to your merciful Redeemer, and to your perishing brethren.

I call your attention this evening to a class of men— your fellow-subjects, your neighbors,-whose situation demands your kindness and your care; and I plead with you in behalf of an Institution which is laboring affectionately, diligently, and successfully for their highest and most enduring interests. The Edinburgh and Leith Seaman's Friend Society must be already well known to you, for it has existed for many years: it has carried on its meritorious work at your very door, and under your very eye it has frequently appealed to you for support, and has received it; and no one has pretended to doubt that its efforts have been both wise and vigorous, and that it has been honored, under the blessing of Heaven, to confer signal benefits on that interesting part of the population whom it has taken under its guardianship, and visited with its mercy. It cares for their temporal comfort, and it cares for their eternal salvation. Its main object is to wean them from the service of sin, and to engage them in the service of God. And while for this purpose, it studies to separate them from the temptations to profusion and intemperance and idleness, to which they might otherwise be too much exposed, and by which they might otherwise be too easily overcome, it strikes at the very root of all the mischiefs that beset their lot and surround their path, by a moral machinery which provides them with saving knowledge, which goes to penetrate their hearts, and to imbue them with the principles and spirit of the gospel, and which teaches, and encourages, and stimulates them to seek for their happiness in the favor of God, in the exercises of piety, in the practice of holiness, in the hope of heaven and immortality. I could dilate with pleasure on its various means of elevating their character, and improving their condition-means which were wont to be thought of with indifference, or treated as the subjects of wonder, of merriment, or of

idle pity. I could tell you of the tracts which it circulates of the Bibles which it distributes of the education which it imparts of the ordinances which it administers of the visits of Christian love which it pays ―of the numberless offices of kindness by which it enlightens, and comforts, and animates the objects of its constant solicitude. But I need not occupy your time in such discussions. You are already acquainted with the character and merits of this establishment. Its directors deserve every degree of confidence you can repose in them. Its funds need to be replenished by the bounty of a generous and Christian public. Its prosperity will, in some good measure, depend upon the supply which it this evening receives from the audience that I now address. It throws itself upon your charity. And I am sure you will not willingly mar its usefulness, or disappoint its expectations, by withholding what the providence of that God whom you and it are united in serving, has enabled you to bestow. O think of the seaman, embarked upon the dangerous deep-exposed to the furious tempest, or to the unwholesome climate, or to the thousand perils which surround him in his adventurous course. If, by the protection of Him who rules over all, he escape these multiplied hazards, and come back in safety to his native shore and his beloved home, what a blessing for him to find, that, while he himself has gone and returned in the faith of that Saviour in whom he has been taught to believe, and in a dependance upon that Almighty arm on which his once godless soul has been taught to lean for guidance and protection, his wife and his little ones have been learning the same lessons, and practising the same virtues, and enjoying the same peace. And if he be fated never more to revisit that domestic circle which he left in sorrow and in hope, and with all the yearnings which are known only to the heart of a seaman-husband and a seaman-father; if it be the will of that God whom he loves and serves, that he should be the victim of a fatal

shipwreck the vessel his coffin, and the ocean his grave-O what a precious consolation to him to recollect, as he sinks in the remorseless waters, that he does not leave his widow disconsolate, nor his orphans unprotected that they are in the hands of Christians, who love their souls, and will not abandon them to ignorance, oppression, or destitution-and that he is going to that blessed and peaceful region, for whose mansions they also are training, and amidst whose blessedness they and he shall meet again, and dwell, and rejoice forever!

SERMON VII.*

CHRISTIAN BENEFICENCE.

MATTHEW xxv. 35, last clause.

"I was a stranger

and ye took me in."

THERE is a certain class of people who not only build their hopes of salvation upon their own personal righteousness, but who even restrict that righteousness, as the foundation of their hopes, to acts of benevolence. And when we remonstrate with them on the presumptuousness, and the danger, of such an idea, they quote, in support of it, the passage of which my text forms a part, and ask triumphantly whether it be not a clear and irrefragable proof, that, if we abound in deeds of kindness to the poor, the afflicted, and the oppressed, we shall have boldness in the day of judgment.

Now, to those by whom such a sentiment is, in any degree, maintained, I would address a few remarks, tending to show that it is altogether without countenance or sanction from the word of God.

In scripture, it is by no means uncommon to annex the attainment of future happiness to the exercise of a particular grace. Of this fact I could give you a mul

Preached in St. George's Church, Edinburgh, 18th December, 1828, when a collection was made in behalf of the Spanish and Italian Refugees, at the request of the Lord Provost and Magistrates.

titude of examples, were it necessary. But if the opinion I am supposing you to entertain be correct, as to almsgiving, it must be equally correct as to all the other graces of Christianity, which are placed in a similar connexion. Why fix upon this, and neglect the others, since they and it have the same common authority? For what good reason should not any one of these be the ground of expectation and assurance, as well as that which you have particularly selected for the purpose? If you are to obtain a sentence of acquittal, in consequence of being beneficent to the needy and the wretched, why may not a sentence of acquittal, result as well and as certainly from your godliness, or your humility, or your justice, or your patience, or your purity, or any other single feature of the Christian character? The truth is, that the scriptural statement, when correctly apprehended, is perfectly consistent with itself, and is founded in the very nature and reason of the thing. It does not mean, that, if you have any particular virtue, and no other, you shall be admitted into heaven; for, truly, the possession of but one insulated virtue will appear to us impossible, if our ideas of holiness be taken from the gospel. According to the gospel scheme of morality, every genuine virtue must be the fruit of a regenerated heart, and must be practised under the influence of right principles and motives. But if the heart be indeed regenerated, and if the conduct be indeed governed by right principles and mo tives, then there will be a cordial disposition, and a habitual endeavor, to obey the will of God in every thing. And, on this account, whenever a particular virtue has the promise of eternal happiness attached to it, we are to regard it as co-existing with all its kindred virtues, though they be not specifically stated, and as, in fact, the representative of the whole character, though it be not mentioned as holding that station. If, therefore, any one build his prospects of future blessedness on his alms-deeds, we say to him, in strict conformity to his own general principle, "It is true you abound in