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taking a serious account of all his ways?— is any one careless in his way of doing what he does for the service of God?

Think of king Hezekiah, who delayed not to serve the Lord, but began in the first year of his reign, in the first month. Think how much he must have had to break through, how much pains he must have taken, how many things he must have changed, how earnestly he must have set himself to work. Remember that you will never be serving God as you ought, nor ready to meet Him in judgment, nor fit to stand before Him in Heaven or in His Church on earth, until like Hezekiah you seek God with all your heart, in every part of His service. Let not Christians, the inheritors of better promises, be put to shame by the example of one who lived under the law.

SERMON IX.

PREACHED

AT THE COMMEMORATION OF THE CONSECRATION OF TRINITY CHURCH, BUCKHOLD, ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1839.

PSALM 1x. 9.

Who will lead me into the strong city? who will bring me into Edom?

THE place in which we are now assembled is become one of our common blessings. It is no longer a new thing to us, and we come not to see but to use it. Only to-day we call to mind the time when this spot was but common ground, and the goodness of God in suffering us to dedicate it to Him. This we do both because we are glad of an occasion of bringing Him the offering of praise and thanksgiving; and in particular that we may be reminded from year to year of His goodness shewn to us in this place, and of our duty to Him, both in respect of it, and in other like matters.

And here we might fix our minds on the thought that we have been allowed to build

an altar to the Lord, and that here the Bread of Heaven is given us for food, and the waters of life flow forth. Did we but know our own blessedness, and what it is to have our Lord in the midst of us when we meet together in His name, His presence would fill our thoughts, and would so as it were fill this place, that even while within it we should seem as though we were not within it, but nowhere except only in His presence. We should not be shut out, as the priests of old by the glory that filled Solomon's temple, but taken out of ourselves, and out of all visible things, in the deep contemplation of Him, as though by seeing Him as He is we partook of His likeness, so that we were not here or there, but wheresoever He is.

And even now, little as we know what it is to stand before Him, what it is to have Him in the midst of us, what it is to receive Him into our very selves, the thought that such things are granted us is enough to take up our whole souls, and to fill us with gratitude and joy, so as scarcely to leave room for other thoughts. But such is now our state, that we may not dwell wholly upon this. The day of the week reminds a 1 Kings viii. 10, 11.

us both of the manner in which our blessedness was won for us, and of the way by which we must enter into the full enjoyment of it, and of our short-comings in that way. Of the same tree whose wood overlaid with gold is our altar, is made also our banner, our token of triumph, which is the witness of the suffering obedience of our Lord, and of an obedience that cannot be without conflict and suffering in ourselves. The Psalm from which our text is taken, and which we considered more fully a short time since, may certainly be spiritually understood as relating to the conflict of the renewed man, and of the Church, with nature and with the world.

Each one of us within himself, and the Church of God with each, and with the mass of mankind, with what is earthly in each and in all together, has a war to carry on, and a victory to win. Edom, the old earthly nature of man, the elder brother by creation of his spiritual nature, which is not to be destroyed, but blessed in the service of the spiritual man, has yet to be subdued. And whatever is done for the service of God on earth, beside its being directly intended to His honour, serves also towards the b Exod. xxx. 1, 3.

bringing of human nature, and the whole of human life, into subjection to Him. It is plain that the earthly nature of man cannot become wholly subject to the law of God except by His Spirit really ruling in each one. This is as when an Edomite was received into the congregation. And a difference was made in this matter between an Edomite, the true-born but fallen brother of Israel, and an Ammonite, the offspring of sin after the separation of his family from the people of God. An Edomite in the second generation might be admitted, as human nature in its third birth from the grave, an Ammonite not even to the tenth, as nothing that defileth shall enter the new Jerusalem. But even short of this actual reception into the very body of Israel, Edom might be held in subjection, and made to obey and pay tribute. This must be in some measure the state of every man's spiritual life, he must hold nature in subjection at present as it were by force. And so must the Church hold human nature in general in a kind of imperfect and unwilling subjection, as when men do not indeed place themselves and all that they have at the service of God and His Church, but yet through fear and admi

c Rev. xxi. 27.

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