sanctified people; impossible! and it is only the prayers of the righteous, the prayers of the sanctified, that avail with God.

But it is against our Liturgy that there is now being made a most determined and systematic attack; and when foes are so active and friends so cold-Lord, be thou our helper ! The contemplated aggression is founded on the complaints now so frequently made of the length of the services; and these complaints are made because people are very reluctant to be more than a certain time in God's house, and think that the prayers ought to give way to the sermon. The leading journal of the day, as it is usually termed, thus writes on the subject, in a spirit of mingled hostility to the Liturgy of the Church of England, and of contempt for her congregations:-"The plain fact is that the great mass of the people-good religious people-will not, cannot devote three quarters of an hour every morning, and half an hour every evening, at stated times, to hear the service. People don't talk against it. They don't vote against it. They don't ask for its revision. They simply absent themselves. If they do come to church, they will not come day by day. Few of them come to both services even on Sundays. Of those who make the most resolute efforts to comply with the Prayer Book, the greater part still confess to feelings of weariness at the length, monotony, and repetition of a service which, to judge from the appearance of almost any congregation on a warm Sunday morning or afternoon, has been framed for angels and saints, perhaps,

but not for Englishmen, Englishwomen, or English children." *

My dear brethren, The Liturgy of the Church of England was framed for Englishmen, Englishwomen, and English children. It was framed for sinners, for praying hearts and perishing souls, and everyone under a due sense of his sinful state and his need of Divine mercy-of his helpless state, and his need of Divine grace will feel how wisely and how holily it has been framed for these spiritual purposes. He will feel the prayers as constituting by far the principal object of his going to the house of the Lord. He will endeavour to profit by the sermon, but he will regard the best he hears as, after all, but the words of a fallible man. He will remember the admonition of the Apostle; "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. I have planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase." He will look into the depth of the meaning of God's own words, "Not by might, nor by power, (that is, not by man's might or power, either in speaking or in doing,) but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts." And these thoughts, and a conviction of the truth of this assurance, will bring a man lowly upon his knees before the footstool of mercy and grace; and he will regard the prayers of the Church's services as incomparably of higher value than

* Leading article in the Times, Saturday, May 8, 1858.

the words of the preacher. All the sermons a man has ever heard have been to him but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal, if they have not tended to breathe into his heart and soul the spirit of prayer and supplication, and led him to revere with devout thankfulness the ordinances of religion, and to seek grace through the appointed means of grace; and especially and constantly through the highest means of all, the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of Christ.

Lord, give us thy graces of a sound mind and of a prayerful spirit!

THE DAUGHTER OF JAIRUS.

Preached 4th Sunday after Trinity, 1865.

"All wept and bewailed her: but He said, Weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed Him to scorn, knowing that she was dead."-Luke viii. 52, 53.

I HAVE taken to-day a very common text; and yet a very uncommon one. There is a seeming contradiction in these opening words of my sermon. The text itself is full of these seeming contradictions. It is a very common text in its adoption by the preacher, when he speaks to aching hearts and of sad bereavements; very uncommon in the wisdom which it teaches, and in the comfort which it gives. In that hour of sorrow there is a fierce conflict being waged between nature and grace-grace holding out the lamp which shines upon the path of life, and lights up to the throne of God; nature too perverse to look that way, or having eyes too dimmed with tears to see it. Then the Spirit of God and the spirit of evil are striving for the mastery. The battle ground is the same to both, and they are teaching and alluring opposite ways; so there must be contradictions. But a few words on the text will reconcile these contradictions,

and show God in the infinity of His power and His goodness; truth in all His words, and mercy in all His works.

We will first consider the circumstances of the text. It had been a very eventful day in the ministry of Jesus. First, He had been in a small boat on the tempestuous sea of Galilee; the disciples were terrified by a violent storm which arose, but He rebuked the wind and the raging of the water, and there was a calm. Next, when they came to shore there met them a poor unhappy man under the influence of many evil spirits; but Jesus spoke the word and the devils departed from him, and astonished multitudes, running together to the spot, saw the poor lunatic sitting at the feet of his deliverer, clothed and in his right mind. Presently there came a man named Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, and he fell down at Jesus' feet beseeching Him to come to his house, for he had one only daughter and she lay a dying. As He was now going to the house of Jairus great multitudes followed Him. Among them was a poor widow with a sore disease and large faith, and she said within herself, "If I may but touch His garment, I shall be whole." So she touched and was healed. At this moment a messenger arrived from Jairus' house, saying that his daughter was dead. Jesus spoke a few words of comfort to the afflicted father, and went on. There were many assembled at the house of mourning, besides the family of Jairus; and there lay the maiden dead. "And all wept, and bewailed her but He said, Weep not; she is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed Him to scorn,