body, they were dead in the spirit; yet this state would have come on them sooner, had they despised the watchful zeal of such parents as the mother of Samuel. And again, on the other side, that zeal was, in Samuel's case, no doubt blessed to his greater safety. He was enabled to keep more constantly to the love of God, because he had such a mother. Here is a great lesson and encouragement to us all, who, having children placed where they will constantly hear of God and attend his service, may so influence them as to make these opportunities be to them what they ought to be; the savour of life unto life. Here is a great reason why domestic care should go along with that which is more public; since it may depend on the greatness or deficiency of this domestic care whether the public opportunities turn to good or to evil: a great reason for those who have the blessing of such care to thank God for it with all their hearts, and most earnestly to give heed to it; knowing, that if they perish when thus doubly guarded, there can be none whose guilt will be so great as theirs: a great reason, also, for those who have it not, why they should labour to supply it from other sources; why they should avail themselves more diligently of those public means of grace, which, if used as they may be, will prove to them, that when their father and mother forsake them, the Lord has taken them up; which, if not used, (and it may happen, that having no parents to warn them, they let slip the opportunities offered,) will then prove a curse unto them, and not a blessing.

Who can tell which of all these is, or will be, the case with each of us? One thing, however, we can tell each for ourselves; whether we are availing ourselves of those means of grace which we have, public, certainly, if not public and private both. One thing, we can tell, whether the words which we have now heard have passed by unregarded or no; whether, as they are now going to close, we think that our task is over; and that if we have attended to them whilst they have been spoken, we have shown a sufficient zeal for our souls' salvation. So to-morrow we may turn every one to his own ways as usual; the carelessness, the vice, the hardness of heart increasing, and to increase more and more. So, perhaps, did the sons of Eli, till the sound of the name of God, and the sight of his tabernacle, passed over their senses without leaving the least impression on their minds. So they grew harder and harder, till the most earnest remonstrances, even from a father's lips, were unable, in any degree, to awaken them; their sin had wrought its perfect work, and brought forth death: "they hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them."

SERMON XXVII.

CHRISTIAN FRIENDSHIP.

COLOSSIANS, iv. 11.

These only are my fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God, who have been a comfort unto me.

THE persons of whom this is said were three. One was Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica, who had travelled over Asia Minor with Paul; had been with him at Ephesus: had gone up with him to Jerusalem; and had been sent with him from Palestine to Rome, where he was now his fellow-prisoner. Another was Marcus, sister's son to Barnabas, the very man who had formerly been the cause of the contention between Paul and Barnabas, when Paul, thinking him deficient in zeal, had refused to take him with him as his companion on his journeys. Now, however, Paul gives him a very different character, calling him, as we have heard, one of the few who were a comfort to him, and who were his fellow-workers unto the kingdom of God. The third was Jesus, who was called Justus, that is, whose Jewish name was Jesus, but who was known among the Greeks by the name of Justus; just as the Apostle himself was called by the Roman name Paul, when he was living amongst the Gentiles, although his own proper name was Saul. Of this Jesus, or Justus, nothing is known, unless he was the person spoken of in the eighteenth chapter of the Acts, as receiving Paul into his house at Corinth. But these three men, Aristarchus, Marcus, and Jesus or Justus, were, at this time, Paul's only cordial fellow-workers to the kingdom of God, and his only comforts in his imprisonment.

The Epistle to the Colossians was written from Rome, and it is not in this Epistle only that St. Paul speaks of himself as being very generally unsupported by his fellow-Christians during his captivity in that city. In his second Epistle to Timothy, written from Rome only a short time before his death, he says, "At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me." Even Demas, who was with him when he wrote the Epistle to the Colossians, had been tempted away from him before he wrote the Epistle to Timothy; and, through love of this present world, had left him, and departed for Thessalonica. And even in the Epistle to the Philippians, although he says that there were some who entirely sympathized with him, yet he also complains that "others preached Christ not sincerely, supposing to add affliction to his bonds:" that is, we may suppose, they taught that the true followers of Christ ought to keep the law of Moses, and that Paul was deservedly to be blamed for teaching the contrary; that therefore he was not suffering for the sake of Christ, but for his own errors; having justly provoked the hatred of the Jews against him, by attacking the law and the customs which God had given them. Thus, from one cause or another; from want of zeal in some, and from a superstitious zeal in others; Paul found that after all his labours, they who were turned away from him were many more than they who heartily laboured with him, and were a comfort to him.

It

There is much in this part of the Apostle's life which, as it seems to me, may be useful to us. In what is said of Marcus in this passage, compared with what we read of him in the Acts of the Apostles, there is an example of individual character which, I believe, is far from uncommon. is impossible to say with what feelings Marcus originally accompanied Barnabas and Paul, when they went from Antioch to Cyprus, to preach the word of God. It may have been merely to go with his relation Barnabas; or, as Barnabas, we are told, was himself a native of Cyprus, he may have