accountable agents, redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ and enlightened by His Holy Spirit.

In the same way, it is easy to find out whether a given course of conduct is right or not, by asking ourselves, What would our Lord Jesus Christ have done, or have advised us to do, in the days of His flesh? The answer to this simple inquiry will at once satisfy us as to twothirds of the questions which we treat as open, or as perplexing. We know how He would have dealt with what we sometimes think a proper pride," or due care of our own interests," or "marrying" (so to describe the process) a divorced person, or making everything give way to amassing a fortune. And as to the remaining third of unsettled questions, we can generally find our way, by thinking out their points of analogy with questions which He has settled; by applying, with needful adjustments and allowances, the principles which He has laid down; or by weighing probabilities, such as may be inferred from an anxious and accurate survey of what is in itself beyond discussion.

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And if, when this has been done, there still remain districts of conduct where the right course is indistinct, and where for the time we stumble in darkness and see not the light, and note how even good men take divergent paths or opposite sides, we can at least ask our Lord, Who has promised to guide us, to show us the way that we should walk in, since we lift up our souls to Him.

"Lead, kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,

Lead Thou me on;

The night is dark, and I am far from home,

Lead Thou me on.

Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see

The distant scene; one step enough for me.'

a St. Matt. v. 3, 5, 38-40; xxiii. 12.

c Ib. v. 32.

↳ Ib. xvi. 24-26.

a Ib. vi. 19, 20; St. Mark x. 23-25; St. Luke xii. 15–21. e J. H. Newman, Lyra Apostolica, No. xxv.

We stand this afternoon within a few hours of the close of another year; and we are each of us one year nearer to death and judgment, to Heaven or to hell, than we were on the 31st of December, 1881. A truism, some one will say. Yes, but also, an awful truth. How much has passed since this day last year! Some great national mercies at once occur to us as subjects for thankfulness to the Giver of all good. A war has been brought to a speedy conclusion. And if to a serious Christian war can at the best appear nothing better than a dreadful and humiliating necessity, we may reflect with thankfulness that its early and successful termination has involved less human suffering than would have resulted from a prolonged campaign. Something, too, we may hope, has been done to arrest the systematic perpetration of murder in the sister island; and there is no question between us and any foreign power which threatens a rupture of European peace. But how many But how many familiar figures-stateswriters, soldiers, jurists, divines-have passed into the unseen world since this time last year! One especially occurs to us here, since he was among the clergy of this Church. His gentle and kindly nature, and amid weakness and failing health, unwearied devotion to duty, and perfect consideration for others, and simple and unaffected piety, will long endear him to us who have had the happiness of serving our Lord in his company, on the foundation of this Cathedral. And others there are whose death has caused more general concern. Three may be mentioned. The death of an Archbishop of Canterbury can never be an unimportant event to members of the Church of England; and the late

men, popular

a The Egyptian campaign against Arabi, September, 1882.

b The Rev. J. V. Povah, M.A., Rector of St. Anne and St. Agnes, Aldersgate, and Minor Canon of St. Paul's, died February 28, 1882.

Primate was a man whose character and ability would have made him remarkable in any position. Not less noteworthy is the death of the noble and single-hearted Missionary Bishop, whose ambition it was to win Central Africa for Christ. And one other has passed from among us, who of late years was rarely seen, but whose name and influence were, and are, and will yet be, a moral power of the first importance; a man who could stir the hearts of men in their most serious moments as, in these later days of Christendom, few men have ever stirred them; a man in whom immense learning, and fearless devotion to truth and duty, and inexhaustible tenderness, and all those finer aspects of character which constitute saintliness, went hand in hand; a member of that company of elect souls whom God permits to appear on earth at intervals that they may do some special work in His kingdom, while their withdrawal into His nearer Presence is felt at the time, and is looked back to in after ages, as an event of great moment to the spiritual life of mankind. And in how many is there now a vacant place which was filled one short year ago, and which reminds us who survive that the time is short; and that it remains that "they that have wives, be as though they had none; and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as though they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; and they that use this world, as not abusing it for the fashion of this world passeth away"! We stand for these few hours at a division of time;

d

a Archibald Campbell Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, died December 3, 1882.

The Right Rev. Edward Steere, D.D., Missionary Bishop of Central Africa, died August 27, 1882.

The Rev. E. B. Pusey, D.D., died at Ascot, Berks, September 16, 1882.

we look backward and we look onwards. How many of us will still be here on the last day of next year? What may or may not await us between this day and that; what successes, what failures, what disappointments, what surprises! Perhaps some accession of happiness of which we form no idea! Perhaps the forfeiture of all that we most love in this world! Perhaps the last scene of all; and the opening of that new existence, upon which so many have lately entered whom we have known. and loved! Brethren, only one thing will enable us to look forward to this uncertain future with entire tranquillity; the Light of Jesus Christ our Lord in our souls; the power to say with humble confidence, "The Lord is my Light and my Salvation; whom then shall I fear? the Lord is the Strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?"

THE

SERMON XVIII.

PROVIDENCE AND LIFE.

(SUNDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS.)

Ps. XXXI. 17.

My time is in Thy Hand.

HE Prayer-book Version of the Psalms does not always keep so close to the letter of the Hebrew as does the Authorized Version. But it is not often less true to the general drift and spirit of the writers. And, being in itself, as a piece of English, much more beautiful than the Authorized Version, it enables us the better to conceive of the beauty of the original. The truth is, the Prayer-book Version was made at a time when the English language had reached the zenith of its perfection; the men of the sixteenth century had a more perfect ear for the harmonies and the resources of our mother-tongue than the men of the seventeenth. How far we of the nineteenth have fallen below the standard of the seventeenth may be gathered from the recent attempt to produce a Revised Version; but in the seventeenth century the decline had already begun. Various fancies and conceits, some of foreign origin, had made men less content with that earlier speech, so strong, so simple, so clear, so tender, which was in the mouths of our forefathers