The truth is, that so long as you obey the flesh in these matters, your spirit, that ought to be the free child of Heaven, and fellowworker with the Almighty, is kept in a miserable bondage. Those powers that ought to maintain communion with your Creator, are either imprisoned and kept inactive, or are kept drudging in the service of the enemies of your true happiness. You may be free if you will, "for where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty;" and there is no other true liberty for a spirit created in His image. But so long as you do not fairly put yourself under His guidance so long as you persist in looking at things from the point of view in which you are placed by a carnal life of self-will, so long you will see no liberty in the service of God, or, at least, none for yourself. It is in devoting yourself to Christ, and diligently keeping His Commandments, that you may expect to know the Comforter Whom He sends, and the liberty that is in Him.

For although you are not to trust every impression and feeling that purports to be from Him, but must test all impulses by His law, all notions by His Word, and by the doctrine received in His Holy Church, or

g 2 Cor. iii. 17.

even by the views and reason of those who are wiser than yourself yet you may come, and will come in time, by steady obedience, to a very well grounded belief, I may say knowledge, that you are assisted by Him, and kept by His watchful care from innumerable dangers, warned of the snares of the enemy, and strengthened against his assaults. This you will perceive, if you are heartily pursuing spiritual objects, the control of your passions and appetites, the regulation of your affections, the improvement of your knowledge of God's will, and of your ability to perform it, the knowledge of God and of His work, the furtherance of His kingdom, the relief of man's suffering. Only never forget that you are not really pursuing these as spiritual objects unless you do it with singleness of heart in His sight, and without reserving to yourself any one liberty that is against His law. The very name of the Holy Spirit may teach you that He will not dwell with any unholiness of will. Of will, I say, for there will be unholy motions of unwilling desire and inclination even in those that obey Him from the heart. To understand His forbearance as well as His strictness, is a part of the knowledge of Him which improves by ha

K

bitual obedience and continued communion with Him.

i

I will not suppose that any of you are scorners, who do not believe God's Word, or make up their minds to reject His Law, but I must be blind and deaf if I could think that you are all living Christian lives, and seeking "first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." The degree to which many of you neglect the opportunity of daily prayer here offered you, is a sign of a different mind from that of those who "continued daily with one accord in the Temple." Your prolonged parties, for what I fear is often a sort of revelling unworthy of Christians, or even of rational men, are a direct disobedience to the precepts of our Lord and His Apostles. Your little care of health in your amusements or indulgences, frequently disabling you from duty, through your own mere selfwill or carelessness, is not the conduct of men “diligent in business, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord." Your false pretence of illness is—lying. You tell one another it is understood; and that, too, is a lie ;—you know it well. It is known and suspected, but not understood. The only thing that prevents the closest espionage and severest

h S. Matt. vi. 33.

i Acts ii. 46.

k Rom. xii 11.

punishment on our part is respect for your honour, and unwillingness to disbelieve any individual, a wish to treat you as men and as Christians, in order that you may indeed be so.

I have mentioned a few things out of many which we cannot help observing, that shew a will at variance with the Spirit of God. I will not dwell on such things on this Festival, which should be a day of joy to us, and a day of peace and unity in the Spirit. But this unity can only take place when both you and we are minded to do the work of the Spirit, and to do it heartily. It should be enough for you that He, your God, is . come to aid you, that His work is that for which our Lord Jesus Christ came in the flesh and suffered, and now intercedes for us above. But nothing we can say of it will make you really understand it until you are heartily engaged in doing it. Till then, though baptized into Christ, and professing faith in Him, you rank with the world, that receives not nor knows the Heavenly Comforter. Only let your will be with Him and He works with you and in you, and it will be more and more truly said that "ye know Him."

SERMON XV.

TRINITY SUNDAY.

S. Matt, xxviii. 19.

"Go ye, therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

This day is called Trinity Sunday, and the rest of the Sundays in the year, till Advent, are called Sundays after Trinity, that we may remember God, and have Him in our mind all the year round by that holy name in which He has made Himself known to us

—the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The word Trinity is nowhere found in the Bible, but it is used to shew that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, are Three. For it means Threeness, and we find it so written in ancient English books. So Unity means Oneness, and we say Trinity in Unity to shew that the Three Persons are One God.

This is too hard for us to understand;