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the fierce and bitter trial of persecution from those who were dearest to it upon earth. Instances have been recorded, in which the idolatrous parent gave up his child to suffer death for the crime of being a Christian, instances in which an idolatrous son betrayed an aged father, and brought down the axe on his head,-instances in which the crown of martyrdom was beset with more piercing thorns by the thought of him whose hand placed it on the shrinking sufferer's brow. But as the trial in these cases had a double measure of anguish, so in some of them it was rewarded with a double measure of blessing. Sometimes it happened that the father, who had ruthlessly given up his child to death, because it would not join in his idolatrous worship, was toucht by the fortitude which that child manifested in the hour of death, and was brought thereby to acknowledge the power of that faith, which was able to bear up the spirit when the flesh was sinking. Instances are recorded in which the martyrdom of the child was the means appointed by God for converting the heart of the father. Blessed termination of the variance which Christ came to bring between the members of the same household! Blessed child! how great must its joy have been to meet that father in the courts of heaven, whom it had left the hardened slave of heathenish idolatries! How its heart must have overflowed with thankfulness to Him, who had rendered its sufferings the means of its father's salvation !

Such grievous and terrible trials had the disciples of Christ to undergo in the early ages of the Church. Of the trials to which Christians in these days are exposed, and which may be regarded as in some measure answering to those I have just been mentioning, I shall have to speak to

you another Sunday. In the mean time you must all surely perceive that from the heaviest and most heartrending part of the trials with which God visited the early Christians, we are mercifully spared. Surely too you must feel that we have great reason for thankfulness, in that we are no longer called to follow Christ out of the midst of a Heathen world, in that we are no longer under the necessity of setting our face against our parents, and the religion of our parents, when we come through Christ to God. Great cause have we for thankfulness, in that we are born in the bosom of the Church, in that our parents themselves bring us to the baptismal font, in that all the members of the same family come to church together, and join in the worship of God, father along with son, and mother along with daughter. O that we may all prize this great blessing as we ought, and use it as we ought! and then we may hope that the ties, which unite us here on earth, will never be broken, or at least only for a time, and that those whom we have loved the most dearly upon earth, will be restored to our love imperishably in the presence of the Father of Love.

SERMON XVI.

HEAVENLY AND EARTHLY LOVE.

MATTHEW X. 37.

He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.

IN speaking to you of our Saviour's declaration, that He was come to set the son at variance against the father, and the daughter against her mother, I tried to explain how it was, that the Onlybegotten Son of the Eternal Father, He whose meat and drink it was to do His Father's will,-He who was the Fulness of all Love in Himself, and the Giver of all Love to others,-He who came to set up the perfect Law of Love, as that in which alone every other law is fulfilled, in which alone every other law lives and moves and has its being,-could yet say of Himself, that He was come to sow division in families, to sow enmity in that which ought to be the home. and temple of Love. This declaration, we saw, was intended to bear in a more especial manner on the first age of the Church; and it was occasioned by the state of the world at the time when the foundations of the Church were to be laid. In laying the foundations of a building, we dig into the earth, and tear up its bosom: and the loftier and massier the building is designed to be, the deeper do we dig, the more we tear up the earth. Whereas, when the foundations have once been laid solidly, the earth closes around them, and supports them;

and the stones are set on, tier above tier, without any further disturbance to it. In like manner, when the foundations of that Church, which was to overarch the world, and to last as long as the world, were to be laid, it was necessary that they should be laid deep in the heart and soul of man; it was necessary that the hearts of men should be torn and broken up, so that the foundations might not rest on those feelings which spread along the surface, but might be firmly grounded on the central, primary rocks of our nature.

Now there were two reasons, we further saw, in the state of the world in our Lord's days, which rendered it unavoidable that He, who came to call mankind into the Kingdom of Heaven, should in many cases set the son at variance against the father, and the daughter against her mother. In the first place, all the world was then lying in the darkness and bondage of idolatrous superstitions. But the change which Christ came to work in mankind, was not to be wrought upon men in a mass: it was to be wrought in each several heart. Hence, as it was always found, that, among those who were called, only some gave ear to the call, while others turned away, it could not but often happen, even among the members of the same household, that some would be moved by the preaching of the Gospel, while others would harden their hearts against it. In such cases, as a man who forsakes his religion has always been accounted worthy of the utmost scorn and loathing,—which indeed he would be, if he forsook it from any worldly motive, as the very names, apostate and renegade, which are given to such persons, are held to imply everything hateful and abominable, it could not but be that those who clung to the worship of their old Heathen gods would often abhor

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