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body, that, though we may yet hope to retain our lives, we have lost our strength and our beauty perhaps for ever.

Let it then be our endeavour to arrest, by timely repentance, the progress of that spiritual degradation, the beginning of which is but too discernible in us already. Let us not forego what still remains to us of our heavenly inheritance, through the hope, that after all is spent, our Father's house may still be open to us.

Let us from this day forth resolve to amend our conduct, and may God in His mercy amend our hearts.

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SERMON XIII.

INNOCENCE OF CHILDREN THE HIGHEST

MORAL CONDITION.

ST. MATTHEW xviii. 2, 3.

"And Jesus called a little child unto Him, and set him in the midst of them; and said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

THE words of the text and others to the same purpose, which are constantly occurring in the New Testament, some people are unwilling to understand in their simplest and most natural meaning. I shall not attempt to state the ways in which different persons understand them, or in which they contrive to divert their thoughts from the first impressions which the words suggest. It is plain however that many people do somehow or other contrive to explain them away; and find a meaning for them different from what they would convey to any one who looked only at the drift of what our

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Lord is saying. If we look only at the drift of the text, and afterwards at that of a passage which occurs in the following chapter, we can hardly avoid supposing that in what our Lord says of little children, he is actually proposing their minds as models of imitation for the minds of grown up Christans; that there is something in the piety of little children which is peculiarly pleasing to Him; something which the piety of full grown people can scarcely attain to; something that we are [almost] sure to lose in our progress through life, and which we must return to as we best can, if ever we would find entrance into the kingdom of heaven. "Then were there brought unto Him little children that He should put His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not to come unto Me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven; and He laid His hands on them, and departed thence." It is difficult to find more than one meaning for these words; i. e. that our Lord is indeed proposing little children to His disciples for their imitation; and that He is pointing out to them a state of mind, which they considered childish, as being more pleasing to God than their own. It is difficult to find for the words another meaning than this, yet, if we put the case to ourselves, it is a meaning which we are not very ready to admit.

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[This word seems to be struck out in the MS.]

Most men, I suppose, would feel a kind of reluctance at going back to the state of children, and giving up at once so many qualities which they pride themselves on having acquired, qualities which it would be quite impossible that children should ever possess, indeed the very opposite to a childlike temper of mind. They would not part with their knowledge of the world, and of the ways of bad as well as good people, and return again to the guilelessness and simplicity of little children, even for the sake of regaining the innocence which they lost in attaining to their present condition. Whether they will own it or not, they, in reality, feel a kind of contempt for the innocence which arises from an ignorance of the pleasures of vice; and regard those who seem possessed of it as feeble and pitiable. They do not perhaps directly congratulate themselves on having known by their own experience what the pleasures of sin are, but they think there is something more manly and dignified in adhering to the right course with a knowledge of the temptations which tend to distract us, than in doing so from what they consider a blind prejudice, from a person having always done as he was taught from the first, and consequently having little inclination to seek forbidden pleasure. They have a higher admiration for those who act right in spite of temptation, than for those who feel no temptation to act wrong.

Such feelings and notions are certainly not con

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sistent with the literal and obvious meaning of our Saviour's words, "Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." But as long as men feel a great reluctance to admit the obvious meaning, they are sure to find ways enough of evading it, and finding out one more in accordance with what they think the suggestions of common sense. As long as they have notions of what is fine and manly, which lead them to despise a simple childlike purity of mind, they will never believe that it is of these qualities our Lord is speaking when He tells us to become as little children.

It may be as well then to consider what are the grounds on which people get into this way of thinking; and first, how far it is consistent with the notions and feelings which common sense suggests to us for the regulation of our every-day conduct ; that is, whether in our ordinary dealings with one another we measure manliness and strength of mind by the same rule which we measure them by in the case of our religious duties; and esteem those persons more highly who act right in the face of temptation to act wrong, or those to whom it never occurs to do any thing but what their conscience approves. For example; what is the temper and conduct which a father esteems most highly on the part of his son? for this is the comparison by which the Bible brings home to us the manner in which our tempers and conduct are re

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