had done right.-Ah! Brethren, God's dealings with his people have often a very gloomy aspect, as if he were meditating their destruction, while he is really consulting their truest advantage, and promoting their salvation.-" Verily, he is a God that hideth himself," while he is at the same time "the God of Israel, the Saviour." There may appear to be much seve rity in his dispensations, but "the Judge of all the earth will do right."

Sermon by the Rev. John Kaye, D.D., preached at St. Mary's Church, Cambridge.

PSALM CXIX. v. 71.

"It is good for me that I have been afflicted."

IN estimating the characters of Princes we seldom make due allowance for the obstacles which the circumstances of their birth oppose to their moral improvement. Our blessed Lord has expressed by a strong similitude the greatness of the temptations to which wealth exposes its possessor; but when wealth and power are united in the same person, the danger becomes doubly formidable. Accustomed from their earliest infancy to command the ready obedience of all around them and to obtain immediate compliance with their desires; besieged by flatterers who persuade them that they are not bound by the same rules to which men in humbler stations of life are subject; the great are too apt to contract a habit of neglecting the convenience and the feelings of others, and of referring all things to their own gratification. Even minds naturally disposed to benevolence are soon hardened into this callous insensibility, unless they are early impressed with religious principles and motives. By these our illustrious Princess escaped its fatal influence. Though raised so far above the common level of mankind, she thought none so low as not to be entitled to her regard. The power, which her elevated rank conferred

upon her, was in her eyes a trust for the discharge of which she was accountable: and with this conviction deeply rooted in her heart, she omitted no opportunity of gaining those qualifications which might enable her worthily to act her part upon the busy theatre of public life. She felt the awful responsibility of the situation in which her birth had placed her; and strove, by acquiring the mastery over her own passions and desires, to fit herself for the arduous task of exercising dominion over others. No pursuit had any charms for her which had not some tendency to promote her intellectual or spiritual improvement. Innocent and instructive recreations; the acquisition of knowledge; the performance of acts of devotion to God and of benevolence to mankind; these were the employments which diversified her day: employments always delightful to the pure of heart; but doubly so to her, who shared them with a companion of habits and disposition congenial to her own.

Fancy not that, because you are now young and vigorous, you have necessarily a long course to run; and that it will be time to think of death when many years of pleasure shall have passed away. Meditate rather on the lesson which the fate of this illustrious Princess presents; and learn that not the aged only are exposed to the shafts of death, but that the young are equally the objects of his aim. And should God assign to you an untimely end, like hers; should you, like her, be cut off in the flower of youth; will it then be said of you, that, like her, you employed the short space allotted you on earth in acquiring those habits, and that frame of mind, which might have rendered the prolongation of your life a blessing to your fellow-creatures? that, surrounded by earthly enjoyments and gratifications, like her, you could set bounds to your desires nor abused the gifts of Providence? That, like her, you "remembered your Creator in the days of your youth," (Eccl. chap. xii., v. 1.) and walked in his commandments, and took delight in his worship?

Sermon by the Rev. Thomas Le Mesurier, B. D., preached at the Parish Church of Haughton-le-Skerne, Durham.

JOB, chap. xxxiv. v. 18, 19. 20.

"Is it fit to say to a King, thou art wicked? and to Princes, ye are ungodly?-How much less to him that accepteth not the persons of Princes, nor regardeth the rich more than the poor? For they all are the work of his hands.-In a moment shall they die, and the people shall be troubled at midnight, and pass away: and the mighty shall be taken away without hand."

IT is to this last great and most important truth, pressed as it must necessarily be upon our minds by the awful and afflicting event for which the whole nation is now mourning, that I propose more especially to call your attention in my present discourse. I do it, because it strikes me as being in itself most important and edifying, not only at such a moment as this, but at all times; as tending most particularly to check that spirit of discontent which is so apt to spring out of the irregularity of conditions which it has pleased the Almighty, for good and wise ends, to establish in this world; and as even thus calculated to remove one of the great stumbling-blocks which lie in our way, and which take us off from that entire obedience and submission to God's will, which is the only sure road to salvation. There is, indeed, no mistake more fatal than that which is so commonly made, that riches or earthly power, or high situation, always and invariably bring with them happiness and comfort; that the men of wealth or rank have nothing to do but to enjoy themselves; and that they do in fact enjoy all that is good and desirable in this world. Most dangerous indeed, I say, is this very false notion; because, while it makes men discontented with their condition, and, even by that, sinners in a high degree before God, it most strongly also tempts them to obtain for themselves the riches and the power which they so envy and covet, by fraud or. oppression, practised upon their neighbours in a greater or less extent. It is, therefore, of the utmost importance to destroy or counteract this so dangerous

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error; to assert and to make all men feel and confess, what all those who believe in the eternal and infinite goodness and justice of God, must feel and confess, that he is the same. God, not only to the Gentiles as well as the Jews, not only to one nation or description of men as well as to another, but to every individual of those nations and people; that he has not confined happiness or enjoyment to any portion of them, but extends his gifts to all equally; that, as St. Peter was made upon a memorable occasion to declare, "God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him." (Acts, chap. x. v. 34, 35.)

Sermon by the Rev. Lewis Turnor, preached in the Parish Church of Clunbury, Salop.

ECCLESIASTES, chap. xi. v. 8.

"If a man live many years, and rejoice in them all, yet let him remember the days of Darkness, for they shall be many."

SO framed is our nature, that whether our years be many or few, we cannot "rejoice in them all." If, indeed, it feli to the lot of any human being "to rejoice in them all," it was to her who was the nation's hope.

For from that early period when the mind begins to exercise reflection, the source of happiness as well as of misery, to within a few hours of the dawn of that day on which her first year of darkness began, it may be fairly concluded, that no real infelicities could have interrupted the peace of her mind. Placed by the constitution in a station, than which only one is higher; a station, so framed, if the expression may be used, as to afford great latitude of power for doing good, and opening a prospect to the filling of that higher station, on which the experience and wisdom of ages have been exerted to perfect it, for advancing and preserving civil

zation through the mass of population in the United Empire; for promoting prosperity through, and imparting happiness to, the various ranks and degrees, into which that population has fallen; for rewarding those, who aid by their talents and personal exertions in supporting the character of this country as a wise and great nation; for adding to its power, and maintaining its tranquillity and grandeur; placed, in short, in a station exempted from many of the evils of life, and in possession of power to dispense many blessings, her years were, no doubt, years of happiness..

Very different is the situation of all, in other stations, however elevated. The power of deriving happiness from benevolent gratifications has its limits: for benevolent acts must be bounded by prudence, and since we quickly arrive at her boundary, we must quickly stop. Indeed, elevated stations have a wider scope for their exercise; being the channels through which the Highest permits many blessings to run, they that fill them may be considered as having a constant source of uniform satisfaction, and often, most heart-felt pleasure.

The middling station, too, with which many connect the greatest uniformity of happiness, has its means of keeping in frequent activity the sympathies inherent in our nature.

No station, indeed, is denied the exercise of these sweeteners of life. Those in the humblest, possess the power of rendering mutual aid in health and sickness; they can speak to each other" to exhortation and comfort;" of their loaf they can part with a morsel to the hungry, and at their fire-side they can revive the weary traveller, perishing with cold.

But the happiness we derive from the exercise of those feelings which Providence has implanted in our nature, as emanations of himself, is subject to much alloy. For it hath pleased him to implant in it also their opposites, which, if not restrained within their prescribed bounds, render us dissatisfied with ourselves, and often engender in the heart the worm that never dieth."