confession, He saw his heart. The reason why we cannot trust to death-bed repentance is that we fear to trust words, when we cannot know the heart. He knew all, and whatever men may say of us, or however they may doubt, if our heart lies open to Him, His eye and word is enough, all we need care about. It is before Him you stand, and by Him you will be judged. If you have been a great sinner, men will scoff at your repentance, and call it a mere mockery and pretence. Doubtless the Pharisees scoffed at His taking a thief to paradise, as they did when Mary knelt beside Him, saying that this man knoweth not she is a sinner.

"Greater is He that is for you than he which is against you." Amid the scoffs and doubts of the world, if your heart be true to Jesus Christ you shall mount to heaven despite them all. "Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." "I am come, who feed My sheep among the lilies; I have found a sheep, a lost one; but I lay it on My shoulders, for he believeth, and hath said, I have gone astray like a sheep that was lost."

Here, in this holy story, is the whole Gospel,

-a sinner saved; saved, not by the merit of his own works, but by the merit of Christ's Blood; yet having first come to Christ by penitence, and shewn his sincerity by faith, hope, and charity.

SERMON VI.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

There they crucified Him.-LUKE Xxiii. 33.

FOUR days of this sorrowful yet happy week are passed away; we have come to the most sad, the most important, of its blessed number-Good Friday. Good, because on it the only perfect Man that ever lived died; good, because on it heaven was opened to us and hell shut for the believer; good, because if on one day in the passing year we ought to keep ourselves holy, it is to-day. And yet how sad a day it is; how sad the tale of suffering which brings to us the agonies of our Redeemer; sad, when we remember how little we thank Him for His love, or feel for His sorrow. Oh would to God we could feel the love an angel feels, for whom Jesus never died! would that the sun that rose to-day had found us all prostrate in tears

and sorrow for the sins that brought Him here! But cold, beyond expression cold,-dead, passing description dead, we are as worldly minded, as sinful, as careless, as indolent on the day He died as we are on any other. Is it not so? and why should it be? Have you no love, no care, for a never-dying soul? is heaven nothing? is hell a trifle? have you no gratitude in you, that your praise and sorrow have been so slight to-day?

See to it, I beseech you, for it is your own fault. It is not so in heaven. No, if days and hours are marked and numbered there, for many an hour have ten thousand thousand happy spirits ransomed, blessed spirits-shouted their triumphant song of praises to the Lamb. While you yet slumbered on your bed,-you who have a soul that may yet be lost,-the ransomed in heaven of six thousand years were gathered round the great white throne, and their robes of flowing whiteness glittered with a dazzling brilliance as they stood before the Lamb-the Lamb that was slain-slain for them on this the birthday of their salvation; loud from the happy bosoms had the echo shouted, "Worthy is the Lamb that" (on this day) "was slain, to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing." And you,—what were

you doing? you who are not yet saved, you who may have no part in the Death of Christ after all? you who may be still lost? were you also praying, if not praising? angels, who were never saved, struck their golden harps to the same tune of glory, they joined in the nightly hymn of thanks—thanks that you were saved, and yet you, perhaps, thought nothing of it. Oh the deadness of these unfeeling hearts, the emptiness of our feeling or our love! I said, if days and years are counted in that happy world, such this morning has been their employment, for they know better than we what they have gained in heaven, how blessed it is to be free from sin, how immense was the purchase the Death of Jesus made.

Days are marked on earth; we are not in heaven yet; we may, after all, be lost. Let us, then, see what happened to-day.

a. Let us for a moment fancy ourselves one of the crowd that followed Jesus of Nazareth through the streets of the city. Can you not see Him outside the hall of judgment? it is full-Pharisee, Sadducee, publican and sinner, Jew and Roman, all are there; the friends of those whom He had raised from death, from sickness, and from pain; the father of the restored child, the