The Collect for the day accordingly makes penitential acknowledgment of God's justice in punishing our sins, and prays for deliverance, for the glory of His blessed name.

The Epistle points out our race, and the necessity of fasting and mortification, in order to run it successfully.

The Gospel shews us the work appointed for us in God's vineyard, looking also to the calling of the Gentiles in the end of the day, who yet, by diligent labour, may equal, in the receipt of wages, those who set out in earlier ages. But it gives not the smallest encouragement to those Christians who, by their baptism, were engaged to labour early in life, but have loitered idly all the day, and, at the close of it, only begin to work, or lament that they have not worked earlier; for so this parable has been sometimes wrongly applied.

The Sunday Lessons, going back from Isaiah to Genesis, discover to us the superior rank and high dignity of man upon his creation, stamped with the image of God, the divine spirit added to his earthly body and human soul, by the distinguishing favour of the gracious Creator. Made in his natural body a creature only of earth, heaven, by this more than natural grace, became his inheritance, and the garden of God's own planting was made his delightful habitation, as a pledge of that above. There all was peace and joy, with hope of higher things, before sin brought in shame, and sorrow, and death. By the mercy of Him who made us, and, of His love and pity, also redeemed us, we are created anew, that we may shake off

our sins, and put on the new man, which, in Christ Jesus, is renewed in holiness, after the image of Him that created us.

Sexagesima Sunday.

"Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God."-2 Cor. i. 4.

If there is one point of character more than another which belonged to St. Paul, and discovers itself in all he said and did, it was his power of sympathising with his brethren, nay, with all classes of men. He went through trials of every kind, and this was their issue, to let him into the feelings, and thereby to introduce him to the hearts, of high and low, Jew and Gentile. He knew how to persuade, for he knew where lay the perplexity; he knew how to console, for he knew the sorrow. His spirit within him was as some delicate instrument, which, as the weather changed about him, as the air was moist or dry, hot or cold, accurately marked its changes, and guided him what to do. "To the Jews he became as a Jew, that he might gain the Jews; to them that were under the law, as under the law, that he might gain them that were under the law; to them that were without law, as without law, that he might gain them that were without law. To the weak,' he says, "became I as weak, that I might gain the weak. I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some" (1 Cor. ix. 20-22).

And so, again, in another place, after having recounted his various trials by sea and land, in the bleak wilderness and the stifling prison, from friends and strangers, he adds, "Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is offended, and I burn not? If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities" (2 Cor. xi. 29, 30). Hence, in the Acts of the Apostles, when he saw his brethren weeping, though they could not divert him from his purpose, which came from God, yet he could not keep from crying out, "What mean ye to weep, and to break my heart? for I am ready, not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem, for the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts xxi. 13). And even of his own countrymen who persecuted him, he speaks in the most tender and affectionate terms, as understanding well where they stood, and what their view of the Gospel was. "I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart; for I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh." And again, Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they may be saved. For I bear them record that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge" (Rom. ix. 3; x. 1, 2). And hence, so powerful was he in speech with them, whenever they were not reprobate, that even king Agrippa, after hearing a few words of St. Paul's own history, exclaimed, "Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian" (Acts xxvi. 28). And what he was in persuasion, such he was in consolation. He himself gives this reason for his trials in the text, speaking of Almighty God's

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"comforting him in all his tribulations, that he might be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith he himself was comforted of God."

Such was the great Apostle St. Paul, the Apostle of grace, whom we hold in especial honour in the early part of the year. At this season we commemorate his conversion; and at this season we give attention, more than ordinary, to his Epistles. And on Sexagesima Sunday we almost keep another Festival in his memory, the Epistle for the day being expressly on the subject of his trials. He was beaten, he was scourged, he was chased to and fro, he was imprisoned, he was shipwrecked, he was in this life of all men most miserable, that he might understand how poor a thing mortal life is, and might learn to contemplate and describe fitly the glories of the life immortal. "Experience," he tells us elsewhere, "worketh hope;" that grace which of all others most tends to comfort and assuage sorrow. In somewhat a similar way our Lord says to St. Peter, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: but I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not; and when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 31, 32). Nay, the same law was fulfilled, not only in the case of Christ's servants, but even He Himself, "who knoweth the hearts," condescended, by an unspeakable mystery, to learn to strengthen man, by the experiencing of man's infirmities. "In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to

God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people; for in that He Himself suffered, being tempted, He is able to succour them that are tempted." "We have not an high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. ii. 17; iv. 15).

Such is one chief benefit of painful trial, of whatever kind, which it may not be unsuitable to enlarge on. "Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward." More or less, we all have our severe trials of pain and sorrow. If we go on for some years in the world's sunshine, it is only that troubles, when they come, should fall heavier. Such, at least, is the general rule. Sooner or later we fare as other men; happier than they, only if we learn to bear our portion more religiously; and more favoured, if we fall in with those who themselves have suffered, and can aid us with their sympathy and their experience. And then, while we profit from what they can give us, we may learn from them freely to give what we have freely received, comforting in turn others with the comfort which our brethren have given us from God.

Now, in speaking of the benefits of trial and suffering, we should, of course, never forget that these things, by themselves, have no power to make us holier or more heavenly. They make many men morose, selfish, and envious. The only sympathy they create in some minds is the wish that others should suffer with them, not they with others. Affliction, when love is away, leads a man to wish others to be as he is; it leads to repining, ill-will, hatred, rejoicing in evil. The