mained no grander and more exalted arena yet to be opened for the exercise of the faculties of an immortal soul. While a similar conclusion must result from a view of the constitution of man as forming a connecting link between two widely different orders of being. With the things of the material world we are indeed bound up for a time, but we are yet of a higher character than they. Man is composed of an undying spirit linked to a perishable body. Bowed to the earth with the infirmities of his mortal frame, as well as with the sinfulness that has enthralled the soul, yet, in his immortality, at least, he is akin to those eternal spirits who minister perpetually to the will of Jehovah; and who, as we are told, in subordination to the supreme intelligence, watch over the destinies of man, and participate in the joy of Heaven over the return of a repentant sinner. And thus, from the very composition and structure of our nature, we may learn, though alas! we too seldom apply the truth, that our interest in this world is but of a transitory kind, and that we are indeed as "strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

But in how far more deeply interesting and efficacious a light is this great principle represented to us in the Gospel scheme! It is a principle which is interwoven throughout with

the whole texture of revealed religion from the beginning of time. And it is one which stands forth in peculiar and most striking prominence in the preaching and all the doctrines of Christ. It was the spirit of this world which he came expressly to encounter,-the spirit which makes men love that world as their real and permanent home, and fix their attachment on the objects of sense, as if they were to abide for ever. His "kingdom was literally "not of this world."

It was to

break the chains that bound us here, that he came from heaven. His office, as a Redeemer, was to ransom us from our subjection to that evil spirit who was emphatically called, "the Prince of this world," and to open to us an "access to a better kingdom, that is, an heavenly. And the Holy Ghost, while it sanctified the heart of man, was to do so, not only by instilling holiness and goodness from on high into that corrupted soil, but by banishing those degraded affections which riveted and bound it too much to the earth, the "lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and

the pride of life, but the world."*

which are not of the Father,

So that it is not too much to

assert, that a great and essential principle, pervading the whole tenor of the Christian scheme, is one which requires its professors to feel and live as "strangers and pilgrims on the earth."

1 John ii. 17.

SERMON S.

BY

W. E. TRENCHARD, M. A.

Of Pembroke College, Oxford,

AND LATE CURATE OF WEST MONKTON, SOMERSET.

<BOD

LONDON:

MESSRS. RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH-YARD;

W. C. POLLARD, EXETER.

AND SOLD BY ALL BOOKSELLERS.

1835.