shall be well with them. It covers the pit over, and makes great efforts to lay the cry of alarm. The men whom you may trust, expose your danger, and depict your depravity, lead you to search your hearts, and try your hopes; and they deserve and need your confidence. They have trials enough, when their people rally about them, and confide in their integrity.

Let me say to all the lost, it is equally your duty and your interest to love the ministers of Jesus. Christ. They come to you on an errand the most kind, and it may happen, and God may know it, that when they disturb you the most, they feel the most tenderly. When it has seemed to you that they, must hate you, they have gone home and wept over you, and interceeded with God in agonized prayer for your eternal life. So your child thought you cruel, when you tore the thorn from his wounded hand; but was you not kind?

One thing it is easy to know, he who so presses home upon your conscience the doctrines and duties of the gospel as to offend you, is not probably governed by selfish motives. His interest, when no reference is had to the last day, would lead him so to soften his message as not to give offence. You would then the more generously fill his board. Still when you find him unbendingly faithful, he deserves. your esteem the more. Else yoù tempt him to betray your interest. When you move him from his integrity, he but goes down with you to the pit;

or if God forgive him, and he is saved, he may first have destroyed you and your children. Let him then be faithful and still have your affection, then his work will be pleasant, and your danger diminished.

And the ministers of Christ will also need your help. The enterprise in which they are employed is the redemption of men from eternal misery. And they have all the weaknesses of other men, and need, in a work so awfully grand, the prompt coopération of all who value the soul. The seed they sow must be watered with prayer, their duties must be made easy by your friendship, and their trials be softened by your sympathies. When the burdens of the

ministry are thus lightened, they are still weighty enough for the shoulders of an angel. Our constant exclamation is, "Who is sufficient for these things?" Next to him who in the very work itself has continued faithful unto death, the high reward of heaven will be his, who has aided our efforts, and has laboured with us in the gospel. If you could have helped in building the world, it would have been a service less honourable than that of helping to redeem it. It was built of clay, but must be redeemed with blood; it took its form in a week, but its redemption has been progressing these six thousand years.

You may contribute to save a soul from death, and cover a multitude of sins; may snatch a spirit that can never die from perdition, and elevate it to

a seat high in bliss; may substitute the glories of heaven, for the darkness and horrors of the pit; and change the wailings of the damned into anthems of Alleluia. By motives mighty like these, you are urged to ease the burdens of the ministry, to render the service pleasant and efficient, by your sympathies, your counsels, and your prayers. It is sweet to know that we have sometimes the entire confidence as well as the prayers of those whom it is our work to build up in the faith and purity of the gospel. It cheers the solitude of many a midnight hour, that we are preparing a repast for the disciples of the Lord Jesus, who when they have fed upon the word, will pray for him who published it. May every such prayer for us be answered, and then returned into your own bosoms, and when the lips are cold and the tongue silent that address you, and the sanctuary where you worship has crumbled, and other generations fill the places we occupy, may we be together about the throne, to sing and say, "Blessed be the Lord God, the God of Israel, who only doeth wondrous things. And blessed be his glorious name forever: and let the whole earth be filled with his glory. Amen, and Amen.”

Finally it is a crime of no small magnitude to treat with neglect or contempt a ministry formed after the pattern of the text. The embassy that God commissions deserves regard. He that receiveth you, receiveth me." If ministers are faithful, it is not at the option of their people, whether they

shall receive or reject their message, and treat kindly or otherwise those who hold the high commission of ambassadors of Jesus Christ. To their own Master they are accountable, for every doctrine they advance, every duty they urge, and the proper application of every promise they repeat; and you too are obligated to insert that doctrine if true into your creed, to practice that duty, and apply legitimately, that promise. If they deliver the true gospel, and you reject it, it proves to you a savour of death unto death. Even cold indifference is criminal toward that ministry which has immediate connexion with your salvation, and the eternal life of your offspring. God will punish those who treat rudely his ministers. We could point you to the places where sterility and death have reigned for half a century, when the hand had been raised against one whom God sent to them with the news of pardon. The law in Israel, "Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm," has been renewed in other terms under the gospel. Blessed God, let no child of mine ever hurt or offend thy ministers. Amen.

SERMON 13.

THE RICH BELIEVER BOUNTIFUL.

1 TIMOTHY VI. 17-19.

“Charge them that are rich in this world that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy; that they do good, that they be rich in good works, ready to distribute, willing to communicate; laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life."

THE bible admirably adapts its instructions to every character and condition in human life, from the greatest monarch to the meanest slave. And this fact is an evidence that the scriptures are from God. They teach with an authority that men uninspired would not have been likely to assume. There is no crouching, no sycophancy, no flattery. Duty is taught to every man in the same style, with the same plainness, and the same assurance. What was said of our Lord, that he taught as one having authority, is true of the whole bible.

In the text Paul is directing Timothy what he must say to the rich. They may not be highminded. God distinguishes one man from another. "In thine hand it is to make great." They may not trust in their riches, for they are uncertain, and may take to themselves wings and fly away, They must trust alone in God, the living God, who giveth them