bear, being injured, "Well done, good and faithful servants."

In short, whatever we do or endure, upon principle, because our conscience tells us it is right, or because the love of God constrains us, and because we have determined to offer before him of the travail of our souls, is an oblation, like that of David; for it is not offered to the Lord our God out of that which has cost us nothing.

Lastly, if our work, or our endurance, be done truly in that spirit, it is also an oblation in the spirit of one greater than David; even of that Son whom David called his Lord. He indeed gave of his own, and we only of that which he first enables us to give. But this is verily and indeed "partaking of Christ," when by daily perseverance in well-doing we fill up in ourselves that in which we have hitherto come short of the devoted life of Christ. Nor can there ever be a better opportunity for thus righting what is wrong in ourselves, than when we are invited, in words full of comfort and of blessing, to remember the sacrifice of that Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. Like in that grand Psalm (50th) in which Jehovah calls to all the holy people who were in covenant with him, so his words call to you to-day; "Offer unto God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows unto the most High; and call upon Him in the day of trouble; He will deliver thee, and thou shalt praise Him."

Hear also St Paul beseeching you, not by the terrors, but by the great mercies of God, that you would not honor Him with that which has cost you naught; but

bring your whole hearts, your lives, yourselves, as the living sacrifice to do his will, and to accept henceforward whatever portion He shall assign you. Blessed be his name, the God of all consolation, who comforts us even in our sorest distress, by enabling us then to offer before his throne something which has cost us much, even our pain, our patience, our secret groanings, our entire bowing down in the dread, yet strangely-comforting thought, Oh Father, not our will, but thine be done. Such comfort has almost a sad sound; even as, Take up thy cross, or, Go and suffer something for me, is not so flattering an invitation, as Come and reign, or, Thou shalt sit on my right hand and my left. Yet whoever makes experience of thus giving himself freely and without reserve to God, for Christ's sake, even as Christ freely gave himself for us, will find a blessedness of peace which the world cannot give or take away. Take we, then, brethren, this yoke upon us, for it is easy; and the burthen of Christ, for we shall find it light.

LAMPETER, Midlent, March 6, 1853.

SERMON VII.

DEBORAH'S SONG.

Then sang Deborah and Barak the son of Abinoam on that day, saying, Praise ye the Lord for the avenging of Israel. Judges v. 1, 2.

A CERTAIN kind of sacredness appears ever to have been stamped by the Almighty upon the several sentiments which were necessary to preserve either the family or the state. That the parent indeed should cherish the child, was a provision so amply involved in the gentle teaching of nature, as to require no written commandment. But that the child in turn should honour and reverence the parent, was at the same time suggested by nature and reason, and also embodied in those ten fundamental precepts, which formed the essential characteristic of the law given by Moses on Mount Sinai. From such a reverence of our fathers the sentiment of love to our fatherland is so natural an offshoot, as to appear but a slight extension of it. No nation has been found to which the Divine wisdom ever revealed itself in even the dimmest degree and obscurest fashion, without some recognition of the sentiment, that a man's country has a claim alike on his services and on his affection. "We are not born merely for ourselves," said

all the noble spirits among the Gentiles; nor does the circle of our duty end with our immediate family, but embraces those whom God has bound to us by the ties of neighbourhood, citizenship, and national law.

Among the Israelites the same feeling shews itself in so earnest and devoted a form, that it is not always easy to distinguish how far some of the glowing expressions of psalmist and prophet should be ascribed mainly to the inspiration of patriotism or to that of religion. The Sion, of which her children grieve to see the stones in the dust, is at once the city which their fathers built, and the spot where the sanctuary of Jehovah stands. To dwell in the land is the inheritance of the pious, and to be cut off from it the portion of the wicked. Scarcely is any wish thought more worthy of being cherished by the saintly patriot than that he may see Jerusalem in prosperity all his life long.

Now it will be readily allowed, that whatever draws a man out of the narrow will of his own selfish desires, is in itself so far good. But supposing, again, a sentiment which has been so far useful, takes up its range at but a short distance from the man, and refuses to be carried farther, it may become in its turn not a means of widening the sympathies, but a mode of narrowing them. We can easily imagine cases, or our memory may supply us with them, in which the feeling of attachment to a particular country has been so intense, as to overrule the universal obligations of good faith, justice, and truth. Nor ought it to surprise us if in the earlier stages of the world's history we find such a sentiment

existing in its ruder forms. It may have glowed in

men's breasts so effectively as to perform all the work of which our Maker intended it to be the instrument, giving a stimulus to valour, and a bond of union to societies; yet have been guilty in its kind of some excesses, which a more enlightened humanity than that of the age would have been required duly to correct.

The very circumstance, indeed, of the sentiment to which we allude, being a natural sentiment, might prepare us to expect some excess in its ruder manifestations. It would seem a province destined for the gradual progress of mankind, to suggest one after another checks and limitations on feelings acknowledged to be natural. And, as this process might on the whole be step by step, so if at any time it should please Almighty God to teach his rational creatures in any more signal and remarkable manner, constituting thereby an epoch in the history of mankind, we should then expect the corrections to be supplied which the ruder capacities of nature might require. We did not want a new revelation to teach us that our nature possessed certain instincts; but we do appear to have needed some emphatical caution (or some warning from no less authoritative voice than that of our Maker), against the abuses into which an unrestrained indulgence of those instincts might hurry us unawares. Hence, when the Only-begotten Son of God came teaching mankind the way of peace, He deemed it unnecessary to recommend men the love of their own country; He says nothing of selecting one person rather than another for the more tender offices of friendship; and it is only on a special occasion, with reference to a particular abuse, that He reminds men of the primary duties of honouring