endeavoured to seduce Him in the wilderness, was approaching to tempt Him again with the awful terrors of the Divine wrath upon the cross,-even He, the Redeemer of the world, the Incarnate Deity, then cried out, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me!!" Thus in His own person and in His own work echoing the prayer he has prescribed to all his followers, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One!"

Utterly inscrutable to speculation is the whole subject we have been this day considering. Why God should permit any of his creatures to be tempted is a question we can no more answer than we can that question of which indeed it is but a case, why God should suffer evil to exist at all. But we know that evil does exist: and we know too that temptation does exist. That evil was first introduced into the world by a Being who goes under the name of Satan or the Adversary2, we are told ;—that this Being endeavoured first to seduce, and afterwards to menace our Saviour into evil, and that he is constantly engaged in tempting us as he tempted Christ, we are also told. To deny his influence will not destroy it. We cannot escape the danger by shutting our eyes against it. In matters of such moment, and so utterly beyond the province of the senses, or the discovery of reason, it is the part of rational beings to listen with reverence to what the word of God declares, and to direct our ways accordingly. Acting on this principle let us take heed to the last words of that Prayer in which our Saviour has 1 Matt. xxvi. 39.

2 2 Cor. xi. 3.

bequeathed to us a comprehensive summary of all we ought to wish, and all we ought to fear: and as we are taught to pray for pardon and justification in the words, Forgive us our trespasses, so let us pray with equal earnestness for that preservation from sin and sanctification which can only be expected by creatures frail as we are, if we be "not led into temptation, but delivered from the Evil One!"

SERMON VIII.

CHRISTIAN ECONOMY.

JOHN vi. 12.

"Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost."

To those who like ourselves, my brethren, are persuaded of the divine character of Him who uttered this command, it will surely not be necessary to address any argument in proof of its being worthy of being recorded by the Evangelist. Every action--every word of the Saviour becomes invested with surpassing dignity by the consideration that He is God over all, blessed for ever: and so far from deeming any one particular of those which have been preserved superfluous or trivial, we are generally rather inclined to ask why the sacred historians have been so chary of the sayings and doings of that most memorable life: why out of a series of transactions so numerous and, one might think, so severally important, so few only have been handed down in the pages of the Gospels.

But, on the other hand, the very fact that out of so many incidents so few have been preserved, proves the special importance of those incidents which have been thus distinguished: since the choice of the inspired historians must be supposed to have been determined, not by the

bias of human partiality but by the guidance of divine wisdom and thus the gospel narratives are doubly commended to our most attentive consideration, as being not only a history of the most important Person who ever did or ever will live on this earth, but a quintessence of his history in which nothing has been preserved but what is of greatest note and of highest instructive power.

These considerations may prepare our minds to pause with due attention on the command, "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost;" as knowing that the all-wise Redeemer would never have issued this command without a very sufficient object in the first place, and that the Evangelist would never have recorded it in the second, without its having a definite and most important general bearing.

Jesus had just fed five thousand men with five barley loaves and a few small fishes: an exertion of miraculous power which of all those narrated by the Evangelists approaches most nearly to the first recorded act of Deity. For certainly there is, if not a complete identity, yet the closest resemblance between creating the universe out of no pre-existing matter, and multiplying pre-existent matter so enormously as the circumstantial details of the miracle imply. Five thousand men, besides women and children, as St Matthew tells us, had all eaten and were filled and St Mark completes the impression which these words convey by adding that the disciples who were employed by the Saviour to distribute the five loaves and few small fishes, gave to the hungry multitude who had

been all day fasting in their intense eagerness of listening, as much as they wished. And now, all being sated, Jesus bids his disciples "gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." Now it is impossible to conceive circumstances more calculated to impress on the minds of those present the importance of the maxim, "Let nothing be lost." Surely one who possessed the power of creating food at any moment to any conceivable extent, needed not to take such anxious care to preserve the mere crumbs from the rich man's table, the mere relics of that feast at which Omnipotence had evidently been the lavish entertainer. Fatigued as the disciples must have been with the mere labour of distributing to so immense a throng, why should they now be taxed with the additional, and doubtless heavier fatigue, of going about and sedulously picking up the minute and crumbled morsels that lay scattered on the grass? Such might have been, probably, the thought of thousands who had beheld the miracle, and now heard with surprise a command apparently so disproportionate to the power which had performed it. And this very apparent incongruity between the miracle and this subsequent command would stamp the command and the reason assigned for it all the deeper on their memories and hearts. Nothing could more strongly represent the sin of wastefulness than the solicitude to prevent waste thus evinced by one who had omnipotence at his command to supply want; nor could any moment have been chosen by the Saviour more forcibly to impress the duty of allowing nothing to be

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