by the example of others, or by the dread of singularity, occur comparatively seldom. There are meanwhile a vast number of small daily cases, in which we can do all that we ought to do, without exciting any observation at all. Such, I mean, are cases of inward self-denial of things which we like, accurate performance of duties not expressly religious, exactness and fulness of prayer. Now we should be placing ourselves in a position of far greater hope, in respect of our greater and more casual dangers, if we were, in anticipation of them, to gain the habit of strictness in these secret things. Under God's blessing, a hearty morning prayer, or other early acts of inward self-devotion, may set us in a right direction of obedience for the whole day. Duty of all kinds would follow more naturally from a good beginning.

But the one great secret of strength is to pray. In private and in public, by words and by thoughts of trust and supplication, to be ever seeking God's help, where we have none of our own. We may ask it boldly, for as his baptized children we are within His covenant of grace. We need not doubt that He will grant it, for He hath expressly promised His Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. With the aid of that Spirit we shall learn to please Him. We shall learn that vital faith which is the means of acceptance and pardon. And though His be the grace and His the glory,-though all we have to rely upon be Christ's merits, and all the holy fruits of

our life be the effect of the operations of the Spirit on our hearts, yet when the day of trial comes, our Judge will surely say to us, as to the Samaritan in the narrative which we have been considering, “ Go your way, your faith hath made you whole."

66

SERMON XXI.

KING'S ACCESSION.

1 PETER ii. 11.

"Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul."

THESE words stand at the beginning of the Epistle for this day. This Epistle is chosen with express reference to the solemnity of the day, and is pecu liarly appropriate to it. I shall therefore endeavour, with God's blessing, to explain and unfold it, in order that you may both learn with how great wisdom and knowledge of Holy Scripture it is appointed to be read on this day, and that you may be able to obtain the benefit which our Church contemplated in so appointing it. St. Peter, in the earlier part of the chapter, had been exhorting Christians to live a life of peace and obedience. This he urges upon them by the strongest motive

of all, the spirit of love and gratitude towards Him, who is as the corner stone of the temple in which they all are built up, who hath called them out of darkness into His marvellous light. The apostle then proceeds in the words of the text: "Dearly beloved, I beseech you, as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul.” Observe here the zealous manner in which the Apostle breaks off: "Dearly beloved, I beseech you :" I do not merely put it to you as a course which you would be prudent or wise to adopt, but I beseech you, I would urge it on you with all the influence which I may possess over your minds; “I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims,”—as those who well know that your rest is not below, who know that you are travelling to a better country, as those who desire above all things to live in this life in such a manner as under God to ensure your eternal inheritance" to abstain from" all such "fleshly" or carnal" lusts which war against the soul." By fleshly or carnal lusts, the Apostle might mean any kind of sin, for the carnal mind in Holy Scripture means the mind of the unregenerated man, the mind which is uninfluenced by the Holy Spirit, and therefore full of sin but in this passage the phrase particularly means the sins of self-will and disobedience. For these are the sins of which the Apostle has already been speaking in the former part of this chapter; these are the sins of which he speaks in the sequel of it, and these sins, as much as any others which

men can commit, or more than any others, indicate the carnal mind, the absence of grace.

We

may therefore understand him to say, rising as he does from a simple didactic manner to a warm and touching exhortation-Dearly beloved, ye whom I truly love, and by whom I would hope that as a Christian Apostle I am also loved in return, I beseech you, I pray you, as you are pilgrims journeying to another country, strangers seeking for another home, I beseech you keep yourselves clear and free from the sins of wilfulness and disobedience. Such sins are the first and worst of the sins of the flesh. By them fell the angels. They introduce all other sins. They war a deadly warfare against the soul. When a man lifts himself up against the authority which God has set over him, when in an independent spirit he would fain burst the sacred bonds, within which God, in the order of the world, has seen fit to circumscribe and limit the wild licence of thought and action in which he would fain indulge, he truly goes to war against his soul. The soul whose highest happiness hereafter is to consist in a loyal will, in a complete harmony and obedience to the supreme will, the perfect wisdom and goodness of Almighty God, must be trained in obedience. The disobedient soul is out of the path which leads towards heaven: the disobedient and wilful soul is the creature of the flesh. Though his disobedience be shewn in small things, though his wilfulness appear to resist only sub