your support under all trials: and in the blessed mansions of immortality you must on the same principles throw down your crowns, and sing the "Thou song of the penitent sanctified sinner,

hast redeemed us by thy blood!"

390

SERMON XII.

1 TIM. i. 5.

Now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned.

THESE words denote the subject recommended by the Apostle Paul to Timothy's attention as a Christian minister. They express the ideas which he wishes him to impress on his own heart, and also to inculcate on the people who were under his charge; at the same time lamenting that others, by neglecting these things, had run into various speculations of no utility to the church of God, and had turned aside unto vain jangling. At least, then, the Holy Spirit of God bears us witness, through the pen of St. Paul, that the subject before us is no vain jangling, no idle question, but is the very life and soul of the

Gospel itself. It ought, therefore, to be your prayer and mine, that God would be pleased to point it out to us in its real power and its beauty; and that he would graciously direct our endeavours in the consideration of it, so that it may afford us salutary and substantial evangelical edification.

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"The end of the commandment," he says, "is charity," or love-for this same Apostle in his First Epistle to the Corinthians chap. xiii. has explained at length, and in the most beautiful manner, how this great Christian grace of charity is ever to be distinguished from mere liberality. The man who is possessed of true charity, must be a liberal man; liberality is a necessary ingredient in the charitable man's composition:, but the contrary is not true; and St. Paul, who well knew to what pernicious mistakes we are prone, guards us most particularly against such a conclusion, by informing us that a man may give all his goods to feed the poor, and his body to be burnt, and yet be devoid of charity.

When, therefore, it is said that the end of the commandment is charity, we must distinctly remember not to deceive ourselves, by substituting, in the place of that comprehensive Christian grace

called charity, either a little, or even a great deal, of that mere humanity, or ordinary benevolence, which shews itself in freely bestowing our goods upon the poor. This is a very dangerous mistake, and a mistake likely to be made in the age in which we live, which, to speak in general, is no doubt an age of humanity.

That true Christian charity, which in my text is pronounced to be "the end of the commandment," comprehends the love of God and of our neighbour;-meaning by our neighbour (as we are taught to explain the term by our blessed Lord himself) all such of our fellow-creatures as we happen to have intercourse with, according to the sphere of action in which we are called to move in this present world.

But, needs it to be mentioned, that in this account the love of God must stand foremost? for "God himself is love; and be that dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God, and He in him." That which all the revealed religion of Jesus aims at, is to teach us to love God and one another. The man who possesses true love, is fit for heaven and its happiness. Indeed, true happiness consists in love. Try, in the utmost extent of your imagination, whether you can conceive happiness

to consist in any thing else but love to God and man. And then only, when this heavenly gift and grace is attained in perfection, will the soul be completely happy, and need no more but the continuance of this for its enjoyment to all eternity.

A very little observation and careful reflection on the state of mankind, will convince us that naturally we do not possess this inestimable blessing of love. Alas! the love of God implies the exercise of a temper in no respect habitual to man. Rather we are averse to God. We are described by St. Paul as "at enmity" with God; as having our "hearts alienated from God." When he calls ou us, when he invites us to turn again unto him, we are apt to hide ourselves from him: we imitate our first father, who hid himself among the trees of the garden from the presence of God.

Never, therefore, let any one of us flatter himself that he possesses that which he does not possess; for I am bound to inform you that this is dangerous ground to tread. Because, if you persist in maintaining that the love of God is naturally in you, and that you have always loved God all your lives, the Gospel of Christ will not suit your case: according to your own account, you possess