end of his proposed visit to Bethany would be to gratify the feelings of a useless sympathy at the hazard of his own safety. "Master," they say unto him, "the Jews sought of late to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?" and when they found him determined to go, "Let us also go, ," said St. Thomas, "that we may die with him." They rather expected to be themselves stoned by the Jews, together with their Master, and to be one and all as dead as Lazarus in a few days, than to see the life of Lazarus restored.

I must observe, by the way, that these sentiments, expressed by the apostles upon this and similar occasions, afford a clear proof that the disciples were not persons of an over easy credulity, who may with any colour of probability be supposed to have been themselves deceived in the wonders which they reported of our Lord. They seem rather to have deserved the reproach which our Lord after his resurrection cast upon them,-" Fools, and slow of heart to believe!" They seem to have believed nothing till the testimony of their own senses extorted the belief. They reasoned not from what they had once seen done to what more might be: they built no probabilities of the future upon the past: they formed no general belief concerning the extent of our Lord's power from the effects of it which they had already seen. After the miraculous meal of the five thousand upon five loaves and two fishes, we find them filled with wonder and amazement that he should be able to walk upon a troubled sea and to assuage the storm. And in the present instance, their faith in what was passed carried them not forward to the obvious conclusion, that he who snatched the daughter of Jairus from the jaws of death, and raised a young man from his coffin, would be able to bring back Lazarus from the grave. And this indeed was what was to be expected from persons like them, of low occupations and mean attainments, whose minds were unimproved by education and experience: for however certain modern pretenders

to superior wisdom may affect to speak contemptuously of the credulity of the vulgar, and think that they display their own refinement and penetration by a resistance of the evidence which satisfies the generality of men, the truth is, that nothing is so much a genuine mark of barbarism as an obstinate incredulity. The evil-minded and the illiterate, from very different causes, agree however in this, that they are always the last to believe upon any evidence less than the testimony of their own senses. Ingenuous minds are unwilling to suspect those frauds in other men to which they feel an aversion themselves: they always therefore give testimony its fair weight. The larger a man's opportunities have been of becoming acquainted with the occurrences of his own and former ages, the more he knows of effects daily arising from causes which never were expected to produce them-of effects in the natural world of which he cannot trace the cause; and of facts in the history of mankind which can be referred to no principle in human nature-to nothing within theart and contrivance of man. Hence the man of science and speculation, as his knowledge enlarges, loses his attachment to a principle to which the barbarian steadily adheres-that of measuring the probabilityofstrange facts by his own experience. He will be at least as slow to reject as to receive testimony; and he will avoid that obstinacy of unbelief which is satisfied with nothing but ocular demonstration, as of all erroneous principles the most dangerous, and the greatest obstacle to the mind's improvement. The illiterate man, unimproved by study and by conversation, thinks that nothing can be of which he hath not seen the like: from a diffidence perhaps of his own ability to examine evidence, he is always jealous that you have an intention to impose upon him, and mean to sport with his credulity: hence his own senses are the only witnesses to which he will give credit. I am persuaded that nothing hath so much contributed to spread infidelity among the lowers ranks of people, as the fear of