his expences increased every year, he had been able every year to increase his charity. I will not say, that God always thus increases our power of doing good, in proportion to our will: but there is one way, in which almost every master of a family may, under God's blessing, extend his means of doing good for himself; and that is by the diligent practice of another duty enforced by the history of this miracle. I mean by an accurate attention to lessen his own unnecessary expences, and to prevent all excess or wastefulness in his family. We find, in the conclusion of the history, that even Christ Himself, who had just, with a word, created these provisions, and who had power to command even the stones that they should be made bread; yet did not He think it beneath Him to be anxious for the fragments, which remained from the miraculous meal, in order that nothing might be lost. And can we dare, we, miserable dependants on His bounty, can we dare to waste His good creatures, in careless extravagance, or in swinish gluttony? Or can we forget, that we then provoke Him to take away from us those blessings which we use so carelessly?

Oh, let us be wise in time; let us consider what are our best interests, both in time, and in eternity: :-and let us, by prudent management in our households, and by avoiding all temptation to luxury, and unnecessary expenditure, so in

crease our means of doing good to our fellowcreatures, that, the blessing of God attending our charitable endeavours, we may hope at the last great Day to hear those condescending words of our Saviour, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."

1 St. Matthew, xxv. 40.

SERMON XIX.

FIFTH SUNDAY IN LENT.

ST. JOHN, viii. 58.

Jesus said unto them, " Before Abraham was, I am.”

THESE words are introduced by our Saviour, in the course of that eloquent expostulation with the Jews, which has been read to you in this morning's Gospel; in which, having assured them, that whosoever should keep His saying should never taste of death, He replies to their objection [that Abraham and the prophets, the best and greatest men of ancient times, had all, in their turns, paid the debt of nature; and that by this promise of immortality to His followers, He made Himself greater than either Abraham, or Moses,]-He replies, I say, to this objection by admitting the full force of the principle, on which it was founded; and by laying claim, in positive terms, to a superiority over both Moses, and Abraham, far greater than that, to which even their cavil had accused him of pretending.

He first begins with a preface very proper to so unusual a claim, as that which He was about to make ;—a denial of all vain-glory, which might have led Him to assume a higher character among men, than that, which His Eternal Father sanctioned. "If I honour myself," are His words, "my honour is nothing. It is my Father, that honoureth me; of whom ye say, that He is your God. Yet ye have not known Him; but I know Him; and if I should say, I know Him not, I should be a liar like unto you: but I know Him, and keep His sayings." Then follows the claim, which He makes, of superiority to the great ancestor of the Jews: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad."

In these words, He compares, as it should seem, the hardness and coldness of heart, with which the Jews received Him ;-with that glow of rapturous devotion, which Abraham felt towards Him and hence, two important truths will follow - important both to the faith, and to the practical devotions, of a Christian: First, that Abraham believed in Christ, and hoped in Him as the future Saviour of Abraham himself, and of all mankind;-that Seed, in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed :and secondly, that Christ Himself had been seen by Abraham, and had, therefore, as Son of God, and Second Person in the Most Glorious Trinity,

existed for ages before the time, when He took the form of man, and was conceived by His Virgin Mother.

The first of these assertions is proved by the rejoicing of Abraham in Christ's day. For why should he rejoice in the expectation of an event, from which no benefit was to be derived to himself, or to so many millions of his posterity? And what benefit could he look to, but that he himself, and his posterity, were to be saved? that they should escape the wrath of God, should be raised from the dead, and made partakers of the Kingdom of Heaven, by that Being, in the hope of whose coming to accomplish these glorious purposes, he, therefore, with good reason, might rejoice with exceeding joy? If Christ, by the merits of His blood, were not to make atonement for the sins of the world, and of Abraham among the rest, of what advantage was His coming to Abraham?—of what advantage to those holy prophets, who, since the world began, spake of His coming; and fell asleep, as we read in Scripture, in the hope of the promises?

There are some pretended Christians, (Unitarians they call themselves,) who maintain, that Christ was nothing more than a man; that He only came to preach a purer doctrine, than had, before His time, been revealed to the world; and that His blood had no more power to wash away the sins of the world, than that of any other