ceive (x). Blessings in the present life, blessings beyond the grave, are ensured to those who are bountiful; bountiful, that is to say, from the Christian motive. When the divine blessing is pledged to attend any course of conduct, it is on the affumption that the conduct proceeds from love to God. Otherwise, ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven. Let bounty be the fruit of religion; and alms no less than prayers shall come up for a memorial before God (y). Blessed is he that considereth the poor: the Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. The Lord will preserve him, and keep him alive, and he shall be blessed upon the earth: Thou wilt not deliver him into the will of his enemies. The Lord will strengthen him upon his bed of languishing. Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me (x). You know the reverse of the description. You know the doom of the un charitable. (x) Acts, xx. 35. (y) Acts, x. 4. My My brethren, as children and stewards of God, objects of His love and dispensers of His blessings, may we give all diligence in the exercise of Christian bounty; of bounty habitual, ample, cheerful, discriminating; bounty directed to the glory of God, bounty for the sake, and according to the example, of our Redeemer. May the Lord make us to encrease and abound in love one towards another, and towards all men (a)! (a) 1 Thess. iii. 124 SER Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? CHRISTIAN tempers, and their oppo sites, have an intimate connection with Christian Morality. The one, and of course the other, may be in their nature such, that their immediate exercise can reach only to men. Thus of the Christian temper, Liberality, and of its opposite, Covetousness, man only can be the actual object. In this case, and in every similar example, the influence of the Christian or unchristian temper on Morality is manifest. There are other dispositions, Christian and their contraries, as humility, pride, gratitude, unthankfulness, of which the immediate exercise may be directed either towards God or towards When it is directed towards men, men. the influence on Morality is unequivocal. Nor, when the exercise of the disposition is directed towards God, is the influence on Morality disputable. The exercise towards God of any frame of mind, becoming or unbecoming one of His creatures, has a decided bearing on the Morality of the individual: partly, by forming a habit of mind favourable or unfavourable to right conduct towards men; and partly by promoting or impeding those communications of divine grace, on which, as the fruit of the vine-branch on nutriment derived from the vine, right conduct towards men depends. In the present discourse the nature and the effects of Discontent, a temper wholly opposite to a Christian disposition, are to be investigated. The parable of the labourers in the vineyard appears to have had, like other parables delivered by our Lord, a two-fold purpose. It seems to have been designed partly, to indicate in a prophetical manner the malignant dissatisfaction, with which the Jews would contemplate, after the ascension of Christ, the admission of the Gentiles to a participation of the blessings of the gospel on a footing of equality with the descendants from Abraham: and partly, to warn men in all future ages against ་ against the indulgence of a kindred spirit of discontent on any other occasion. It is to the latter purpose that the parable is now to be applied. When the labourers assembled in the evening to receive their wages, the owner of the Vineyard bountifully directed that a sum the same with that which he had contracted to give to the persons who had been hired early in the morning should also be paid to the others, who had been hired at later periods of the forenoon, or in the afternoon, or even but an hour before sunset. This determination raised no inconsiderable discontent among the labourers who had been sent early to the work, and who now imagined that they should receive an addition to the terms for which they had bargained. Disappointed in their expectation, they murmured against the good man of the house, saying; These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one of them, some one who stood forward more clamorously than the rest, and said; Friend, I do thee no wrong. Didst not thou agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is, and go thy way. I will give unto this last even as unto thee. Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with 03 mine |