opportunity for beginning once more the way of peace which you have long forsaken.

To those among you who have children of your own now about to be confirmed this present time speaks with still greater force. It rests with you, more perhaps than you think, whether this is indeed. a turning point in their lives for good, whether they will now henceforth walk in the love and fear of God. Let me strongly urge as many of you as can to go to Hitchin church on Friday next and take part yourselves in that solemn service. But still more needful is it that at home you encourage them in all good and serious thoughts and ways belonging to the time, and support them against the laughter of foolish and worthless friends. Above all, lift up your hearts in prayers to God that they may indeed' lead the rest of their lives according to this beginning and that you and they may be enabled by His grace to help and strengthen each other in His service.

But the message is most of all sent to you who propose to come forward in your own names this week. During the last few weeks I have been bringing before you privately the chief lessons as to the step which you are about to take yourselves and the blessings which you are about to receive from on high. To-day I would dwell only on what our Lord's temptation specially teaches. You stand, as He did then, at the threshold of life. Those temptations came upon Him as He was about to go forth into the world to do His Father's work. The perfect victory over evil which He gained then stood Him in good stead in the days that followed. A

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holy and blameless childhood did not save Him from having to battle with the evil one when manhood came: new powers brought new dangers. But when that great victory was once gained, the worst was over. And so, I do not shrink from saying, it may be with you now, though in a less degree. Confirmation stands to you as a sign of the choice for good or evil which you have to make now in opening manhood or womanhood. The struggle will not indeed be over in one day. It may last in a manner for years. Nay, at different times in your life it may have to be renewed: no day of your life will pass without some call upon you to stand fast in God's name against the enemy. But much will depend on the heart and spirit in which you meet the service of Friday next. If you go to it carelessly and thoughtlessly, you do worse than lose what you might have gained: you give the enemy the advantage of a profaned and dishonoured ordinance. If, on the other hand, you meet it with eager and longing hearts, wholly distrusting yourselves, throwing yourselves on your Maker and your Redeemer, you will have taken the one great step which will make all others easier; you will find in yourselves an unlooked for power to stand against temptation when temptation comes. And if you feel the blessed memory of that day fading out of your minds, you can renew yet better and mightier memories in the Communion Feast of the Lord your Saviour, the everlasting help of them that are tempted, and find there the hope and peace which, as the hymn says, ever flow from His presence.

But Christ's temptation has other lessons for you still. “If thou be the Son of God" was the weapon of doubt with which the evil one twice assailed His faith. Believe me, it is his most dangerous weapon still. If he can keep you from learning to know that you are indeed children of the Lord of heaven and earth, that all His dealings with you are those of a Father with rebellious, but always deeply-loved children; or if, after you have become persuaded of this blessed truth, he can succeed in undermining your belief and dropping into your hearts instead black falsehoods about your Heavenly Father, his work is half done: whatever you had of religion is gone; it will be strange indeed if you can make much fight without it. As years go on, and fresh dangers throng round you: when the unruly passions of your bodies entice you to gluttony or drunkenness or uncleanness or sloth, when the false and ungodly opinion of your friends and neighbours makes you shrink from following the voice of your own conscience, when falsehood and selfwill and covetousness and hatred are thrusting themselves into your hearts, and striving to set you one against another, what will you have to lean on for help against all these tempters, if you have given up your God? And you do give Him up when you do not cleave to Him by constant prayer and praise and loving devotion to His service.

Accept Him then this week boldly and hopefully as your own. You cannot depart out of His presence or escape the reach of His hand. Thank Him that you cannot, for to be shut off from Him would be

the most dreadful of deaths. You have been taught to know Him as He is as the Father who made you, the Son who died to ransom you from sin and death, the Holy Ghost who makes you strong and holy, and knits you and all His Church together in one happy fellowship. Rejoice then in this His holy name; let the hearts of them rejoice that seek the Lord. Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His

face evermore.

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Confirmation must always have Lenten thoughts belonging to it. It can never be separated from the recollection and the dread of temptation it speaks of sins to be repented and enemies to be renounced. But Lent itself is heathenish and not Christian, if it leads us for one moment to forget the coming Easter, if it drowns the hope of life in the fear of death. Much more should Confirmation, with all its solemnity, be a time of faith and hope.

Listen to and join in the words of the psalm, which were spoken before the Son of God had died and risen again, but which ring forth with new power to us who are bred up in the faith of that blessed gospel: "When I called upon thee, thou heardest me and enduedst my soul with much strength. They shall sing in the ways of the Lord that great is the glory of the Lord. Though I walk in the midst of trouble, yet shalt thou refresh me: thou shalt stretch forth thy hand upon the furiousness of mine enemies, and thy right hand shall save me. The Lord shall make good his loving-kindness toward me yea, thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever: despise not then the works of thine own hands."

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GOD'S LOVE SHOWN IN CHRIST'S DEATH

"GOD commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."—Romans v. 8.

GOOD Friday must always be in some measure a day of mixed and contradictory thoughts for those to whom it brings any thoughts about its meaning. We cannot separate it from our greatest blessing, our redemption from the power of sin and evil. may be very careless about the matter: the thought of it may do us very little good. Still in one way

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or another we all of us believe that Christ is our Saviour, and that that name comes to Him first and foremost from His death on the cross, which we celebrate to-day.

And yet who is there that does not feel a kind of weight and discomfort upon him to-day? The tale of our Lord's sufferings is so awful in itself, the salvation bought for us is so great and wonderful, that, if we think of them at all, we long to raise our minds to a pitch in some degree suited to them.