how many must there be who are now safe in Paradise! Think then, in these same walls where we now are, how many victories there have been against temptation, how much patience under suffering, how much sorrow for sin, how many resolutions with God's help to renounce the devil and all his works! Probably, nay almost certainly, there is not a single room of all the rooms we live in, from which, at some time or other, a Christian soul has not departed to Paradise. This ought to be a check on all of us, when we are tempted to do evil. How can I do this wickedness, and sin against the LORD here? here, where in past times, some one of GOD's servants has fallen asleep; here, where the Angels then were, ready to carry his soul into Abraham's bosom; here, where he first beheld, however dimly and indistinctly, the glory of GOD, and Jesus standing at the right hand of GoD to help him in that agony of death? here, where death first began to have dominion over his body, sown in corruption, that it might be raised in incorruption? here, where that saying has been fulfilled, "Blessed"—and oh, who shall tell how blessed!66 are the dead which die in the

LORD."

But what, if I were to remind you of the other thought which might weigh with us when the devil would lead us to sin? As these rooms have seen some blessed departures-God grant they may have been many, and the more they have been, or shall be, the more His Name be blessed!-so how can we doubt that some, at least, of those who have formerly lived in them departed from them out of grace, and are now awaiting the resurrection of damnation? If our LORD'S words are true, so it must have been for He says,

"Strait is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth unto life; and few there be that find it." So again, each of you may ask yourselves, How can I sin here? here, where the time has been that a man would have given untold wealth for one hour's space of repentance, and found it not; where he has uttered that exceeding bitter cry, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved;" where he has seen that CHRIST'S Blood had no longer any power to save him, the HOLY GHOST no longer any will to strive with him; when the Church has no longer been able to intercede for him, when he has felt himself shut out from all Christian men, from all good Angels, from all sight and comfort of GOD, from all light, and from all hope, when devils have taken his soul, and carried it away to dwell with them for ever, and for ever, and for ever! This is no fancy. These things have happened again and again; have happened here again and again; have happened where we go on sinning and repenting, repenting and sinning, again and again. Even in hell, those who are lost keep some of their earthly feelings, at least at first they do; we know it from the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. What do you think that they who once dwelt in this place, but who now dwell where the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever, would say, when they see you, their successors, rushing into sin, and going headlong to the same place that is prepared for them? "Tell them," they would say, "that for one morsel of meat we sold our birthright; that we found no place of repentance, though we sought it carefully with tears. Ask them who among them can dwell with the devouring fire, who among them can dwell with everlasting burning?

Testify unto them, lest they also come to this place of torment."

But who can tell how those miserable ones would urge you? Who can tell what it is the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched? A good man of old time, to set forth their state, wrote a poem in which he makes them speak thus:

"For ever and ever is a long time!
Were a heap of sand before our eyes
Exceeding the whole world in size,

And a bird every thousand years should come

To take one single grain therefrom,

And God would grant deliverance,

When the last grain of all were taken thence,

We should have hope that some one day

Our misery might pass away.

But now beneath GOD's wrath we lie,
Hopeless and lost, eternally."

But, before I end, we will look once more back to those of God's servants who, having done His will while they lived in this place, have now gone to a better habitation, that is an heavenly. Would they not, think you, exhort you to run with patience the race that is set before you? Would they not urge you to pray in the very spot where they prayed, to repent in the very spot where they repented, to do your duty in that state of life in which it once pleased GOD to place them, as it has now pleased Him to place you? Only to pray more earnestly, to repent more deeply, to do your duty more diligently? Would they not tell you that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with that glory? Would they not exhort you to strive to enter in, because with all your strivings the entrance will be hard enough?

They would indeed. And the time will come when these servants of GoD, of whom, as of the Martyr of this day, we know nothing now, shall be known by all. The poor shall not always be forgotten. GOD, Who has their names written in the book of life, will one day proclaim them to men and Angels. And in the meantime, we are knit together with them in one communion and fellowship. I will tell you how a poet of our own speaks:

"But could we lay the body by,

And wash our eyesight clean,
Then look into the boundless sky,
How different 'twould be seen!
What now is void and silent space,
Were full and vocal then ;
Its habitants a heavenly race,

Though once our fellow-men."

And now to GOD the FATHER, GOD the Son, and GOD the HOLY GHOST, be all honour and glory for ever. Amen.

SERMON XLIII.

THE BUSH THAT BURNED, AND WAS NOT BURNT.

Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Dec. 8.

"AND THE ANGEL OF THE LORD APPEARED UNTO MOSES IN A FLAME OF FIRE OUT OF THE MIDST OF A BUSH. AND HE LOOKED, AND BEHOLD, THE BUSH BURNED WITH FIRE, AND THE BUSH WAS NOT CONSUMED."-EXODUS III. 2.

I HAVE often told you, that it is hardly possible to open a page of the Old Testament without finding some striking type of our LORD. In like manner, here and there His Blessed Mother, Saint Mary, is also set forth to us. Now to-day, when the Church would have us remember her, whom all generations shall call Blessed, we cannot do better than to think over one of these types. It has always been a favourite one with the servants of God; and sets forth most plainly to us how our LORD, Who was begotten of the FATHER before all worlds, was nevertheless born in these latter times of a pure Virgin.

Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro his father-inlaw, the Priest of Midian; and he led them to a part of the desert, where it joined Mount Horeb. We are not