love your fellow-men from the consideration of the gcod you could then do them. I look around me and see in varied forms a vast amount of misery. The view creates distress, and I urge you to attempt itscure.

Are you willing it should remain? Can you think of leaving your children to spend their life in the midst of it? Can you quit the world peaceably till what you can do has been done, to fertilize the moral waste, over which you expect so soon to cast a lingering, dying look. The miseries we contemplate are contagious, and may when we have done with life, enter our habitations, and prey these twenty generations, upon our children's children. If you leave one infidel, one profane man, one who is intemperate, one Sabbath-breaker, one scoffer, one disorganizer, unreformed, he may find access to the bosom of your son, may carry the pestilence into your house, may spread the plagues we contemplate through all the ranks of your posterity till they come down in a mass to perdition.

Would it not render you happy to die assured that you had been useful. If you could transport yourself to some isle of the Pacific, and by your influence and your prayers tame and evangelize its whole population, would it not seem a very desirable exploit? You may do all this good at home, and feel as joyous at last as if it had been done in the other hemisphere, and for another people. We have none about us who worship a block of wood, but we have no doubt many who are as real idolaters as can be found in the recesses of Tartary or on the banks of the Ganges. We have none who lacerate their bodies to fit themselves for heaven, but there are many who inflict upon their consciences and their peace, wounds deep and wide and incurable. We have none who may not have the word of God, but many who

trample its precepts under their feet; none without a Sabbath, but many who do not sanctify the day of rest; none who never heard the gospel, but many who never obeyed it; none without the bread that perisheth, but many who have no relish for that bread which endureth to everlasting life. Here then, on the hither side of every ocean, is a field where benevolence may operate in the cure of distress, and where it may achieve a conquest as valuable and as splendid, as can be won in any land or any clime.

V. I urge you to benevolence by one other motive, the dying love of Christ. It was in the cure of this very same distress, that he came in the flesh and died on the tree. He was rich, but for our sakes he became poor, that we through his poverty might be rich. He came to seek and to save them that were lost. His heart bled, it would seem, over the miseries of the apostacy. He felt a benevolence which to gratify, he let go all the honours of the upper world. He saw us cast out in the day that we were born, polluted, and in our blood; and as he passed by us, he bid us live. But he could only redeem us with his own blood. If he would be our friend, all the wrath which it became us to feel he must endure.

Now the same world that he pitied so much, we are inviting you to compassionate. And he declared himself our friend, while we were all his enemies. Probably some of the very court that condemned him, and the band that took him, and the guard that watched him, purged their iniquities in his blood. Hence, if men hate you it affords no reason why you should not love them. While we were yet enemies, Christ died for us

Enter then upon the work of making your fellow-men happy, and you are in the very vineyard where the Lord Jesus laboured. He has already rescued from the ruins of the apostacy, a great multitude that no man can number. The work is going on, and he invites your co-operation. To be employed with him will be honourable, and will secure to you a share with him in the same victory, and the same awards. "He that overcometh will I grant to sit with me on my throne even as I overcame and am set down with my father on his throne." It would seem that no one could resist the motive thus presented. By all that Christ has done, by every tear he shed, and every prayer he uttered, and every pang he bore, you are urged to spend your strength, and utter your prayers, and weep your tears, in the cause of the same miserable multitude. And they are your brethren, they were not his. I urge you, in the name of my Master, to love your own mother's children, those who are flesh of your flesh, and bone of your bone. You can meet no man but a brother, you can hate no man but a brother, you are invited to do good to none else.

And in the Lord Jesus you are not only presented with a motive to become benevolent, but you have a pattern by which that principle should operate. It is said of him, that he went about doing good. When the disciples of John came to inquire who he was, they were sent away with this history of him, "The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached to them." Thus all kinds of benefits that he could bestow upon a miserable world he did. His main object was to save the soul, and here he bent his mightiest efforts, because here could be applied the most effectual remedy to the maladies he came to exterminate.

But he could see misery in no shape and feel indifferent. He took our sorrows and bore our sicknesses. His path was lined with the couches of the palsied, the decrepit, the miserable; and every where there saluted him the cry of some blind Bartimeus, "Lord, Jesus, have mercy on me." And he could suffer no such cry to be suppressed till the sufferer had come near and was healed. When there came to him the ten lepers, nine of whom he knew would never return to thank him, he healed the whole. The multitude who had gone into a desert place to attend upon his ministry, although they rejected the overtures he brought them, still must not be sent away till he had fed them. If any mother wished him to bless her children, they must open her an avenue to his presence. If one petitioned for the life of his servant, he must live. If even a Sidonian would ask his help, although it was not meet to take the children's bread and cast it to dogs, and although he was not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, still the veriest outcast must not go away from his presence without a blessing. Even the famishing and heretical Samaritan must drink the living water that springeth up to everlasting life. The very man who had come to take him must not leave his presence wounded; and the thief, who in the dying hour solicited his aid, must go with him to paradise. Into every ear to which he had access he poured instruction; every house he entered he blessed; and in every village, and every street, where were the impress of his feet, were left behind him the fruits of his benevolence. Tell me the single case where he withheld the blessing that was asked, and you may go and do likewise. If he would not grant to James and John the distinction they craved in his kingdom, that

being the appropriate appointment of the Father, still he would suffer them to drink of the cup that he drank of, and be baptized with his baptism. Thus there dropped from his hand, upon the beings that came about him, every variety of blessings. Who has not been impressed with the fact, that the very first miracle done in Cana of Galilee had respect to the conveniences of a marriage feast. He knew that if he should turn their water into wine, it would supply the deficeinces of poverty, render the host respected, and the occasion more pleasant.

Thus have we the very example we need. The benevolence which we are called to exercise must take the same track, must flow in the same channel. It will lead us, as we have the ability, to do every kind of good to all men; to supply their wants, heal their sicknesses, enlighten their ignorance, relieve their anxieties, awaken their consciences, and render smooth, and safe, and pleasant, their passage through this desert world. It will lead us to feel another's wo, and weep for another's misery. When the Lord Jesus approached Jerusalem, saw them about to reject him, and exclaimed, weeping, "O that thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things that belong to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thine eyes," how strongly and how strikingly does he pour out the benevolence of his soul. Thus we are to look over a world of beings that sin has rendered miserable, and weep as he did for the calamities that are coming upon them. And there is no man so poor or insignificant but he may communicate happiness. Let him add his weight, if it be but a grain, to the accumulating mass of public sentiment that is now attempting to put down sin and misery in every form and attitude, and he will not die till he has achieved