once in holy fear, and in strong confidence in His power. They can indeed do nothing without Him, but He will not refuse those who seek His help. Whatever their duty may be, He is ready to aid them in it. All the affairs of men are nothing to Him in themselves. What are all the riches of the world? what are its honours? what are its kingdoms to Him before Whom the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and Who taketh up the isles as a very little thing? Lord, what is man that Thou visitest him, or the son of man that Thou so regardest him? But whether it be in great things or small, He regards with mercy and love those who desire to do His will. He forgets them not, whether they are occupied in great things or small, for great and small are all one to Him. Not a sparrow falls to the ground unseen by Him. The very hairs of our head are numbered by Him.

The very same Spirit Who wrought mightily in the Apostles for the conversion of mankind, is ever with the Church of God. He still attends the laying on of the hands of those whom He has made Bishops over the flock of God. Baptism effectual to the

a Isaiah xl. 15.

He still makes remission of sin,

b Psalm viii. 4.

and still dwells in the baptized except they depart from God, and still makes the Lord's Supper effectual to their spiritual nourishment, and still helps them to earnestness in prayer and thanksgiving, to faithfulness and constancy in obedience, to patience and cheerfulness in suffering, to deep repentance if they have offended, to hope and confidence in death.

Foolish and wilful men will tell you that the Church does not teach you to look to the Holy Spirit. The Church does not indeed teach you to take all your own vain imaginations, or theirs, for the teaching of the Holy Spirit. But the Church sets before you the Word of God, written by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Church gives you the Sacraments, which have no power in themselves, but are the means of life through the operation of the Holy Spirit, as our Lord and His Church teach you. The Church alone has ministers who have received the Holy Spirit for that office from our Lord by the hands of His Apostles. The Church alone gives you the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, by laying on of hands in Confirmation. And the Church teaches you that you can do no good thing but by the help of the Holy Spirit, but that He is ever

ready to help you, nay that He is ever striving with you to lead you in the way of God, and that you can be guided by Him if you will.

If, then, you believe that you have life by the Spirit of Christ, be careful to abide in the Church, which is the Body of Christ, and to abound in the fruits of the Spirit, that is, to be fruitful in good works, such as God has prepared for you to walk in. Thus by His grace you shall sowd to the Spirit, and in the end reap the fruit of eternal life.

с

d Gal. vi. 8.

SERMON XVI.

PREACHED IN CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL ON

SEPTUAGESIMA SUNDAY.

MATT. XX. 6, 7.

And about the eleventh hour he went out, and found others standing idle, and saith unto them, Why stand ye here all the day idle?

They say unto him, Because no man hath hired us. He saith unto them, Go ye also into the vineyard; and whatsoever is right, that shall ye receive.

THE history of our Lord's ministry in the Gospel according to St. Matthew contains first His general invitation to all men to prepare by repentance for the coming of the kingdom of Heaven, and the calling of some of His first disciples. Then His proclamation of the general laws of that kingdom in His Sermon on the Mount. Then His labours to bring men into it both by His own preaching and miracles and by those of the Apostles whom He sent out with authority. Then the way in which different persons received both Him and them, and the

parables in which He foretold what would be the end of their different courses.

Afterwards the course of the narrative requires that controversy with the unbelieving Jews should be mixed with instructions to the now separate body of His own disciples, and these instructions are more exact than what had been given before both with respect to the Church on earth, its discipline and its privileges, and with respect to the final state of men, whether in glory or in punishment.

But we must observe that, at least till after our Lord's resurrection, the minds of His disciples were by no means clearly enlightened with respect to the nature of the kingdom He was about to establish. Their questions were like that of the Sadducees, Whose wife shall she be of the seven, such as could not be answered except by first shewing that they were grounded upon error. And such very likely may some of the questions be, which are raised even now about the world to come.

Still it is good for us to exercise our minds upon those parts of the Holy Scriptures which relate to the world to come, as well as upon those which relate to the kinga Matt. xxii. 28.