bones. So now, though evil thoughts seem to be generated by the very substance of thy soul, though they be evermore thy first thoughts, the spontaneous produce of thy soul, and better thoughts come slowly after, as though from thy understanding and not from thy heart, faint not and hold thee not back; complain of thy misery, but to the All-Merciful. We come to Him, not because we are whole, but because we are sick. "Create in me a new heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Let every pang of misery and self-reproach issue in a brief prayer to Him, a sigh for His Help, a longing for His Purity, and He will create in thee a clean heart, and every cry shall bring down the touch of His Hand to cleanse it.

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This, as it is the ground-work of our humility and our hope, so is it of exceeding joy. "He made us and not we ourselves." He re-made us; and we, as far as there yet remains any good thing in us, are His workmanship in Christ Jesus." He will once more re-make us, and prepare us for that endless Regeneration, when by our last blessed birth, death shall be swallowed up in Life, corruption shall put on incorruption, dishonour shall be enveloped in Glory, and even the memory of past sins shall be so overwhelmed by the presence of the love of God, that it shall but increase our love, that such as we once were, He chose, to be the companions of Angels, the image of Himself, the partakers of the joy of Christ Jesus, our Lord and God.

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"Create in me a clean heart, O God." We shall then be the same and shall not be the same. shall be the same selves, but all which now so clings

to us, as to seem engrained in our very nature, the whole old man shall be laid aside, melted away with the fire of the Divine Love, and replaced by "the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness;" and this by the Spirit of God, by the gift of the Holy Spirit within us. "Renew a right Spirit within me." And meantime, this new self is re-created through every prayer to God. For prayer is the voice of the Holy Spirit within us, and calleth Him into ourselves. It is enlarged by every act of humility, for He dwelleth in the contrite heart; by every deed of love, for God is Love; by every imperfect obedience, for with those who obey Him He dwells; by every earnest calling on the Name of Jesus, for "He is very nigh unto all who call upon Him."

Faint not nor despond. If thou prayest, "thy heaviness shall be turned into joy." Let thy heaviness ever issue in prayer, brief, but longing; and while thou art yet in heaviness on earth, thy prayer which seems to fall back upon thee, Angels shall waft on their golden censers, and thine Almighty Intercessor shall present it before His Father; and unseen, perhaps unfelt, the Holy Spirit shall descend upon thee, and thou shalt, day by day, be renewed, not by any workings of thy own mind, nor by any power over thine own thoughts, nor by any change of thine own feelings wrought by thyself, but by His might "Who subdueth all things unto Himself."

And especially at Holy Communion, pray Him, when He vouchsafeth to come under thy roof, in that deep prayer of the Church, to "cleanse thy sinful body by His Body, and wash thy soul in His

Precious Blood; and He shall dwell in thee and thou in Him, thy impurity cleansed by His Purity, thy lukewarmness kindled by His Love, thy pride changed into His Lowliness, thine angry tempers hushed by His Meekness; that in the clean heart which He has created He may dwell, and with the right Spirit which He has renewed, thou mayest love and obey, and be conformed unto Him, and thy exceeding, everlasting joy be, that thou art wholly not thine own, but His; transformed from thyself and made, Scripture saith," one spirit with Him, through His Spirit Which dwelleth in thee."

SERMON XII.

THE SIN OF JUDAS.

PALM SUNDAY.

ST. MATTHEW Xxvii. 3-5.

"Then Judas which had betrayed Him, when he saw that He was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the Chief Priests and elders, saying, I have sinned, in that I have betrayed the innocent Blood. And they said, What is that to us? see thou to that. And he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself."

STRANGE picture is this day, of the world around us, and in which we are; may we not be of it! Would it were altogether of the world around us! Would that, at this time, when our Lord comes almost visibly before us, in the mysteries of this holy week, to recall to us the boundlessness of His love, any multitudes of this great city would go forth to meet Preached in London at the Chapel in Tichfield Street.

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Him! Would that, as the Psalms which celebrate Him, were wont in the early centuries to echo in the streets and the ways," so either hearts or voices in this great city would greet Him, their Redeemer, "Blessed is He that cometh in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!" Alas! another voice sounds there, in the varied notes of an untiring, unceasing discord, "Great is the goddess of the Ephesians!" Hymns of praise go up on high from the luxurious dwellings of the wealthy, from the marts of those who speculate, from the counters of our tradesmen, from the care-worn, anxious crowds which throng our streets, from the "palaces" which are the haunts of our homeless ones; but they go up to the god of this world, not to the God, Who made them. There are, doubtless, in God's mercy, the seven thousand, who have not "bowed the knee unto Baal;" but from far more than seventy times seven thousand, one prayer there is from morning to evening, a prayer not from the lips, but from the heart; a prayer, not from divided affections, but from the whole heart; a prayer, not listless, but with the whole energy of men's being; a prayer, which lives on in acts suited to the prayer; "O Baal, hear us." What do men's daily acts speak in the smooth accents of the vicious refinement of the rich, or in the coarse ribaldry of the poor, but, "We will not have this

b "Of other of the Divine Scriptures, you may see most men remembering little or nothing; but the spiritual hymns of the Divine David you may see many, many times, calling to mind, in houses, and streets, and ways, and soothing themselves by the harmony of the song, and gaining benefit through this pleasure of the soul." Theodoret. Præf. in Psalm.