to call the very Spirit of the Lord God to visit their hearts with power and purification in Jesus Christ. Let not then the multitude of your sins stop you, neither let their magnitude affright you. But take the promise into thankful hearts, and tread down despair. Though, like the sons of Anak, your sinful habits be giants, still go up against them in the strength of the Lord; go up against them in firm resolution to be servants of God in time to come; go up in deep and true repentance; go up in earnest and continual prayer, and lo, through Christ, the promised land is opened unto you, and you shall go up into heaven!

SERMON XXIX.

Sunday after Ascension.

DEUTERONOMY Xiii. 3.

Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams: for the Lord your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with your soul.

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HESE words shew us that after the Lord had

chosen Israel to be His people, He permitted them to be tried by temptation in order to prove them. The temptation which seemed the most likely to lead Israel away from God was the idolatry of the nations who dwelt round about them, because all people are easily persuaded to follow the practices of any neighbouring nation; and also because the worship offered to the idols permitted many impurities and sensual practices, which were in agreement with the base appetites of our natural hearts. So that the temptation which was to beset Israel was one of the most ensnaring in its nature which could perhaps befall them.

The Lord God therefore forewarns Israel against it. It is foretold to them by Moses that among the priests of the idols, prophets, or dreamers of dreams, should arise, who should foretell some 66 sign," or perform some "wonder," and that these "signs and

wonders" might "come to pass," and these might seem to prove that the prophet was a true prophet, and that his idol was a true god, so that Israel might be tempted to worship at the false altar, and being led away by the multitudes and the example of the heathen, and enticed by the lusts of his own heart, might depart from the pure worship of God, and from that self-denial and holy living which the Lord commanded. The Lord therefore warned His people beforehand, that they should "not hearken unto the words of that prophet," for that he was not a true prophet, but was permitted to speak truly in that instance; and the "sign" and the "wonder" were allowed to come to pass, only to prove Israel, whether indeed "he did love the Lord his God" with all his heart and with all his soul.

I need not stay here to shew you that these false prophets did come and infest Israel; you all know that Israel was not stedfast, but that he fell away from God; and that not once or twice only, but very often; and moreover that not one here, and another there, a few only among the people, turned from God, but that they who cleaved unto the Lord were the few, "the remnant," and that they who "started aside " were the many, the nation; so that the Lord is frequently seen, in their history, to drive His people into captivity, and to make them the slaves and the bondmen of the heathens, whose gods they worshipped.

This is, I believe, the meaning of the first three

verses with which the Lesson begins which is read to us by the Church to-day. There is more teaching in these three verses than one sermon can contain; let me, however, by God's help, endeavour to place some of it before you, that you may, in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, take into your hearts some of that spiritual wealth which the holy Church of Jesus lays before you in the worship appointed for this day. But first, we ought, my brethren, to thank God that among all the mistakes and errors which there are in these days, in despite of falsities in worship and "dreamers of dreams," still the Lord is not yet weary of us, but that He doth, as indeed His promise is, still continue to uphold His Church, and that He doth still keep her among you to dispense among you His sacred Word, and to lay before you Sabbath after Sabbath these rich lessons, which, taken into your hearts, will reprove their evil nature, will faithfully chastise sin, and will lead you in trust and in fear to follow after God's laws even unto the end, when for Christ's sake and in His Name redemption cometh.

One thing, then, which these verses teach us is, that after we are called, still we are tried. "We are proved" whether we "love the Lord our God with all our heart." This therefore teaches us that a call into a state of grace is one thing, and that the final pardon and salvation of the Lord at the last day is another thing. It warns us that after we are called we are tried, and that in our trials we may fall away.

Now of course Scripture will agree with Scripture; and so we see that this doctrine, which was given to the Jews from the Lord by Moses, was given unto us by Christ the Lord Himself. The Lord Jesus commands us that whenever we pray unto God, that we beseech Him to "lead us not into temptation," but "to deliver us from evil;" so that it is of the will of the Lord, now as heretofore, that His people are tried; and as it was formerly, so now in the latter days, it is of the purpose of God that we be proved whether or not we be faithful.

We have, however, the assurance that if we are faithful servants of the Lord, and if we abide constant in prayer, that, although Satan finds an evil joy in tempting us to sin, and has a wicked hope that in this way he may largely destroy souls, and may lessen the wideness of Christ's salvation; still the Lord God, by His infinite wisdom and power, will control each temptation, while He permits it to try us, and after giving us commandments and warnings, will suffer us to be tried, (yet not beyond our strength,) in order that we may prove our sincerity towards God, may strengthen our souls against the craftiness of our enemy, and may be an example to other men to follow our course, and, under Christ, to be strong in the same firmness.

This teaches us, my brethren, why good works, or, which is the same thing, why obedience to the laws

a See 1 Cor. x. 13.