lighting up many a dark spot, and leading many a wanderer to the only refuge for the sinful and the lost. You are now asked to contribute liberally towards this great work of multiplying churches. Applications for assistance are pouring in to the Incorporated Society, and its funds are literally exhausted. Manufacturing districts are crying for help: cities, towns, villages, all are eager to participate in the ministrations of the Established Church; though large masses of their inhabitants are now unavoidably excluded, through the want or the narrowness of churches. Support, then, the Establishment by increasing its power of doing good. Every church which is built is a new tower on its battlements. I know not whether the Establishment could have withstood recent and present assaults, had they been made some years ago, before there was any effort to increase church accommodation. But the Establishment has been so strengthened by the extension of her ministrations, that, by the blessing of God, she may defy her enemies. She has been strengthened, not by obtaining new pledges from a sovereign, or fresh patronage from nobles, but by giving thousands and tens of thousands of the poor a share in her services. She has thus rooted herself more deeply in the affections of the people: and let her only continue to hold the same course, making her ministrations N more and more commensurate with the growing demand, and thus increasingly proving herself, what no other body can even pretend to be, emphatically the poor man's church, and we can be confident that no weapon formed against her will prosper, but that her adversaries will compass their own shame and confusion. I rejoice that, required as I am by duties in another place to leave you for the ensuing month, I should have had this opportunity of making an appeal to your Christianity and your churchmanship. I go to fulfil my engagement as select preacher before the university of Cambridge during the month of November; and I shall have to carry with me to that seat of learning, with which the wellbeing of the Established Church is indissolubly bound, fresh witness that those amongst whom God hath called me to labour, are firmly attached to that Church, persuaded of its worth, and bent on its support. Ye are not, ye will not be, of those who prefer their own luxury and aggrandizement to the glory of God, and the welfare of man. Ye are not, ye will not be, of those who may be taunted with living in their cieled houses, while the house of the Almighty lieth waste. Rather will ye resolve, and act on the resolution, that, so far as in you lies, the houses of God shall be multiplied in the land, till all, young and old, rich and poor, shall have ample opportunity of owning and praising Him as Creator and Redeemer-yea, of magnifying Him for his countless mercies in words such as these which I now ask you to sing: Praise God, from whom all blessings flow, Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. SERMON IX.' THE FINAL TEST. MATT. XXV. 34-36. "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and visited me; ye I was in prison, and ye came unto me." DURING the last week, the Church has called upon us to commemorate that great event, the Ascension of Christ; and her second lesson for this morning's service, though the coincidence is accidental, follows with singular appropriateness after such a commemoration. Having seen our Lord go up into heaven, having listened to angels declaring that He shall so come again in like manner, what portion of Scripture 1 Preached at the Church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, on behalf of the Charing Cross Hospital. could be more suited to our next assembling than one which delineates under bold figures how the Son of man shall descend in his glory, and represents all nations as gathered before Him, that every man may be judged according to his works? And if the lesson might thus seem to have been chosen on purpose for the Sunday, you will allow that it is also peculiarly adapted to the occasion of my addressing you. Having to plead the cause of the sick and the destitute, whither can I better turn for motives to benevolence than to that grand sketch of the last assize, whence we learn that the test to which we shall be brought, when on trial for eternity, is that of our having shown love to others out of love to Christ? On every account, therefore, we could not long hesitate as to the subject of our present discourse. The text seemed chosen for us; and we have only to endeavour to follow out those trains of thought which it seems naturally to open. We wish, however, in order to guard against any misapprehension of our succeeding statements, to premise a few remarks on the general doctrine which our Lord's words present, and which appears to be that of our portion hereafter being to be determined by our works here. We observe at once that it cannot be improper to speak of reward from God to man, seeing that it is expressly declared in Scripture of certain actions that they shall obtain, or shall not lose, their reward. The question, therefore, is, as to the sense in which reward can follow human |