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resolve to spend these unto Christ, either in devotion, or in usefulness, or in self-improvement, or in true and real recreation. (b) Conversation, or fragments of speech: not only the religious discourse, and the prepared speech, but the incidental and familiar table-talk will be governed by Christian principles, and made contributory to worth and wisdom. (c) Small pecuniary resources, or fragments of mercy not only the gold and the silver, but the pence also are His; not only are the rich and the well-to-do, but the poor also, are invited and expected to "cast into the treasury." (d) The "little ones among men," or fragments of society. Our Lord commended to us, with peculiar tenderness, those whom He called the "little ones ;" these are not only the children, but all those who, for any reason, are likely to be disregarded by their fellows the dependent, the feeble-minded, the sickly, those who have been reduced in circumstances, those that render the more menial services. These, and such as they, are "fragments to be gathered," small things to be appropriated for Christ, trifles for His treasury, souls to be led into His kingdom, and secured for His service.

BRISTOL.

WILLIAM CLARKSON, B.A.

Matthew viii. 4.

(Twenty-sixth Sunday after Trinity.) JESUS had just performed His first miracle of healing. The leper the symbol of the sinner. Many details of sad analogy. Here Jesus is virtually saying to the cleansed leper, "Be recognised as healed." "Go shew yourself to the priest," meant let him see and certify that you are a healed and purified man. If leprosy is so fit a type of sin, this injunction to go and show himself to the priest may be taken as a type of the confession of spiritual cure. This profession of personal religion is

I.-AN ACT OF OBEDIENCE TO THE DIVINE WILL. This is taught by implication (1) in the New Testament injunction, "Come out from among them," &c., and (2) in such statements as "The Lord added to the Church daily," &c. "They first gave their own selves to the Lord and then to us;" and (3) in the conduct of the earliest disciples. They attached themselves openly to Christ, and consorted with one another. "Being let go he went to his own company."

II.-AN AID IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMAN CHARACTER. We expect to find the Divine regulations always beneficial to men, for the words of Moses are an axiom of

God's procedure, "His commandments are for our good alway." In the instance before us, as in personal profession of religion, there is an aid (1) to humility. It was good for a man to have to acknowledge, I was diseased, unclean, a leper. So it is good for a man to confess, I was a sinner; undone, lost. "I have sinned." (2) To courage. That this leper should have to say to a Jewish priest, that Jesus of Nazareth had healed him, was a tax upon his courage, a demand upon his manhood. Similarly though there be seldom the lion of persecution tracking the young professor of religion, there is the keen-eyed lynx of censoriousness. The man who sets up his banners in the name of God, steps on to a battle field even in this age and country.

an

III. A WITNESS TO THE POWER AND LOVE OF CHRIST. Clearly this leper would become eloquent witness to the fact that Jesus could, and would, cleanse. Such a confession was a tribute to the Messiahship of the despised Nazarene. Thus is it with every man who openly acknowledges that he owes his his virtue, his victories (whatever they are) not to his constitution, not to society, but to Christ. Honour the church as the hospital in which you have been healed, if indeed the services of the sanctuary have blessed you.

But, above all, bear testimony to the skill and care of the Great Physician, if, indeed, your humble but confident consciousness is that His touch has healed you. Such tributes men publicly utter when they profess personal religion. But this profession is

IV.-A MEANS OF BLESSING

THE WORLD AND OF STRENGTH

ENING THE CHURCH. That leper would, by his acknowledgment, encourage many a helpless leper to seek the same cure; and would confirm the constancy and revive the enthusiasm of those who had already been restored. (1) The propaganda of evil is open, ceaseless, and mighty. So must the propaganda of goodness be ceaseless, as open, and more mighty. (2) Science has its associations, social life its clubs, for similar and yet higher purposes Christianity has its Church. Enter it now. EDITOR.

John vi. 5-14.

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(Twenty-seventh Sunday after Trinity. ) IN this miracle we can scarcely avoid discerning a type of all harvests, both material and moral. For alike in the miracle and in annual harvests, and in the provisions of the Gospel for human souls, there are these few distinguishing characteristics.

OF

L-THE SATISFACTION HUMAN NEEDS. Jesus wrought this miracle to meet the hunger of the multitudes. It was no craving for luxury, but distinct and common human need that He recognised and satisfied. So upon the annual harvests of the world hang the actual lives of millions. No bread; no life. And so yet again is it in the provision of the Gospel. Through the sins of the race humanity has become morally emaciated. Famishing for true food, it often in ignorance seeks to satisfy itself with "that which is not bread." "Husks that the swine eat" are often its coveted food. The religion of Jesus meets alike the needs of the famished soul, and the healthy appetite of the godly. There are teachings here, grace here, a spirit here of which no man can partake and yet languish and die. There is The Christ revealed, who is Himself Bread of Life; Bread of Heaven; Bread of God. The food with which He met the hunger of the thousands on the mountain is but a hint of the nourishment He provides in His Gospel for human souls.

There is in all three alike—

II. THE MULTIPLICATION OF MUCH FROM LITTLE. The provisions a little boy could carry, became under Christ's hands, a feast for thousands. Similarly, and the analogy is very suggestive in many

details, the bushels of seed-corn of one season become the waggon loads of the harvest home of another. Every year finds this miracle exceeded in amount, though not paralleled in time. The annual miracle has grown cheap simply because we imagine we understand how months can accomplish what minutes only accomplished then. But in the sphere of the provisions of the Gospel do we not see similar productiveness, and sometimes in the shorter though sometimes in the longer time? A word is spoken, as it seems to us, and a man begins to live the eternal life. A sermon from a fisherman, and three thousand souls are added to the Church. A tract, a prayer, a hymn, a service, and out of them blossom and ripen a man's heaven. In all three alike is there

AFFLUENCE

OF

III.-THE DIVINE PROVISIONS. Everyone can understand how the bounty with which Jesus met the wants of the travel-tired multitudes would cheer and inspirit them far more than if there had been but a meagre or just sufficient supply. Stint, or the striving just to overtake the necessities of the hour would have made them feel rather as paupers before Workhouse Guardians, than friends at a Great Friend's bountiful festival. So also the supplies of Nature are affluent.

Ears of corn that bend their stalks, clusters of grape that weigh down the vine, fruit that threatens to break the boughs, shoals of fish in the sea, corn-fields that would girdle the globe, such are nature's supplies. Nor are the resources of the Gospel of Christ less gloriously ample. Every form of thought, every tone of feeling, every aspect of grace is here. The apostle rejoices in "the fulness" in Christ-in His "unsearchable riches." The provisions of Christianity are (1) not for one part of man's nature; but for his entire being. Nor are they (2) for some few souls, but for all men in all centuries, lands, and conditions. In all three alike there is

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The decay alike of rock and of leaf serves for the soil and mould of fresh forests, and flowers, and fruit. The affluent sunlight that perchance fell upon scanty populations cycles of ages ago, was stored up by frugal Nature to give us the heat, and light, and force of coal to-day. Waste is wickedness. If there were no wilful waste of land, of corn, of fish, there need never lie on God's earth a starving man, a famished woman, a squalid child. Thus is it in the realm of religion. There should be no waste there. Let no thought of Christ "be lost," no word of His "be lost," no Bible "be lost," no ray of Christian influence "be lost." All are too precious, for, like the feast on the mountain, they are the productions of Christ. And all are wanted, for starving, famished, squalid souls are crying for the Bread of God. EDITOR.

A wise man should constantly discharge all the moral duties, though he perform not constantly the ceremonies of religion; since he falls low, if, while he performs ceremonial acts only, he discharge not his moral duties.-The Ordinances of Menu.

Oh! with what difficulty are the means

Acquired, that lead us to the springs of knowledge!
And when the path is found, ere we have trod
Half the long way-poor wretches, we must die.

GOETHE

Pulpit Handmaids.

PITH OF GREAT SERMONS BY GREAT PREACHERS.

The Gospel and the Poor.

H. P. LIDDON, D.D., Canon of St. Paul's.

"THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE HATH ANOINTED ME TO PREACH THE GOSPEL TO THE POOR."-Luke iv. 18.

It is not, perhaps, too bold to say of this sentence that it is the motto of our Lord's ministry. The passage plainly refers to the year of jubilee, which at somewhat distant intervals came as a season of benevolence and grace to heal the social wounds of Israel. The blessings of the jubilee were earthly shadows of the blessings of Redemption; and the herald of the jubilee foretold by Isaiah is clearly not the prophet himself, but that Other Figure who is so often before us in Isaiah's later writings; He is the Servant of the Lord, at once distinct from the prophet and greatly raised above him. And thus when, His task being over, Jesus had folded the roll, and had given it to the minister, and had sat down, and the eyes of all that were in the Synagogue were fastened on Him, He began to say unto them, "This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears." There could be no mistake as to His meaning. He Himself was the Preacher whom Isaiah had foretold; and His message was the predicted announcement of good tidings to the poor.

That our Lord's ministry was eminently a ministry for the poor is a commonplace which need not be insisted on. His relations were poor people, with the associations, the habits, the feelings of the poor. He passed among men as "the carpenter's son." He spoke, it would appear, in a provincial north-country dialect, at least commonly. His language, His illustrations, His entire method of approaching the understandings and hearts of men, were suited to the apprehension of the uneducated. So it

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