salvation, and stands with the pardon sealed. There you are a convicted criminal; on one side of you the blissful abodes of heaven, on the other the fiery gulf of hell. The terms for your acceptance are, "Repent, and believe the Gospel;" repent you truly of your former sins, stedfastly purposing to lead a new life; have a lively faith in God's mercy through Christ, with a thankful remembrance of His death, and be in charity with all men." These are the proffered terms on which the Judge offers to remit your sentence. Will you reject them, and reply against God, and claim acquittal as your right? If not, if you joyfully, and gratefully, and unreservedly close with the conditions, then, being "dead to the law," (as affording any ground or means of justification,) you are “alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord." It matters not, (for I desire in these few concluding words to speak comfortably to some burthened sinner,) it matters not how crimsoned your sins, your guilt of how dark a dye. Let them not stand in the way to keep you from your waiting and listening God. From a full and faithful heart pour out in secret your confessions, your sorrows, your sins before Him. He will not be worse

than His word. Hear what He once said to a whole nation of grievous sinners, and what He said to them, He says to sinners now who are willing to turn to Him; "I will cleanse them from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me; and I will pardon all their iniquities, whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me." So will God do by your sins. He will, in the language of

His own inspired Word, "Cast all your sins behind His back," out of His sight, "into the depths of the sea. He will do all this for the love of Christ who gave Himself for you. For as none can be saved but through the Blood of the Atonement, so is that Blood so precious in His sight that no sin is beyond the compass of it. Oh! I would that some poor perishing sinner, who has lived so far away from holiness that he thinks himself shut out beyond the reach of mercy, and is perhaps either reckless or despairing; I would that grace and godly sorrow so touched his heart at this moment, as to inspire him with the godly resolution to cast himself on God's pardoning mercy through Christ! He should not so come unto God in vain. A penitent and a believing heart should then be his together, and he should be a pardoned soul. I do not promise him too much. For whatever else I may be, however unworthy I may be, I am yet an ordained minister of Christ's holy Catholic Church, and this is the message of the embassy with which I am charged; that "God hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead be ye reconciled to God. For He hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him."

HANNAH AND PENINNAH;

OR, FRETTING, AND CAUSING TO FRET.

Preached 4th Sunday after Trinity, 1857.

"And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret."-1 Sam. i. 6.

THERE was a certain man, whose name was Elkanah. And he had two wives; the name of the one was Hannah, and the name of the other Peninnah and Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children. And Peninnah provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the Lord had shut up her womb. And so it was year by year, that when she went up to the house of the Lord, Peninnah provoked her; therefore Hannah wept, and did not eat. Then said Elkanah her husband to her, Hannah, why weepest thou? and why eatest thou not? and why is thy heart grieved? am not I better to thee than ten sons? So she ate and drank, still she was in bitterness of soul, and went up to the Lord's house, and prayed to the Lord, and wept sore. And it came to

pass, as she continued praying before the Lord, that Eli the priest marked her mouth. Now Hannah, she spake in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice was not heard therefore Eli thought she had been drunken. And Eli said unto her, How long wilt thou be drunken? put away thy wine from thee. And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have poured out my soul before the Lord out of the abundance of my complaint and grief have I spoken. Then Eli answered and said, Go in peace and the God of Israel grant thee thy petition that thou hast asked of Him.

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A celebrated author has said, "Our own unhappiness we make, or find." By which I conceive him to mean, that most of the sorrows we endure do not lie directly in our path, but that we go out of our way to look for them, and to pluck them, and to bring them home, as children do wild flowers and berries from the hedges and woods; or as one went out into the field to gather herbs, and found a wild vine, and gathered thereof wild gourds his lap full, and came and shred them into the pot of pottage: and when they poured out for the men to eat, there was death in the pot; because the herbs which they had been carelessly gathering were poisonous.

So, my dear brethren, it is a careless unconcern for each other, in what perhaps appear to us little things and of trifling importance, which causes in the aggregate an amount of suffering-daily, hourly suffering -compared with which the great and unavoidable

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evils of human life are in reality insignificant. Sicknesses must sometimes be expected, and sorrows we must occasionally bear, and death will come at last; but we go wandering and searching about to gather impertinences, and petty repinings, and needless provocations, and vexatious doings, and bitter words, and contemptuous sneerings, and divers other things which serve to irritate and annoy, and throw these wild gourds into the pot, and mix them up with the daily food of life, and pour out for those who are about us, and they find to their cost that there is death in the pot. And one thing we may be quite sure of, that they, who dress and serve up this deadly mess, are always compelled to swallow the largest portion of it themselves, and to discover at last that they have taken a great deal of pains to make their own life very unhappy. I would ask any one present to look back upon his past troubles, of whatever kind they may have been, and then honestly to say, whether they have not been caused (I mean those, which, either from the depth of the wound or the frequency of the infliction, have been the most grievous to endure), whether they have not been caused either by his own wayward and vexatious disposition, or by the sad influence of such a disposition in others? Some doubtless there are many-who never wilfully inflict these evils, but then I question if there be any such who are not occasionally obliged to bear them. The two persons mentioned in my text afford examples of both characters. They lived under the same roof, and were members of the same household. Peninnah had