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Him,” in His body, the Church, “ the fulness of Him that filleth all in alla."

Let this last apostolic announcement, I beseech you, be impressed deeply upon your mind, and having first taken due account, both severally and collectively, of those various symbols and simili.. tudesthe ark of Noah"the burning bush of Moses the hill of Sion"the net cast into the sea®the grain of mustard seed-the golden candlesticksthe two witnesses clothed in sackcloth"

-the woman clothed with the sun, having the moon at her feet, and a crown of twelve stars upon her head —all employed, together with their respective particulars, by the divine founder of the Church, to define its nature—to illustrate the chequered circumstances of its earthly courseand to convey the most decisive pledges of its ultimate triumph and exaltation; then add St. Paul's fore-cited figure to this luminous assemblage of descriptive imagery, and fix your contemplations upon it, as “THE BODY OF CHRIST", which he has been preparing for himself from the foundation of the world'—” for which “ he gave himself"," and is now become “ head over all things","

a Ephes. i. 23.
(Exod. iii. 2, 3.
* Mat. xiii. 31.

Ibid. xii. 1.
"Eph. v. 25.

Gen. vi. 14. comp. 1 Pet. iii. 20, 21. d Ps. cxxy. 1. e Mat. xiii. 47. & Rev. i. 20. Ibid. xi. 3. * Eph. i. 22, 23. Mat. xxv. 34. n Ibid. i. 22,

which is adopted into an union so intimate with himself, that when persecuted by Saul in the zeal of unbelief, “why persecutest thou mea,” were the overwhelming terms of his tremendous appropriation; and which, by all the “ threatening and slaughter breathed out against it,” after Haman’s and Saul's ensamples, and all the havoc made of it in all ages, by open enemies and false brethren, he is refining like gold purified seven times in the fire, that, at the great day of the consummation of the mystery of God, he “ may present it to himself a glorious Church, holy and without blemish bạas the great Apostle, with profound pathos, sets it forth," the fulness of Him that filleth all in all."

By this course of research, diligently and devoutly pursued through all these Divine sources of knowledge, the first counsel to be gathered from the text will be turned to that profit, which the transcendant interests vested in it so imperiously demand. You will know the Church, that great masterpiece and manifestation of the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, adapted to the extreme exigencies of a ruined world, a refuge throughout its generations from the wrath to come you will see it, in its perfect beauty, the joy of the whole earth—and you will take your Saviour's estimate of it, that it is your only indispensable possession—“ that pearl of great price,

a Acts, ix. 4.

Eph. v. 27.

Ibid. i. 23.

which you must purchase and retain, if need be, at the cost of all that you have a.” • It now only remains that, in the searching suggestion of the text, I should call the thoughts of each of you to the consideration of this responsibility, for who that has, in any respect, been distinguished from the mass of mankind, either in temporal prosperity, or in intellectual endowments, can know, with greater certainty than in Esther's case, whether he has come to the station he fills, and to the sway which it gives him in the counsels and affairs of men, “ for such a time as this.

Were there any thing miraculous, either in Esther's elevation in the issue which resulted from her interposition with Ahasuerus or in the intermediate incidents by which that issue was brought about, some question might reasonably be raised as to the relevancy of her example; but let all the circumstances of her narrative be severally examined, the fall of Vashti—and her preferment-and reception afterwards when she made her supplication—the conspiracy against the life of Ahasuerusand Mordecai's detection of it—the omission on the part of the King to reward him at the timeand the greatly-enhanced measure of that recompense, when a sleepless night induced the monarch to have the hours beguiled by the records of his kingdom, and he was suddenly smitten with the reproach of having made no requital to his deliverer :-let these circumstances be subjected severally to the minutest scrutiny, and they must be admitted to be of ordinary occurrence; and it is not till the catastrophe is brought to pass, that God's providence is discovered to have over-ruled them all, and made them work together to produce it; and that Esther appears to be, what Mordecai's faith prompted him to anticipate, as much God's appointed instrument to preserve His Church by a great deliverance, as Joseph and Moses, both raised up by the same secret disposals, had been in ages past, when in the one case famine, and in the other oppression, had reduced this chosen people to similar extremities.

* Mat. xiii. 46.

If then a weak, a defective, or a perverted faith, if a fearful or a divided heart, or, what is worse, of a frame of mind allied to Gallio's, and caring nothing for the things of Jesus Christ, have hitherto indisposed you to regard the signs of the times, and the constraining call they make upon you to quit yourselves towards the Church as His faithful soldiers and servants, be admonished by Mordecai's warning voice-catch a portion of that zealfor this holy heritage with which, as the Evangelist testifies , its divine founder, in the days of His flesh, was absolutely " eaten,” and rouse your spiritual energies to a more enlightened judgment, and to worthier resolutions. To Him and to His Church it is of the smallest possible

a John ii. 17.

account, whether you come to its help against the modern Agagites now as it were gaping to devour it, or parry the obligation with specious pretences, but to yourselves it is of the most intense importance : and though, in the text, it is upon Mordecai's sole authority that these positions rest, because Esther's amended purpose, not to hold her peace, superseded the necessity of deliverance from another place, and changed the threatened destruction of herself and family into a splendid recompense, yet that they are faithful sayings, of irreversible authority, and universal application in God's providential government, there can be no reasonable doubt; for many are the recorded instances of God's preserving His Church in despite of the abandonment of its natural protectors, and no appeal beyond ourselves, the grafted branches into the stock of Abraham when the Jews were broken off, can be necessary to show that God knows how to provide effectually for the Church's perpetuation, at the same time that any unprofitable portion of it is destroyed.

Let Esther's example, then, be adopted as your pattern, and steadfastly embracing her awakened conviction, in the enlarged view of it which I have been endeavouring to set forth, take each of you this true estimate of your Christian responsibility, that you are come to your respective places and influence in society, as she came to the kingdom,

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