that springs from disinterested love. He is the happy man who can realize from his own experience the sublime sentiment of our Lord when in human form below: " It is more blessed to give than to receive." If we know not that blessed truth, we are strangers to real happiness; if we have never tasted that fountain of living water that maketh glad the city of our God.

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The disposition to give, unaccompanied with the ability, is received of God according to what a man hath, and not according to what he hath not. Though we give all our goods to feed the poor, and have not charity, it profiteth us nothing if our hearts be inspired with heavenly charity, then, though we give but a crust of bread, or the widow's mite, God accepts it; and it is more in proportion to a poor individual than the gifts of the greatest sovereign on earth. God is a just God; he does not reap where he has not sown, nor gather where he has not strawed; but accounts him that is faithful in little as faithful also in much. He will not condemn a man because he has not two talents: if he is condemned, it will be because the one talent was hidden in a napkin instead of being laid out for the glory of God. The poor man's crown will be as bright as the rich man's; for it is according to the faithfulness, and not according to the ability, that we shall be judged at the last day. Are there not many of the poor, rich in faith, rich in liberality, rich in love? And if they are ever tempted to envy their richer neighbours, it is on such occasions as these, when their hands can so ill obey the promptings of their hearts, and when they would give largely into the treasury of the house of God. If there is one object more than another that calls for profoundest pity, it is not the poor man who has the heart, but not the hand, to give; but it is the rich man,

who has the hand to give, but not the heart. He is the poor man-poor in the eyes of angels, poor in the eyes of God, poor for eternity.

Further The disposition to give calls for profounder gratitude than the ability to give, inasmuch as the disposition to give brings us likest to that blessed Redeemer, who was not, when on earth, a man of wealth and grandeur; who came not in the splendour of the monarch, with thousands of attending legions; but was himself " a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief," not having where to lay his head, and being dependent on the charity of others; so that from the hand of charity, the Lord of the universe received the pittance of his daily support. Does not this tell us that it is not the ability to give that marks a man as the favourite of heaven, but rather the disposition to give. For what was he giving? Giving the glories of heaven-giving the homage of angels-giving his own heart's blood, to save sinners. "Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich." And when was this mind in us that was in Christ Jesus? When have we counted all things but dung and dross, that we might glorify our Father, and render to him what he has lent to us?

I am, in the last place, to show you, that THE ABILITY AND THE DISPOSITION

TO GIVE ARE NEVER MORE NOBLY EMPLOYED THAN IN ERECTING TEMPLES FOR THE WORSHIP OF GOD.

Charity, to be fully efficient, must be wisely regulated; and the charity that does not proportion its gifts to the urgency of the claims upon it, is wanting in

that wisdom which is from above. Let prudence ever guide the hands of your charity, to give to objects in proportion to their momentousness and their magnitude. There are objects of a temporal nature momentous and deeply affecting. To build alms-houses for the aged and the destitute; to rear asylums for the insane; to support dispensaries for affording medicine for the sick; to erect infirmaries for the reception of the wounded and the maimed; to deal out our bread to the hungry, our water to the thirsty, our garments to the naked; these are exercises of the charity that delights in doing good. But if man be not the creature of time, but a candidate for eternity; if his nature involves not merely the tent of clay, but a spirit deathless as Deity; if eternity is his lifetime, his interests and his destinies all centering there; if, as man is found in this world, he is found in that world; then the charity that has to do with the soul and its eternal interests, as far transcends the charity which has to do with the body alone, as eternity transcends time, and the deathless spirit outweighs the tenement that it inhabits.

Therefore, if charity is to be guided by discretion, and discretion is to be informed by Scripture, the charity that has to do with men as immortal beings, is the charity nearest to the charity of God incarnate; who came from heaven to earth, not to heal the body, or provide for the exigences of time, but to heal the immortal spirit, and furnish it for the ages of eternity. Therefore, the charities that are designed to instruct the ignorant, to illuminate the dark mind, to convey the truth of the Divine Word home to the conscience-those charities that are adapted to promote the ordinances of religion, the sustentation of the sanctuary, for the publication of the Gospel, whereby it pleases God to save them that believe-these should take the first place in our estimation, and have the largest share of our benevolence. The worldly man will give to the necessities of the body; it is only the Christian man who will give, from conviction, to the exigences of the soul: because the exigences of the one are obvious and palpable to the senses of the unconverted man; but the exigences of the soul can only be known to him who is conscious of the exigences of his own soul.

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Further though God uses sometimes the written word, and sometimes employs education, for the conveyance of the light of heaven to the heart, yer, after all, it is by the ministration of his word that he most glorifies his Name. If, indeed, the Gospel shall be proclaimed to every creature before the last coming of our Lord, then to provide for the preaching of that Gospel in its simplicity and purity, is the sublimest charity.

Further if, in order that the solemnization of the ordinances of religion be decently conducted, accompanied with the prayers and the praises that are fitting, that God may be glorified by it, there should be decent and fit houses of prayer, (and though in early times, the rock and the wilderness might form the place of ministration, or a highway, that seed might be sown, yet, at least, it were a reflection on our Christian country, a reflection upon the preaching of the Gospel, a reflection on our gratitude to God, if it were necessary thus to drive the Gospel abroad, as it were, and not to furnish a place for the tabernacle for the ark of our God)—then, assuredly, to furnish houses of prayer, decent, suitable, and prepared for the ministration of the Gospel, and the worship of the public assembly, is, of all charities, perhaps, that a Christian man can pro

mote, the noblest, and most exalted, and the most acceptable to God: for it is, of all means, the most likely, humanly speaking, that God will make effectual to the salvation of sinners, and the perfecting of his saints. Beloved brethren, let not this be thought a stronger assertion than may be borne out by truth. Surely I may apply the observation to many that surround me, and say, Is not your own parish a living illustration of the argument I am pressing? Can you not testify, that since that revered individual whom God has exalted now to such a vast scene of ministration (may that God, who has called him to it, give him strength in proportion to his day, that like a fine setting sun, his last days may be his brightest)—can you not testify, that since that revered individual, in the providence of God, had the oversight of the affairs of this vast population of your, at that time, destitute, and very much neglected parish; and since, the good hand of his God with him, he has been able to give willingly himself, and you, his people, were enabled to give willingly also, and cheerfully, to the service of God, and you have seen on the right hand and on the left hand, the houses of prayer, with their heaven-pointed spires and their decent turrets, and you have heard the sound of the Sabbath-speaking bell, inviting your wandering and Sabbath-desecrating population to bend their steps to the holy waters-can you not witness that since then, there has been a mighty reformation within your parish; and can you not say yourselves, that many of you, then strangers to the method of salvation, have been gathered home by the great Shepherd; and that many who laughed at religion, now fear it; and that many who blasphemed the holy Jesus, now praise his holy name; and many that were hastening to hell, are now travelling to heaven; and many that were dead in sin, are alive to God; and that many that were without God and without hope in the world, are now children of God, and heirs of everlasting life? And I may appeal to yourselves, whether you have not a plain, an ocular demonstration, that there is no charity to be compared to that which furnishes houses of prayer, if those houses of prayer be occupied with ministers that speak according to the oracles of God. Beloved brethren, it is the truest charity for time, as well as for eternity; for the body as well as for the soul. There is a liberality, a prudence, a forethought, a truth: let there be uprightness, and these will all follow in the train of the blessed Gospel of Christ Jesus. Let there be but this in any population, and you diminish the amount of poverty, destitution, and crime, and the amount, consequently, of evil, and ensure the amount of social happiness: you make more little cottages bright and happy; you make more fathers and mothers to train up their children in peace and love, in uprightness and honour: and thus, my dear brethren, you leaven the mighty mass of our population. Every church where the Gospel is faithfully preached, is, as it were, a little pool of Bethesda, from whence go forth healing waters to heal the salt desert, and to cure the corrupting marshes, that before stagnated around that locality. Therefore we may appeal to your own observation, and to the matter of fact in this parish, whether the erecting of temples to the glory of God, and for the ministration of the Gospel, be not the most sublime and noble charity that can engage the heart and the hand of the Christian man.

Beloved brethren, our brethren without the pale of the establishment in this parish, I believe, have also set you an example. I wish not that their temples were fewer, I wish that yours were increased ten-fold; and that, instead of

keeping behind the population, as is usually the case, the places of prayer went before the congregation; and that thus there were ready furnished the apparatus of spiritual and moral improvement. Then indeed there would be hope that we should have our population springing up in the fear of God. Then we should have more hope that that blessed exhortation of the Apostie, that was read in our ear this morning, would be carried into effect, that all men would be loved, that God would be feared, and that the king would be honoured.

Beloved brethren, let me remind you, the Church of England has been verily guilty in the restrictions as to places of worship, which, up to a very late period disgraced her. I say advisedly, disgraced her. Had it not been for those suicidal restrictions, a large proportion, I might venture to say one moiety, of all the chapels now without her pale, would have been within her blessed inclosure; we should have had their little turrets, and we should have had the Sabbathspeaking bell echoing from them. She has driven many from her bosom by not providing room for them: for, however you may think you have provided sufficiently, there are individuals in the situation of one who has borne testimony that she has been long resident here, and has sought in vain a solitary sitting for herself, in the Church of England. If that individual had been driven into the arms of dissent, we could hardly have blamed her; though she would have done a hundred times better, by waiting till it had pleased God to open a door for her. You see, therefore, that however you may think it well supplied, in reality there is at this moment urgent necessity for more room in the Church of England. Hear her crying to you, her children, Lengthen my cords, and strengthen my stakes, that I may gather to my bosom the multitude of my multiplied children." If the Church of England had allowed the principle of voluntary charity in her breast more liberty, you may rest assured, that it would have wrought more powerfully within her; and we might have looked to our temples, and said, Here are the fruits of voluntary love in the Church of England. So far is an establishment from overlaying and swamping that principle, that it does but regulate its extravagances, supply its deficiencies, and give it direct and perma

nent energy.

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Therefore, brethren, let us now prove, that greater enlargement is given to us for furthering the interests of the church by multiplying her sanctuaries, that that principle, though it may seem to have been dormant, when not attended to, that the fire was there, and only needed to be allowed to kindle, that it might blaze forth in its beauty and splendour. I am led, therefore, beloved brethren, in bringing the subject home to your minds, to speak to you thus plainly and publicly. If those who are rich-not poor in heart, not with the poverty at which God looks, but with that poverty which makes a man spend all on himself, who has not so much nobleness or generousness of heart given him, that he can feel any happiness in giving to God, but spends all upon his own paltry self, and can have no conception of the duty of giving to the Lord who gave him all; if any such are here, I would say, O, you are the objects of pity; you are, indeed, the mendicants—the individuals that are indeed poor for eternity. O, never rest satisfied till you, by the grace of God, taste the love of Christ; making you love one another; until you are led to feel the impulse and the power of that motive of the Apostle, "The love of Christ constraineth us;" and until you can feel the appeal of that disciple whom Jesus loved, "Beloved,

if God so loved us, then should we also love one another." You must find the love of God as it is manifested in the cross of Christ, the love of God in choosing you, calling you, redeeming you, accepting you, sanctifying you, glorifying you and then, brethren, it cannot be but you will love one another.

To the poor I would say, to my Christian brethren who have little to give, Give of that little, and God will esteem it much. If you give it to him with a heart overflowing with love, a heart which he has given to many a poor man, then may your Saviour say to you, as he said to the poor church of Smyrna, "I know thy poverty; but thou art rich.” O blessed the poor man of whom his Saviour can say, "Thou art rich;" for if Christ make us rich, we are rich indeed. But without him, though the universe were ours, we were poor, poor and perishing. O, then, let the poor man be rich in faith, rich in Christ, rich in contentment, rich in love, rich in charity; and he has no cause to envy his richer neighbours; but rather to bless God that he has not put him off with the riches that perish, but given him the imperishable riches of his grace.

Christian brethren, I would plead with you on behalf of that house of prayer, which you, through the liberality that God has given you, have so far raised, and, I trust, by your liberality, will fit and furnish as becomes the temple of God. You have well done in that which you have done; and assuredly whatever you have given for that object, will not cost you a pang upon your deathbed. You have spent much in other ways that you will look back on then with shame, alarm, and contrition; but for what you have given to God, from love to God, in order that your poorer brethren might become rich through the knowledge of Christ Jesus, you will thank God and say, "Who am I, and what am I, that I should be enabled to give thus willingly to please my God? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have I given thee."

I am told, brethren, that the locality where that new structure is raised, is one where it is especially needed. I am told that the poor around it are casting towards it many a fond look of expectation, and are gladly expecting the time when it will open its doors to welcome them to hear the glad news of salvation. I may add, too, without presumption, from considerable personal knowledge of him on whom the choice of your minister has fallen-that he who is to minister in your sanctuary, is one that loves, I believe, loves to preach the Gospel of Christ with a fervent and devoted spirit; and one that, from his long ministration amongst you, his acquaintance with your habits, his sympathy with your sorrows, has especial aptitude to serve in that especial ministration to which he is called. So that I can indeed assure you, as far as we may judge of man, he will indeed serve the Lord Christ amongst his poorer members with devotedness of heart and soundness of doctrine. May the Great Shepherd and Bishop of souls, that has called him to a post of higher responsibility, so succour him by his grace, and guide him by his wisdom, that he may save himself, and those that hear him!

Christian brethren, I invite you then to the honour and privilege of giving something to the great God and Saviour that has given you all that you have. Whatever of intellect, whatever of calling, whatever of strength, whatever of riches, whatever of comfort, whatever of domestic endearment you possess, all this give him; and you may be assured you will not have too much to give to God. What you keep back unduly for him, that you lose; what you give, out