Yes, I do regard you as gathered for the lofty purpose of consecrating yourselves anew to the guardianship of life. And it gives a majestic aspect to this our assembling, to consider it designed for the throwing fresh ardency into a conflict with death. Followers of Him, who could describe Himself as "the Resurrection and the Life," of whom it was emphatically said, that He "abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel;" ye meet to resolve that the grave shall not conquer without a struggle; that, if thousands must yet go down with the waves for their winding sheet, thousands more, though environed by peril, shall escape safe to shore, warned by your beacons, guided by your charts, and steered by your pilots. Surely it can hardly be that the vow will be made by any insincerely, or that it will not be acted upon fervently. If there be the sunken rock, which has not hitherto been sufficiently marked; the channel, whose intricacies have not been industriously explored; the sandbank, whose position has not been carefully defined; the pilot, whose sobriety and knowledge have not been thoroughly ascertained; ye will go hence to improve and perfect the arrangements which have already done so much to vindicate for Christianity the high praise of preserving human life. In some respects ye have more power than in others; but in all ye have done enough to warrant the expectation, that, ere long, there will be scarcely a deficiency to supply. Rocks, indeed, and shoals,

and quicksands, require not your constant vigilance: once accurately defined, you have done your part in directing how to shun them. But pilots demand incessant attention: you authorize them as guardians of property and life: you pledge yourselves to the world for their competence: alas, what a blot were it on your glorious escutcheon, if, though no carefulness can secure you against faithless servants, carelessness should admit those whose unworthiness

might have been known! It is like admitting into the priesthood a man whose unfitness a strict scrutiny would have detected: the pilot who cannot steer the labouring ship, like the pastor who cannot guide the wandering soul, is risking men's eternity; the one may cut off opportunities of repentance, as the other may fail to impress its necessity; both, therefore, may work an everlasting injury; and surely, in regard of both, they who might have prevented the injury, are not clear of its com

mission.

There remains nothing but that we tell you, with all simplicity and affection, that, in proportion as ye are yourselves fraught with the wisdom which gives life, will ye be fitted for the faithful performance of duties which, dictated by Christianity, throw over it a lustre, and establish its excellency. For never let it be thought that any trust can be as well discharged without as with personal religion. To receive into the heart "the wisdom which is from above," is to fit ourselves for the tasks assigned us

below. Let me borrow an illustration from an English nobleman, whose son had objected that no apparent good followed the rite of Confirmation, that there was no visible difference between those who submitted to, and those who neglected, so sacred an ordinance. "Tell me," said the father, "what difference your eye can detect between two needles, one of which has received an electric shock, whilst the other has not? And yet the one has hidden virtues, which occasion will show, of which the other has none. The electric shock has rendered the one needle a magnet, which, duly balanced, will enable man to find his way across the trackless ocean. As this needle, so may that soul be, which has received the electric shock of the Holy Ghost: on the ocean of a sinful world, it shall point wanderers to the haven of everlasting rest."

I borrow this illustration, and dare assert, that, if the eye cannot scan the difference, yet will they who open the heart to the religion of Jesus, be the needle which has received the electric shock, as compared with others who know that religion only in name. They will be emphatically givers of life, as though, like the needle, they were endowed with new properties, and men might steer by them in the darkest night and on the roughest waters. Feeling that they have drawn life, eternal life, from Christ, they will burn with desire to lead others to the Saviour, and to prove his Gospel, in every sense,

the chart and charter of the world. And therefore do we know, that, in exhorting each to be watchful, that he make not shipwreck of the soul, we take the best means of urging upon each, that, in his station and place, he be more assiduous than ever in perfecting arrangements for preserving human life. Our exhortation, then, is, that ye prepare to "appear before the judgment-seat of Christ," lest, having reared the lighthouse, ye be yourselves dashed against the rocks; having furnished the pilot, ye be driven with no compass into eternity, that ocean unfathomable, and without a shore. Terrible will be the hurricane, when, in the midst of dissolving elements, of falling worlds, the Son of man shall appear as Judge of quick and dead. Then shall many a noble ship, freighted with reason, and talent, and glorious and beautiful things, be broken into shreds. Then shall many a bark founder which had floated gracefully along, with every flag flowing as though life had been a holiday. And the only vessels which shall ride out the storm, shall be those which, having made the Bible their map, and Christ their light, steered boldly for a new world, in place of coasting the old.

SERMON III.'

THE LEAST OF SERVICE TO THE GREATEST.

1 CORINTHIANS xii. 21.

"And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee; nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you."

THE Corinthian Church, here addressed by St. Paul, was unhappily torn by many schisms and dissensions. There had been a rich distribution amongst its members, of the various miraculous endowments which accompanied, or resulted from, the effusion of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost; but these gifts, in place of being used for purposes of edification, were ostentatiously displayed, and made occasions of bitterness and contention.

To show the wrongness and unreasonableness of this state of things, St. Paul drew an illustration from the human body, in which a great variety of

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Preached before the Corporation of Trinity House, on Trinity Monday, 1842.