tions. If such is the use you make of His death, He did not die for you; I mean, yours is no case that His death will save.

But oh, surely, if you have any regard for such a Saviour, you will daily hate sin more and more; and especially to-day, you will deeply bewail them before God. It were shame to allow angels, who were never saved, to exceed you in your praises for salvation. Think

of the happy souls who are at this moment thanking the Lamb for the blessings He has purchased for them; think of the day when you shall be called to leave this lower scene; remember you are not yet safe, you may yet be lost, eternally lost; and value more than you do the death of Christ. A few more flecting years, and you must be far away from where you now are. Happy are you if you have so gained a share in the merits of His death as to have your deathbed pillow made happy by His voice of love, and your parting moment made bright with a foretaste of heaven. Happy are you if, at the judgment after death, you can look around you on the awful scenery of a perishing world, and want no rock to cover you, no hill to hide you, but can look to Christ as your certain refuge, your covert from the storm. Proud to bear His

honoured name, through good report and ill report; first in the rank of His disciples, however despised their fame or little esteemed among men; crucified with your crucified Master, His in suffering, and far more His in glory,—“ Who shall separate us from the love of Christ ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is writen, For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Would you have this your lot? Then, since nothing but Christ can save you, nothing but His death and His suffering; since you are dependent entirely on Him, as a little child in the hands of its parent; since you can do nothing for yourself, let your prayer to-day and ever be" By Thy Cross and Passion, good Lord, deliver me."

SERMON VII.

CHRIST'S LAST WORDS. No. I.

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

LUKE Xxiii. 34.

THERE are no words like last words; they hang about our ears like the phantoms of a dream do when we wake in the morning. We remember them; and if they bid us do anything for one that is gone, we try and do it. And the more we love the dead, the more would we do what they asked. They are very sacred to us, though they may have been simple, and had not much in them; we try and catch each syllable; we lean over the lips of him who dies, and make out what he says, or what he means, with the same earnestness that we try and read letters written long ago. We have known what it is to be in a room where a man is dying-that awful stillness, that hard-drawn breath, the longing earnestness with which we catch each word and

syllable; the anxious look we give, as if listening still, when we knew not all was over.

We are so struck with those last words, that we mention them often to others who can have no interest in them; they listen to them with respect, because they were dying words; if they were very simple, we think they shewed much. Oh how much has been made of, how much have men clung to, -"I am happy, quite happy;" "Jesus is all my trust," or such expressions!

It is right they should interest us, because,——

a. We shall never hear that voice again; while they were not last words, we felt we might expect more; no more now. And words are very precious; they tell us the mind and feeling of others, and when they are gone, they still live, and feel, and think; but there are no words to tell us what they think, and feel, and wish. we value last words.

So

6. Then there is no time when the situation of a man is so important as when he is dying; it is the great moment of all his existence, and his words tell us what that state is, which we could not learn without he told us. So last words are full of interest.

7. They have in them the beauty of being the same; they tell us that to the last the person

speaking is the same being we have been with; that he loves us to the last, he loves still to lean on us for support in this world.

d. Then, too, very often last words are full of interest from the particular thing said; as when a dying man forgives an enemy, when he would otherwise rise at the last day with an unforgiven enemy, and that would be a dreadful thing; and when a dying man with his last breath makes restitution.

So we value last words; it is the last means of our knowing of the state of those we love, the last act of the connection of their soul and body.

Now I said all this is still more the case when we value and love very much the dying man. Of course, the dearer he is to us, the dearer his words. When children gather round a mother's pillow, or watch a father's dying words, what more full of force!

You will see I have mentioned four things chiefly why last words interest us. They are the last means of knowing the feelings of the dying; they speak of his feelings in a most important moment; they often are about particular duties when it is most urgent to have an opinion of them; they tell us of a man's sameness of feeling towards us.