religion the true devotion, the true worship, and changes the self-satisfied Pharisee into the broken-hearted, selfabased Publican. It is the sight of God, revealed to the eye of faith, that makes us hideous to ourselves, from the contrast which we find ourselves to present to that great God at whom we look. It is the vision of Him in His infinite gloriousness, the All-holy, the All-beautiful, the All-perfect, which makes us sink into the earth with selfcontempt and self-abhorrence. We are contented with ourselves till we contemplate Him. Why is it, I say, that the moral code of the world is so precise and well-defined? Why is the worship of reason so calm? Why was the religion of classic heathenism so joyous ? Why is the framework of civilized society all so graceful and so correct? Why, on the other hand, is there so much of emotion, so much of conflicting and alternating feeling, so much that is high, so much that is abased, in the devotion of Christianity? It is because the Christian, and the Christian alone, has a revelation of God; it is because he has upon his mind, in his heart, on his conscience, the idea of One who is Self-dependent, who is from Everlasting, who is Incommunicable. He knows that One alone is holy, and that His own creatures are so frail in comparison of Him, that they would dwindle and melt away in His presence, did He not uphold them by His power. He knows that there is One whose greatness and whose blessedness are not affected, the centre of whose stability is not moved, by the presence or the absence of the whole creation with its innumerable beings and portions; whom nothing can touch, nothing can increase or diminish; who was as mighty before He

made the worlds as since, and as serene and blissful since He made them as before. He knows that there is just One Being, in whose hand lies his own happiness, his own sanctity, his own life, and hope, and salvation. He knows that there is One to whom he owes every thing, and against whom he can have no plea or remedy. All things are nothing before Him; the highest beings do but worship Him the more; the holiest beings are such, only because they have a greater portion of Him.

Ah! what has he to pride in now, when he looks back upon himself? Where has fled all that comeliness which heretofore he thought embellished him? What is he but some vile reptile, which ought to shrink aside out of the light of day? This was the feeling of St. Peter, when he first gained a glimpse of the greatness of his Master, and cried out, almost beside himself,

Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" It was the feeling of Holy Job, though he had served God for so many years, and had been so perfected in virtue, when the Almighty answered him from the whirlwind : "With the hearing of the ear I have heard Thee," he said; "but now my eye seeth Thee; therefore I reprove myself, and do penance in dust and ashes."

So was it

with Isaias, when he saw the vision of the Seraphim, and said, "Woe is me I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people that hath unclean lips, and I have seen with my eyes the King, the Lord of Hosts." So was it with Daniel, when, even at the sight of an Angel, sent from God, "there remained no strength in him, but the appearance of his countenance was changed in him, and

he fainted away, and retained no strength." This then, my Brethren, is the reason why every son of man, whatever be his degree of holiness, whether a returning prodigal or a matured saint, says with the Publican, "O God, be merciful to me;" it is because created natures, high and low, are all on a level in the sight and in comparison of the Creator, and so all of them have one speech, and one only, whether he be the thief on the cross, Magdalen at the feast, or St. Paul before his martyrdom :-not that one of them may not have, what another has not, but that one and all have nothing but what comes from Him, and are as nothing before Him, who is all in all.

For us, my dear Brethren, whose duties lie in this seat of learning and science, may we never be carried away by any undue fondness for any human branch of study, so as to be forgetful that our true wisdom, and nobility, and strength, consist in the knowledge of Almighty God.

Nature and man are our studies, but God is higher than all. It is easy to lose Him in His works. It is easy to become over-attached to our own pursuit, to substitute it for religion, and to make it the fuel of pride. Our secular attainments will avail us nothing, if they be not subordinate to religion. The knowledge of the sun, moon, and stars, of the earth and its three kingdoms, of the classics, or of history, will never bring us to heaven. We may "thank God," that we are not as the illiterate and the dull; and those whom we despise, if they do but know how to ask mercy of Him, know what is very much more to the purpose of getting

to heaven, than all our letters and all our science.

Let this be the spirit in which we end our session. Let us thank Him for all that He has done for us, for what He is doing by us; but let nothing that we know or that we can do, keep us from a personal, individual adoption of the great Apostle's words," Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief."

SERMON III.

WAITING FOR CHRIST.

(Preached in the University Church, Dublin.)

EP. I. PAUL. AD THESSAL., c. i. v. 9, 10.

Servire Deo vivo et vero, et expectare Filium ejus de cœlis, quem sus. citavit ex mortuis, Jesum, qui eripuit nos ab irâ venturâ.

To serve the Living and True God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, Jesus, who hath delivered us from the wrath to come.

As we approach the season of our Lord's advent

we are warned Sunday after Sunday by our tender Mother, Holy Church, of the duty of looking out for it. Last week we were reminded of that dreadful day, when the Angels shall reap the earth, and gather together the noxious weeds out of the midst of the corn, and bind them in bundles for the burning. read of that "great tribulation," ately precede the failing of sun appearance of the Sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And to-day we are told to wait in expectation of that awful Sign, serving the Living and True God the while, as is His due, who has "converted us from idols," and "delivered us from the wrath to come."

Next week we shall which will immediand moon, and the

What St. Paul calls "waiting," or "expecting," or