held, will flow from no inferior origin. He who endows a hospital, thinking to win favor with God through this his munificence, rears, like the Egyptian monarchs, a pyramid for his sepulchre, but leaves his soul without one secret chamber wherein she may be safe from the sleet of eternal indignation. We would press this matter upon you with all the fidelity that its importance demands. The soul is not to be saved by any, the most costly, giving of alms. Sea and land may be compassed, and the limbs be macerated by penance, and the strength worn down by painful attrition, and the wealth be lavished in feeding the hungry, and clothing the naked ; and, nevertheless, the wrath of God be no more averted than if the life were passed in bold contempt of his name and attributes. "Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ;" and they who have entered heaven, climbed that lofty eminence not by piles of gold and silver which they consecrated to Jehovah,-not by accumulated deeds of legal obedience, but simply by the cross of the Redeemer, putting faith in the blood and righteousness of Him who died, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God." into so many centres of repulsion, But when the heart is occupied by this heaven-born principle of faith, there will be an immediate kindling of love towards the Author of redemption; and works of benevolence, which sit as an incubus on the soul so long as they are accounted meritorious, will be wrought as the natural produce of a grateful and devoted affection. If there be indeed within us the love of Him who hath loved us and given himself for us, then shall we be eager to support the foundations of a god-fearing ancestry, not through the bloated and deceitful expectation that the glories of futurity are to be purchased by attention to the necessitous, but simply in conformity with the apostolical maxim, "Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another." It is here that I take my stand, with a view to the duty now intrusted to my care. The noble institutions which I am required to recommend to your continued support, are so many monuments of the truth that "the poor we The poor we have always with us, have always with us." I trust I may and thus have we always abounding add, that the careful and liberal patron- opportunities of testifying our dedicaage which they have hitherto receiv- tion to Him who is brought near by ed, has emanated from a sense of love faith, though removed from sight, and to the Redeemer; and that the zeal who hath linked himself in ties of such with which they shall hereafter be up-close brotherhood with mankind that he sympathizes with the meanest of the race. Upon the platform of love to the Redeemer do we take our stand, when recommending to your generous care those several Hospitals whose institution it is the business of this day's service to commemorate. I shall pause while the report of their proceedings during the past year is read to you, and then wind up my discourse by a brief exposition of their claims upon public benevolence. Various and multiform are the ills which the charities, whose report you have now heard, set themselves to alleviate. The burden of poverty is sufficiently heavy, even whilst the animal frame is not wasted by the inroads of sickness. But when disease hath laid its hand upon the body, and the strength is fretted by pining maladies, then especially it is that penury is hard to bear; and the man who has wrestled bravely against want, whilst there was vigor in his limbs and play in his muscles, sinks down wearied and disconsolate, when the organs of life are clogged and impeded. Who would refuse to stretch out the hand of kindness, succoring the afflicted in this their hour of aggravated bitterness? Who could be callous enough to the woes of humanity, to be slow in providing that all which the skill and the wisdom of man can effect, towards lightening the pressure of sickness, may be placed within the reach of those who must otherwise waste away in unmitigated suffering? Who, in short, could be bold enough to call himself a man, and yet give himself up to a churlish indifference as to whether the pains of his destitute brethren were assuaged by the arts of medical science, or whether those brethren were left to the gnawings of racking disease, with no pillow for the aching head, with no healing draught for the writhing emaciated frame? One malady there is the greatest, I may call it, to which flesh is heir, the unhappy subjects of which have a more than common claim on benevolence. It is much that accident and sickness should befall the body; but the climax of affliction is not reached until the mind itself is out of joint. So long as the soul retains possession of her capacities, man, however assaulted, however agonized, falls not from his rank in the scale of creation, but rather, by displaying the superiority of the immortal over the mortal, proves himself the denizen of a mightier sphere. Man is, then, most illustrious and most dignified, when his spiritual part rises up unshattered amid the ruins of the corporeal, and gives witness of destinies coeval with eternity, by showing an independence on the corrodings of time. But when the battery of attack has been turned upon the mind, when reason has been assaulted and hurled from her throne, oh! then it is that the spectacle of human distress is one upon which even the beings of a higher intelligence than our own may look sadly and pitifully; for the link of communion with the long hereafter seems thus almost dissevered, and that pledge of an unbounded duration,-a pledge of which no bodily decay can spoil us- -a pledge which is won by the soul out of the breakings-up of bone and sinew-for a while is torn away from man, and he remains the fearful nondescript of creation, dust lit up Deity, and yet Deity lost in dust. Ye cannot be lukewarm in the support of an institution which, like one of those whose foundation we are met to commemorate, throws open its gates to the subjects of this worst of calamities, and it were to transgress the due bounds of my office, if I should insist further on the claims of those Hospitals which have been reared for the purpose of mitigating the ills attendent on bodily or mental disease. But as the citizens of a great metropolis, you have a duty to perform in watching the moral health of an overgrown population. It becomes you to apply wholesome correctives to a spreading dissolution of manners, and to adopt such processes in dealing with the vicious and disorderly, as seem best calculated to arrest the contagion. There would be a grievous deficiency in the establishment of this gigantic city, if it numbered not amongst its hospitals, one especially set apart to the reception of the vagrant and the dissolute. The beginnings of crime must be diligently checked, if we wish to preserve soundness in our popula- | spirits, must go out into the walks of tion; and the best legislation is that society, in days when they are more which, by dealing strenuously with mi- than commonly swept by the chilling nor offences, employs the machinery blights of scepticism and vice. most calculated to prevent the commission of greater. But I turn gladly to the claims of an institution which can need no advocacy from the preacher's lips, seeing that the objects who are sheltered beneath its munificent protection, surround me, and plead eloquently, though silently, their own cause. Founded and fostered by the princes of the land, the hospital, which bears the name of Him who died as our surety, constitutes one of the prime ornaments of this emporium of wealth and greatness. Equalled by no other institution in the number of those for whose education and maintenance it provides, and excelled by none in the soundness of the learning which it communicates, I pass not the strictness of truth when I affirm, that he who would exhibit the splendor of British philanthropy should take his station in this pulpit, and point to the right hand and to the left. We have here a large multitude of the rising generation trained up in those principles which are calculated, under God's blessing, to make them valuable members of the community; and such is the course of their education, that whilst many are fitted to fill stations in the various departments of trade, others are prepared for the higher studies of a university, and thus introduced to the most solemn occupations of life. Who can behold such a number of his fellowcreatures, each with the dew of his youth just fresh upon him, and not rejoice that the early years of their lives are thus shielded and cherished? Who can remark how each bears upon his breast these animating words," He is risen," and not desire that these young heirs of immortality may grow up into manhood, rooted in the faith of Him who is "the Resurrection and the Life," and showing that they themselves are risen with Christ," by "seeking those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God?" The snows of a polar winter must rest upon the heart which throbs not with emotion at surveying so many born in troublous times, who, with all the airy expectancies of youthful and untried Unnecessary though I deem it to dwell at any length on the duty of supporting this venerable establishment, yet would I speak affectionately to you who are its inmates, and conjure you, "if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise," to "remember your Creator in the days of your youth." Whilst you are still strangers to the seductions of an ensnaring world, I would warn you against the evils which will gird you round when you go forth from the peaceful asylum of your childhood, and mix, as you unavoidably must, with those who lie in wait to destroy the unwary. I would tell you that there is no happiness but in the fear of the Almighty; that if you would so pass through life as not to tremble and quail at the approach of death, make it your morning and your evening prayer, that the Holy Spirit may take possession of your souls, and lead you so to love the Lord Jesus in sincerity, that you may not be allured from the holiness of religion by any of the devices of a wicked generation. Ye read in your classical stories of a monarch who wept as his countless army passed before him, staggered by the thought, that yet a few years, and those stirring hosts would lie motionless in the chambers of the grave. Might not a christian minister weep over you, as he gazes on the freshness of your days, and considers that it is but too possible, that you may hereafter give ear to the scorner and the seducer. Thus might the buds of early promise be nipped; and it might come to pass, that you, the children, it may be, of pious parents, over whose infancy a godly father may have watched, and whose opening hours may have been guarded by the tender solicitudes of a righteous mother, would entail on yourselves a heritage of shame, and go down at the judgment into the pit of the unbeliever and the profligate. Let this warning word be remembered by you all: it is simple enough for the youngest, it is important enough for the eldest. You cannot begin too soon to serve the Lord, but you may easily put it off too long; and the thing which will be least regretted when you come | ters confess their transgressions and repent them of their sins; let covetousness-the curse and darling of commercial cities, be abhorred, and lust renounced, and ambition mortified, and every bold working of impiety chased from amongst them; and let them, covered with the sackcloth of deep humiliation, bind themselves in a holy league for the advancement of the purposes of an enlarged philanthropy. Then, and not till then, may the hope be cherished, that the political hurricanes which shake the dynasties of Europe, shall leave unscathed our island sovereignty; and that whilst the rushing of a wrathful deluge dash away the land-marks of foreign states, Britain may lift her white cliffs above the surges, and rise amid the eddies like Mount Ararat from out the flood. "The poor you have always with you :" meet their spiritual and temporal necessities with the alacrity and zeal which become the followers of Christ; be yourselves men of prayer, and, so far as your influence extends, lead others to wrestle with the Almighty; and then, oh tell us not that England's greatness hath touched its zenith; ask us not for the lament which may be wailed over her departed majesty,-home of mercy, home of piety, thou shalt still continue the home of plenty, the home of peace; the sunshine of heaven's choice favor shall sleep upon thy fields, and the blithe music of contentment be heard in thy valleys; for "happy is that people that is in such a case, yea, blessed is that people whose God to die is, that you gave the first days SERMONS PREACHED IN GREAT ST. MARY'S CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE; AT THE EVENING LECTURE IN FEBRUARY, 1836 AND 1837. 1836. SERMON. THE GREATNESS OF SALVATION AN ARGUMENT FOR THE “How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?"—Hebrews, 2 : 3. There is nothing affirmed in these striking considerations, flowing from words, but the greatness of the salva- the fact that the salvation is so great, tion proposed by the Gospel; and from which must force you to admit the im this greatness seems inferred the im- possibility of escape asserted by St. possibility of escape, if we neglect the Paul. We shall necessarily, as we prosalvation. And there is, we think, sur- ceed, descend so far into particulars, prising force in the question of our text, as to take by themselves certain elewhen nothing but the stupendousness ments of the greatness in question. of salvation is regarded as our proof, But, whatever the constituent parts inthat to neglect it is to perish. It is a to which we may resolve salvation, it minister's duty, whether addressing his must be simply as great that we exhibit own congregation, or those to whom this salvation; and from the greatness, he is comparatively a stranger, to strive and from this alone, must we prove that by every possible motive to stir his none can escape who neglect the salhearers to the laying hold on salvation, vation. You see clearly that the pecuthat so, whatever their final portion, he liarity of the passage lies in this, that may be free from their blood. And it infers the peril of the neglect from therefore are we desirous to press you the greatness of the salvation. And in this night for an answer to the question, laboring at illustrating the accuracy of "How shall we escape, if we neglect this inference, and the pressing on you so great salvation?" We wish you hon- your consequent danger if careless of estly to examine, whether the magni- the soul, we shall attempt no other artude of redemption be not of itself an rangement of our discourse, but that overcoming demonstration that ruin which will set before you in succession, must follow its neglect. We would certain respects in which salvation is keep you close to this point. The pow-great, and use each successive exhibier of the question lies in this-the peril of the neglect proved by the greatness of the salvation. And we are sure that there are many tion as a proof, that to despise what is thus great, must be to make sure de struction. Now if we were arguing with an |