siderable sums for the purpose, which have built many large Churches. But in the meantime the number of people increases from year to year, and all that has been done for the last twenty years, though far more than had been done in a much longer time before, has been little more than enough to provide for the increase of population in the same time. There remain still thousands of thousands to whom this blessing is not offered. Such being still the extreme necessity of the case, our gracious Queen has been pleased to call upon such as are willing in this nation, to give toward the great object of providing Churches for all her people. Thus did Moses when he would build the Tabernacle, and David when he would prepare for the Temple of the Lord.

They called on the people, and the people gave freely, not that they might have where to worship God, but that the worship of God might be honoured with rich and costly furniture.

If our present object has less of splendour in it, yet it has more of necessity. Think then what a blessing a Church is, and how many there are who are greatly in need of it. As a Christian nation we should be ashamed before men, and tremble before God, that

there should be a man in England to whom the Church is not open, to whom the minister of Christ is not at hand.

The Society in behalf of which this appeal is addressed to the Church in this place, is formed especially to meet this need, and is supported and watched over by the Heads of our Church. Whatever it collects is most carefully applied where most wanted, and its help is constantly the means of encouraging men to spend what they can for their own neighbourhood, where that would not have been enough for the work without such assistance, thus calling forth yet more than it supplies. You are invited to give by due authority, by the Queen, by the Bishop, and by your minister; and the cause is the cause of God and of mankind.

Give then freely that you may help to prepare your brethren to meet their God and Saviour, not as a stranger but as Him Whom they have long loved and worshipped —and give too, that you may prepare yourselves, by taking your minds off from delighting in worldly pleasures and gains, for the day when all these things shall be as nothing to you. Give for others, Give for others, that you may thank God the more for what He has provided for yourselves.

SERMON V.

PREACHED IN CHICHESTER CATHEDRAL, APRIL 6, 1840, FOR THE CENTRAL SCHOOL.

ACTS ii. 39.

For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call.

It was thus that St. Peter, on the day of Pentecost, offered to the enquiring Jews the covenant of baptism, with remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. The promise was not only for themselves, but for their children too, and so no doubt it belongs not only to us, that once were far off, but now are made nigh by the blood of Christ, but to our children too. Accordingly we bring them, as we have been brought, to the Lord, and offer them to Him to be received into the same covenant, and to share the same blessings. And if we

rightly valued and used those blessings, we should know ourselves richer and happier in them than nobles and princes, we should rejoice more in a child as being made an inheritor of the kingdom of Heaven, than if he were born heir to the richest inheritance on earth.

I will not speak now of the sad neglect with which too many of us treat their own eternal prospects. The occasion calls me rather to dwell upon those little ones, who have an interest in the kingdom of Heaven, having been born into it of water and the Spirit, and whom our Blessed Lord has bidden us take heed, lest we despise.

Now there is a great error into which we have fallen, and which tends very much to make us think less of those, whose Angels always behold the face of our heavenly Father. I say that we have fallen into it, for there are very few if any amongst us who do not err thus, even if they try to avoid it, for we cannot set ourselves right at once, in a thing which is worked into all our habits and feelings.

The error of which I speak, is thinking too lowly of the Christian life upon earth.

C

John iii. 5. Matt. xviii. 10. d Matt. xviii. 10.

We cannot think indeed too highly of that which God has prepared for those who love Him. Such things eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have they entered into the heart of man. But he who has told us that it doth not yet appear what we shall be, has said also NOW are we the sons of Gode.

These words sound strange in most of our ears, and no wonder, for we do not live like the sons of God, and it is much if we shall be found among them at the last day.

The question is, whether we are to set such expressions down for mere strong words, meant to stir us up to holy feelings when we hear them, and to make us admire the grace of God in those great and holy men who spake them. Or are we rather to regard them as expressions of the plain truth about the kingdom of God, and about those with whom Christ has declared that all the Persons of the ever blessed Trinity would come and make Their abode. There can be no doubt which answer gives the more glory to God, therefore let Him be true, and every man a liar. Let us take all the glorious things that are spoken of His Saints on earth, to belong to that promise,