said to me: she, while she lived, was guilty of such an offence; you never knew it, her companions did; they encouraged her in it, she has now appeared before the Throne of GOD; for her there is no more space of repentance! We cannot limit God's infinite mercy: but can you hope with any assurance that she was a true child of CHRIST?

Dear children, it grieves me to the heart to speak to you as I am now speaking: now, while the future is open to you: now, while you may all be saved if you will. But how should I have felt, if for the first time I had heard of this sin, when for one of you it was too late to be repented of? What bitter, hopeless grief should I have gathered then from that terrible text, "Be sure your sin will find you out!"

Well, I have seen proofs of God's grace in the hearts of several of you. Are all to be lost? or is this miserable fault to hang about you, making every prayer you say a profanation, every verse you say an insult to GOD? I trust, I trust, not. But there can be no true repentance without confessing the sin. I do not mean to me. You know whom you have injured; you know how you have injured that person; you know how it has not been once or twice. I shall never accuse you. But I want you, bravely, courageously, I want you like Christian children, to accuse yourselves. I want you to go to that person, and to say what Achan

did, "Indeed, I have sinned, and thus and thus have I done." Ashamed! I dare say: but it would be a false shame: a shame you ought to tread under foot. Ashamed! it is a shame which would bring you glory in GoD's eyes: and (if you care for that) honour in mine. Ashamed! Then I should call you truly brave; then I should once more think you, what till then I never can or will think you, my own dear children; then I should once more take pleasure in, what till then I never can take pleasure in, your singing. When you are trying to be GOD's true children, you know how I enjoy that singing; how, to use the word in a good sense, how proud I am of it. But what can I be, while it is outside, heartless work; and there is no real truth or earnestness in it?

Now, my children, for our LORD's sake, Whom you never can be like, while you thus give way to habitual sin; for your own sake, as you value your souls; and last and least, for my sake, who do pray earnestly for you, and would give or suffer anything to be able to help you, put away this evil from among you. Pray against it, try against it, resolve against it, and pray, try, and resolve, so that you may acknowledge it as I have told you.

I

Now; you shall not sing again this afternoon. had rather that you all tried to collect your thoughts,

and to say, For Thy Name's sake, O LORD, be merciful unto my sin, for it is great.

And now, &c.

READING XXVII.1

"And JESUS answering said, Were there not ten cleansed ? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to GOD, save this stranger." S. LUKE xvii. 17, 18.

THERE is to this day a hill in the land of Palestine, where about our Easter time you may see the Passover lamb killed, the elders of the people taking a part in the worship, teaching the children the reason why this Feast was held, and blessing GOD, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. And who are these? These are the Samaritans, of whom you read so often in the New Testament: and that hill, Mount Gerizim, is that of which the woman of Samaria spake to our LORD; "Our fathers worshipped in this mountain." It is the oldest religion that has been kept up, as it was at the beginning, in this world. For the Jews, you know, have no temple, no priest, no sacrifice, they are wanderers and vagabonds over the face of the earth. But these poor Samaritans (there are not more than four or five thousand of them now) worship just as their fathers worshipped two thousand five hundred years ago. They have the oldest copy of the books of Moses that there is: and these books of Moses form 1 Preached the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, 1859.

all their Bible; they will have nothing to say to any other part of the Old Testament: and, of course, they utterly reject the New Testament, and will not believe in Him Who called Himself the good Samaritan, our LORD JESUS CHRIST.

Poor, obstinate people! Yet I cannot help admiring the love and faith, such as it is, that has always kept them to the same mountain, and the same form of worship; notwithstanding all the contempt and ridicule which has been heaped upon them; yes, and notwithstanding all the persecution they have endured, for at times they have been cruelly persecuted: and I cannot but hope that for the sake of the LORD JESUS CHRIST, though they know Him not, some of them, at least, will one day be taken from Mount Gerizim, where they still worship the GOD of their fathers, to Mount Sion, the City of the Living GOD, the Heavenly Jerusalem.

But now, my children, the question for you is, whether you too are not like the leprous Jews in the text, amongst whom was one of these poor Samaritans. First, think what the leprosy was. All the body came out full of white, smooth, shining boils, more like a chilblain than anything else; and when the disease was at its worst, these boils ate away the flesh, making large hollows, till at last the flesh consumed away off the bones. I do not think this was often the case among the Jews; but this was a common disease in Europe some four or

five hundred years ago; and one of the petitions in the Litanies of that time used to be, "On all poor lepers, good LORD, have mercy!" For they were driven from among men; had to live in places by themselves; were forced to receive our LORD'S Body and Blood through little windows in the outside of the Churches; if ever you go over to West Hoathly, you may see one there. And, as you know, in Leviticus we have a great number of laws about the Jewish leprosy; how they were to live apart from all men; made any one who touched them, or whom they touched, unclean; had to shave the head and cover the upper lip, and to cry, Unclean, unclean." I do not mean to say that this disease always had to do with sin, but it very often had; as you may remember how Gehazi, for the lie that he told, was covered with the leprosy of Naaman; and how king Uzziah, when he went into the Holy place to offer incense, which only priests might do, had the leprosy rise up in his forehead; and how Miriam, because she rebelled against Moses, whom GOD had set over the children of Israel, in like manner was smitten with leprosy.

66

Well, then, you see how horrible and loathsome a disease it was from which these ten men were delivered; and they knew it to be so themselves, for even when they were crying out for mercy, they stood afar off. although they were

And yet nine out of the ten, so healed, did not think it