you would be fathers, and can you not be Christians? You can love a thousand things which you do not even yet know to be worthy of your love, and can you not love him whose worth you do know? know beyond a doubt, know by every test which your reason or your imagination can supply to you? ? Can you not love him who is so mild, so gentle, so affectionate, and so kind and generous withal, that if we only give, as it were, a promise that we will try to love him, he will send his Holy Spirit into our hearts, which shall teach us to love him as we ought: can you not love such a being? Ah! you cannot love him, the creature love the Creator!-Well then, take a lower range, love him who is formed from the same dust, who inhabits the same earth, who possesses the same limited faculties with thyself, love him, love thy neighbour, love him as thou wouldst love the thing dearest to

thee in nature, love him as thyself; but (you may ask) who is my neighbour?— man, in every rank, of every character, whatever may be his disposition, his feelings, his capacities, man universally, is your neighbour; but nearest of all, that man who has been so blest as to have been admitted into the fold of the Shepherd of Israel, who is called after the name of Christ, to him you are knit by an indissoluble bond; there may, indeed, be a seeming line of separation, but you are in reality one, one in the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism, the same hope of your calling : this man observes days, and times, and seasons, and pays respect or worship to departed men and angels; some would call him superstitious, idolatrous, do you call him fellow-Christian, brother; love him; cherish him; if you can, win him: -that man (as it appears to us) has shorn the Godhead of half its glory, he

believes not that the "Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us;" what are his errors to us? to his own master he will stand or fall, he is our neighbour, let us be careful that we pay him every neighbourly office. Another is at issue with us in church government; another in the simplicity of his heart walks abroad in a plain and unusual garb; one has one trivial distinction; another, another what of that? are not all our neighbours? it is our part, therefore, to love and esteem them all. Pass we beyond the pale of our faith; there are beings, God in his mercy grant there may be few such, who can peruse the simple and artless narrative of our Redeemer's sufferings, and can perceive there nothing but the traces of deep laid villainy and successful imposture; against these men let us use those arms only which Christ has chosen should be employed in his service, those of mild, of tender, of persuasive expos

tulation, that so if we fail in convincing their reasons, we at least may touch their hearts. There is said to exist, I have heard it, but I scarcely can credit the assertion, there is said to exist a reasonable soul who can look out on this wide and variegated world, and can discern there no marks of a creative power, who not only lives as if there were no God in the world, but actually believes there is none. O! if ever Christian charity, that expression of a thousand secret and nameless meanings, had a field to exercise itself in, here is one before it now; trusting in this alone, taking this single guide to our footsteps, let us go forth and seek to restore that unhappy wanderer to the paths of life which he has madly abandoned.

These are but a few instances which may serve to point out wherein the duty of love to our neighbour consists; we might treat of a thousand more had we

time, or were it requisite to do so. This principle, indeed, enters into the very depths of the thoughts; it is working actively and effectually within, while all is silent and apparently unobserving without; it transmutes by a happier alchymy than any of the wise have thought of, the basest into the most costly qualities; it changes detestation into compassion, contempt into pity, jealousy into regard, envy into interest, malice into benevolence, revenge into a desire to do kind offices; it presents to the moral eye, miracles as wondrous as ever were submitted to the sensible eye, it opens the heart of the misanthrope, it unlocks the miser's treasurebut should, peradventure, in our hearts, my brethren, this sacred principle have become less effective than it ought; should either its machinery as it were be clogged, or its wheels have ceased to perform their regular movements,