cated in the passage upon which we have been meditating. If we carefully check every tendency to an uncharitable, unforgiving disposition, whenever we find it disposed to rise up within us, and look to the Lord to be endowed by him with the opposite graces, such will assuredly become our happy state. We shall by degrees experience in our own bosoms, while here, all the happy feelings which ever accompany the presence of charity; and we shall be received hereafter into those abodes of perfect happiness where charity ever reigns, where every one's outward actions are an infallible index to his internal state, and where nothing opposed to charity ever can intrude.

SERMON XLI.

THE POOR WIDOW'S TWO MITES.

BY THE REV. T. GOYDER, NORWICH.

Luke xxi. 1—4.

"And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all. For all these have of their abundance cast in unto the offerings of God: but she of her penury hath cast in all the living that she had."

WHEN the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world,-when as the true Messiah he came as the Redeemer of Israel, and as the Word made flesh; he came to restore and not to destroy-to seek and to save that which was lost, and to give his life a ransom, or a redemption for many. Now, if Jesus Christ be, what the Christian world universally acknowledges him to be, the Redeemer of Israel, then he must essentially possess those qualities and properties, which are alone requisite to begin, to carry on, and to perfect the work of redemption. What are we redeemed from? From the wrath of God? Allow me to say, my brethren, that there is no wrath in God; and therefore we cannot be redeemed or delivered from that which has no real existence. "Fury is not in me," saith Jehovah. "God is love," saith the Apostle; "and whosoever dwelleth in love dwelleth in God." "He," (God) saith the prophet, "hath loved us with an everlasting love." The psalmist says, that God is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works; and exclaims with rapturous feelings, "Oh that men would praise the Lord for his goodness, and for his wonderful works to the children of men." The Lord Jesus, whose every word bears the impress of truth, has taught us, that our Heavenly Father, being perfect, makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, sending rain on the just and the unjust. All the conceptions that the human mind can possibly form of God, and all that is really written of him in scripture, must be, that he is infinitely and eternally good, and that he changeth not. If it be a truth that God is es

sentially good, yea, goodness itself, and that he changeth not, we cannot ascribe to him in reality the vile qualities of anger and wrath; this would be rendering to God the things that are Cæsar's, and ascribing to the Almighty the faults, failings, and imperfections of fickle, changing, and sinful man! But it may be asked, does not David, in Psalm vii. 11, say, that "God judgeth the righteous, and God is angry with the wicked every day?" I answer no! David says no such thing; and if we would carefully read the Scriptures, many bright truths would be opened to our minds, which are now hid from our eyes. In that verse the words-with the wicked-are not in the original at all, and the faithful translators of the Bible tell us so, by putting them in italic characters. The original of that verse reads thus, "God judgeth the righteous," or rather, "God is a just judge, and God is angry every day.” Anger and wrath are attributed to the Lord in the literal sense of Scripture, just as, in like manner, we say that the sun rises and sets. The real truth is, that the sun itself neither rises nor sets, but these are appearances in nature which arise from those constant changings and revolutions which the earth makes in its circuit round that luminous body. Now, as the apostle has laid down a golden rule of Scripture interpretation, which is, that "the invisible things of God are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made," we therefore discover that as darkness and light, heat and cold, summer and winter, are effects in the great world of nature, arising entirely from the earth's situation in respect to the sun, while the sun itself remains unalterably the same; so in man as the moral world, ignorance and wisdom, love and anger, spiritual fertility and barrenness, are effects in him, arising solely from that inward state and condition of mind in which he is, in respect to the Lord as the sun of righteousness, in reference to his reception or rejection of his love and wisdom; the Lord remaining unalterably and for ever the same. Thus while real changes are in the earth on account of its revolutions, the apparent changes are in the sun; so it is with man in his progress of the regenerate life, or in his further inclining to iniquity, while real changes are effected in him, they are only apparent in the Lord.

The Lord appears to every man according to his state; for the human mind is as a mirror in which the Lord is presented to view. This truth we are taught in the Word of God. "With the merciupright man thou

ful thou wilt show thyself merciful; with an wilt show thyself upright; with the pure thou wilt show thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt show thyself froward" (Psalm

xviii. 25, 26). These changes of merciful, upright, pure, and froward, are apparently in the Lord, but really in man; the Lord being always the same. The wicked and angry man looks at the Lord from his inward spirit of anger and pollution, and to him the Lord appears froward. The merciful man, from that spirit of mercy within him, beholds the Lord in his true character of merciful and gracious; the upright and pure do the same. As the sincere Christian advances higher and higher in the divine life, to him the Lord appears more and more lovely, merciful, and kind; but as the sinner sinks into lower states of degradation and pollution, he veils even mercy's face with his own anger; and while his own inward evils shut out the light of heaven from his soul, and become his real tormentors, to him the Lord appears terrific and the punisher of his guilt. It is, then, in reference to these real changes in man, that the Lord as to his appearance and providential dealings with his creatures, is so variedly described in Scripture.

Now as the Lord came not to redeem us from the wrath of God, because there is really no wrath in him; from what then are we redeemed? This is a question of real importance, and searches deeply into the hidden things of the human heart. The true idea of redemption is a deliverance, a setting free from spiritual captivity and bondage: and whatever it is that keeps the soul in mental captivity, in bondage, and slavery; from that we must be delivered or redeemed, otherwise the kingdom can never be obtained, neither can we have any reward of our Father in the heavens.

What is it but sin, a state of degraded self-love, the love of the world and all evil, together with those false persuasions, which bind the soul to the perishable things of time and sense, and thus destroy our hopes of a glorious immortality;-what is it but this unhallowed state, that keeps the soul as it were in prison, under the withering influence of spiritual corruption and death. It is, from this state of selfishness, earthly-mindedness, and falsehood, and from its direful influence over our affections, thoughts, and life, that the Lord has delivered us. He has broken their fetters, dispelled their charm, and brought life and immortality to light. Thus the very name Jesus, signifies a saviour, a deliverer from the trammels of evil and falsehood, and a restorer of the soul. "Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins." If ever we gain the kingdom of life and light, it is from our sins, from our inward impurities of affection and thought, that we must be delivered, redeemed, and saved! It is these spiritual pollutions, these inward foes of our own house, that remove

the heavenly state from the soul of man, and corrupt, at the very fountain head, our brightest prospects of celestial scenes!

Now if the Lord Jesus Christ be in truth the redeemer of Israel, he must, as already observed, be possessed of those divine properties which are essential to the performance of the work. He must know the secret thoughts, the springs whence they rise, and the end to which they aspire; without this penetrating knowledge of the hidden secrets of the heart, and the thoughts and actions thence derived, he could not be the redeemer of the people. This all-knowing, or all-seeing property, is the divine attribute of omniscience; where this exists, we find that it does not exist alone, but is found in close union with two others, namely, with those of omniprescence and omnipotence. The former of these words means all-present, and the latter all-power. These three, then, are essential to the character of a redeemer; for where there is all-presence, there is all-knowledge, and in all-knowledge there is all power, whence comes deliverance or redemption. The being in whom these attributes are not, is weak and fallible, and can be no redeemer; for where there is a defect of presence, there is a defect of knowledge, and a defect of power, consequently there can be no deliverance, no redemption. That these three divine attributes are ascribed to Jesus Christ, is known to all who read the New Testament. It is said of Jesus that he knew the thoughts of man; that he needed not to be told what was in man, for that he knew what was in him. "All power," saith the Lord, "is given to me in heaven and in earth." And when sending forth his disciples to preach the Gospel of the kingdom, he said, "Lo! I am with you always, even to the consummation of the age!" And "wherever two or three are gathered together in my name, there will I be in the midst." Now, brethren, let us all think seriously of the subject matter of our text. Entertain proper and scriptural views of the Redeemer, so essential this to a right understanding of the Word of God. Imagine to yourselves that Jesus Christ, the Redeemer and Restorer of the Soul, he who knew the thoughts, who searched the heart, and explored the motives whence all actions spring; that he, when in the Temple at Jerusalem, was watching and observing, with a divine penetration, the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. Consider that each of these gifts was made from some inwardly concealed motive, and that these motives were all known to him, who, in the text, is described as looking up and seeing the rich men casting in their gifts: when all these things are taken