he had never prepared himself in times past for any such encounter! how must he faint when he has to face it with no inward courage, arising from having looked for it long and provided against it beforehand, and perceives that he can do nothing now! For what can be done by him at that moment? The cry is up, "Behold the bridegroom cometh," and he has no oil either in his lamp or his vessel; for no preparation has he made, and where is he to buy it now? No, my friends, nothing but our having waited for Christ beforehand, long and long, will enable any of us to meet Him face to face at the last without confusion, without our hearts failing us for fear,-nothing but having waited for Him, as servants who wait for their lord, knowing not at what hour he may come; so that come when he may, they may be found diligently doing his work. Blessed will be those servants: they will be in a condition to welcome their master; there will be no running to and fro with them; no hurry and alarm; no attempt at hiding this or that; no excuses, no pretences, no shame. They will feel that they are actually found in their Master's work, that in that they would have been always and ever found, let Him have come when He would,—and so they take courage, and see in Him not their spy but their friend, and feel that He will cheer them with a "well done, good and faithful men!" But if we live year after year the world's, or sin's slaves, and flatter ourselves that in our latter days, when we have some smart warning that death and judgment are hard upon us, we shall begin assuredly to look for Christ's coming then, and that if we then at length turn to Him with a late cry, all will nevertheless be well,—there is nothing in this which answers to the term waiting for our God; and nothing, therefore, which can warrant us in using any such happy words as those of the prophet in

my text, "He will save us; we will be glad, and rejoice in His salvation."

What was St. Paul's language when he was about to meet his God? What was his consolation then? You may perceive that it was dictated by a consciousness that he had been for many years waiting for Christ to summon him; and it overflows upon Timothy, pressing him to wait for Him too, that he may have the like hope in his death. The whole of the Second Epistle to Timothy is conceived in this spirit. It was the last Epistle St. Paul wrote when he was a prisoner, and very shortly to lose his head. "I," says he, “am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight," (that was his comfort,) "I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love His appearing,"—that love His appearing because they feel within themselves that they can say, "Lo! we have waited for Him," and so have no reason to fear Him, but every thing to hope from His coming, and may well therefore love the very thought of it. And then, turning to Timothy, he counsels him, over and over again, to do this work and that, to maintain this temper and that, as the business of a life; that he too might die in his harness, and so have hope in his death. "Continue thou," says he, “in the things that thou hast learned and hast been assured of." "That good thing which was committed to thee, keep." "Thou, therefore, endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." "Watch thou in all things, endure afflictions, do the work of an Evangelist, make full proof of thy ministry." St. Paul's counsel to his son Timothy, you see, is to let his light be ever shining, like

unto that in the temple of God, which went not out night nor day; that as he had received the faith in his childhood from his mother Eunice, and had had it confirmed in his manhood by Paul himself, so he would hold it fast unto the end. This is the sound form of godliness: it has with us an abiding influence,—we are never from under its habitual control,—we wait for our Lord's second coming by means of it.

Let not us then sleep, as do many, with regard to our spiritual concerns; but let us up and be doing. Trust not to a long life, and frequent warnings, and God's long suffering, and a more convenient season for all this will end, at best, in a death-bed cry for forgiveness, (repentance I cannot call it,) and will lead you before God, surely not as men and women that have been waiting for Him, that love His appearing, but that believe and tremble at the last. Religion, Christ's Gospel, is a rule to live by. We are called into life to live by it, and for no other purpose; that we may be tried of what we are made, and how far we are willing to conform our wills to God's. It is not a thing to be forgotten in our health and strength, and remembered only in our decay and death. Let us then be found watching-whether it be "at midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in the morning," let us be found watching. Let us never be off our guard, that we may never be taken unawares. And may Almighty God give us grace so to do; and to cast away the works of darkness and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which our Saviour Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility, that in the last day, when He shall come again in His glorious Majesty to judge both the quick and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through Him who liveth and reigneth, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, now and ever. Amen.

168

SERMON XX.

DOING THE WILL OF GOD THE WAY TO SECURE
HIS FAVOUR.

ST. MATTHEW, xii. 49, 50.

"And He stretched forth His hand towards His disciples, and said, Behold My mother and My brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother."

THIS exclamation of our blessed Lord is drawn from Him by an incident recorded in the verses which precede my text. Jesus was engaged in expounding His Gospel to those about Him, when one told Him that His mother and His brethren were without, desiring to speak with Him. Some of the very earliest commentators upon Scripture that we have, and whose comments, on account of their being written so soon after the Saviour's presence upon earth, are the more valuable,-consider that this interruption offered to the teaching of Jesus by His mother and His brethren was unseemly and sinful:- that their standing without, whilst he was busily engaged in opening His revelation to the people around Him within, who were hungry and thirsty for the Word, argues in these, His relations in the flesh, some indifference to His teaching; and that their sending for Him out to speak unto Him

probably upon matters of trifling import, certainly upon matters that must have been as dust in the balance compared with those He was about at the time- further implies that they were not properly impressed with the grace the people were gathering from the words that were falling from Him. "For who," says He unto them that told Him, "who is My mother? and who are My brethren?" And He stretched forth His hand towards His disciples, and said, "Behold My mother and My brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in Heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother," words which may be thought to intimate that He did not approve of this lukewarm carriage of His kindred in the flesh; and that, however near to Him they might be in blood, He did not account that circumstance a tie at all so close as a willing ear to hear His doctrine, and a willing heart to obey it; that they were to be His family, who would do His Father's work.

This is in accordance with the views set forth of the Saviour to come by the prophets; for they are perpetually referring to the numerous family on earth He should have - much after the manner that it was said of old time of Abraham, that his seed should be as the stars in heaven, or as the sand that is on the sea-shore for multitude; it being true indeed of him in a natural as well as spiritual sense. Accordingly, Isaiah writes in his famous fifty-third chapter, "When thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days," — as if the posterity of Jesus was to be great and lasting. Yet His family in the flesh seems very soon to have become quite extinct. For we are told in early history that the Roman Emperor, Domitian, who like Herod had his fears lest his own throne should be shaken by some Prince of the

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