open shame, to cry out for mercy while mercy may yet be found, and to seek by earnest prayer and diligent endeavours after righteousness, that purifying grace of the Most High which must quicken us, in the life which now is, before we can reasonably expect in the life to come, to be quickened from death to glory.

Nor do I know any way in which Christ and Christian holiness may more effectually be sought after, than by a constant recurrence to those solemn witnesses which He has left us of Himself, those Scriptures which are the express dictates of the Spirit of life and truth; those Sacraments which are so many renewed and repeated images of His death, His atonement, and His resurrection.

In our infancy we bare witness, by water, to the necessity of a new birth from sin; in our riper years, and more particularly in the last most solemn season of the Christian passover, we have most of us, I will hope, renewed our covenant with the Lord, and offered up to His service our bodies and souls, as redeemed by His blood from pangs unutterable and endless.

What now remains but a constant and earnest recollection, that the privileges and the duties of a Christian go always hand in hand; that the greater the mercies received, the more need is there of showing forth our thankfulness; that we do not cease to be the servants of God, when we are admitted to the privileges of His children; but that from these last, on the other hand, a more illustrious

obedience is expected, the service of love, the freewill offering of the heart, the ardour which endeavouring to do all, thinks all too little to repay the benefits received, and express the affection felt, and which, after a life spent in the service of its Lord, lays down at length its tranquil head to slumber beneath the cross, content to possess no other merit than His blood, and presuming to expect no further reward than His mercy!

SERMON III.

CHARACTER OF CHRIST AND HIS RELIGION.

[Preached at Madras, March 12, 1826.]

ST. MARK viii. 9.

And He sent them away.

IT is with these words that St. Mark concludes his account of the second occasion in which our Lord displayed His Almighty power, by multiplying a very small quantity of food into nourishment for many thousand persons. He had before, with five loaves and two fishes, satisfied the hunger of five thousand men ; He now, with seven loaves and a few small fishes, afforded a sufficient meal for four thousand. And, having thus by a miracle relieved their bodily necessities, as He had by His preaching nourished and strengthened their souls with the bread of life, the evangelist informs us that "He sent them away;" a circumstance which I have chosen as the subject of our morning's contemplation, because, simple as it may seem, we may draw from it, by God's help, in the first place, a very important confirmation of the dignity and

disinterestedness of our Saviour's character, and of the truth of His Gospel; secondly, a striking illustration of the spirit and principles of that religion which He brought into the world; and, thirdly, a useful guide to our behaviour in the daily course of our lives, and an additional motive to the diligent practice of those duties, the discharge of which is the end and object of all religious knowledge.

"In those days the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples unto Him, and saith unto them, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way, for divers of them came from far. And His disciples answered Him, from whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? And He asked them, how many loaves have ye? And they said seven. And He commanded the people to sit down on the ground, and He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to His disciples to set before them, and they did set them before the people. And they had a few small fishes, and He blessed and commanded to set them also before them. So they did eat and were filled; and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets. And they that had eaten were about four thousand. And He sent them away."

I have repeated to you the whole history that you may be the better able to judge of the meekness

and moderation of our Saviour, and how greatly His conduct differed from that which would have been pursued by a fanatic or an imposter. Supposing it, for the sake of argument, to have been possible that in these miracles of loaves and fishes, He could have been Himself deceived by enthusiasm or credulity, or, could by subtlety or magical arts, have deceived the enthusiasm and ignorance of His followers; supposing, I say, this to have been possible, which few men in their senses will suppose, yet is such a supposition in the present case rendered absurd by the total and evident absence of any interested or ambitious design which could have led Him to deceive others, or of any pride or vanity by which He Himself could have been deluded. If He had either designed, as His enemies accused Him of designing, to make Himself a worldly king, or if He had derived a vain and selfish pleasure from the number of His disciples, and the hosannas of a surrounding multitude, how little would He have been disposed to send that multitude away, instead of taking advantage of the favourable moments while their hearts were yet warm with the recollection of the miracle, to have secured the zeal and active services of those whom He had the power of thus strangely feeding. A leader who either possessed, or was believed to possess such a power might have filled his ranks with all the idle and needy of the land; and the multitude would have flocked into the wilderness for the bread which he distributed. But the views

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