cognize the agency and presence of our Heavenly Father in all that happens to us, in all that we receive. He blesses us in our benefactors, he tries us by our enemies. The reproaches of our adversary are His "sword in our bones : let this teach us moderation. The comforts of our friends are the anodynes which He mixes. Shall we receive good from His hands, and shall we not receive evil? No sickness befalls us, but He has sent it; and no sweet sleep and mild refreshing flow of spirits restore us, that His kindness has not planned and His pity provided. It is unchristian, as well as unphilosophical, to rest in second causes. He said well who, being thanked for his liberality, replied, "Thank not the rain, but the clouds which sent it." But "a brutish man knoweth not, neither doth a fool understand this."

When all Thy mercies, O my God,
My rising soul surveys;
Transported with the view, I'm lost
In wonder, love, and praise.

Unnumbered comforts to my soul
Thy tender care bestowed,
Before my infant heart conceived
From Whom those comforts flowed.

When in the slippery paths of youth,
With heedless steps I ran;

Thine arm, unseen, conveyed me safe,
And led me up to man.

Through every period of my life

Thy goodness I'll pursue,
And after death, in distant worlds,
The glorious theme renew.

Through all eternity to Thee
A joyful song I'll raise;
But, oh! eternity's too short
To utter all Thy praise.

The Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity.

THE COLLECT.

KEEP, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy Church with Thy perpetual mercy and, because the frailty of man without Thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by Thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

THE EPISTLE.

"But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world."-GAL. vi. 14.

S it not strange that, when inspiration has furnished.

Is

us with the only legitimate subject of glory, man will seek out some other? Is it not strange that when God has offered to us a righteousness complete and

a title unexceptionable, we will defile this righteousness by the mixture of alloy, and insert a flaw in the title-deed, by the intrusion of a clause invalid and unsound. Some depend upon themselves, some upon the pretensions of their fellow sinners; the rich man glories in his riches, the wise man in his wisdom, the moralist in his virtues, and the formalist in his round of ceremonial duties. But all is vain; vanity and vexation is written upon them, and the original sentence-"Thou shalt surely die !"-must sooner or later obliterate them all. Here let us learn the only true and sufficient ground of glorying. The terms of our text are extensive, defining what we may and what we may not make the subject of our dependence and the basis of our hopes. The true source of our glory is "the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ; "this is the pedestal upon which, without fear, the trembling sinner may fix his foot; the cloud of past transgressions which obscured the approach to his Maker, dispersed by the bright sunbeams, disappears, and he enters within the veil; the very recollection of his failures, the discouragements contracted from the infirmity of his imperfect course, as they are healed by its sprinkling and disarmed of their sting, bring him closer and closer to its foot; and in the hour of death— that solemn hour, when every earthly confidence waxes dim and grows pale at the majesty of approaching judg

ment-the Cross alone remains steadfast, and the eye which is fixed upon it learns to triumph, like Him who hung thereon, over principalities and powers, and finds an entrance, administered abundantly by Grace, into the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Well, then, may the Christian glory in the Cross; it is the title deed of his adoption, the seal of his inheritance, his passport through life, his triumph in death. Well may the Christian glory in the Cross to the exclusion of every other object, and well may the heart of faith, when fixed upon it, feel indifferent to what the world esteems glorious, and count all things but loss, to win Christ and to be found in Him, clothed with that righteousness which is by faith unto all and upon all them that believe; for there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God ; and Christ is the end of the law unto righteous ness to every one that believeth.

THE GOSPEL.

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things cf itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."-MATT. vi. 34.

IT

is useless, in most instances, to take thought for the morrow, always understanding by the morrow not literally the next day, but the prospective