SERMON IV.

LADY-DAY, 1851.

ST. JOHN, XIX, 25.

Now there stood by the cross of Jesus his mother.

It is both a common and a just remark, that, in avoiding one extreme, men are exceedingly apt to rush into the opposite. And the truth of this remark is certainly often exemplified by Protestants, who, in their zeal to shun everything which bears resemblance to Popery, may be said to reject not only error, but truth. They have so great, and so becoming, a dislike to the corruptions of the Roman Catholic Church, that they are disposed to look with suspicion even on what may be yet excellent in that body; and it is enough to say of a doctrine, that it is held by the Papists, to insure its being looked upon

with some measure of suspicion. We need not tell you, that there is more of partizanship in this than of the love of truth, more of prejudice than of principle. Forasmuch as the Roman Church was originally the pure Church, though now sadly debased and corrupted, we may expect to find in her tenets disguised and mutilated truth, as well as open and undeniable falsehood. Our business, therefore, is to endeavour to sift out the truth -not rashly concluding that what is found in Popery must be banished from Protestantism, but calmly investigating the grounds of every doctrine, trying it by Scripture and the judgment of the early Church, and accepting or rejecting according as these guides shall furnish a decision. Our Reformers acted in this respect with singular wisdom. They thoroughly felt that their business was not to construct a new Church, but to repair and restore an old, decayed in many parts, and buried under rubbish in more. And

they therefore proceeded, with a discretion and a singleness of purpose, for which we can never be sufficiently thankful to God, to reject whatever the Bible and antiquity did not sanction, and to retain whatever they did; feeling that their business was to wage war with error, and their danger, that, in rooting up the tares, they might root up also the wheat.

But whilst the Reformers were thus careful and judicious, they could not exterminate the spirit which dictated the indiscriminate censure of whatever was Papal. And the spirit still survives. For instance, the Roman Catholics give idolatrous honours to the Virgin Mary, imagining her without sin, addressing her as an object of worship, and applying to her, as an intercessor with her Son, or with God. The Protestant, on the contrary, justly and indignantly refuses to join in this blasphemous homage, regarding the mother of Christ as having been of the same corrupt nature with other daughters

of our race, and as having no power whatsoever of procuring for us benefits, whether spiritual or temporal. But is it not true, that, through fear of giving too much honour to the Virgin, Protestants, for the most part, give too little; so that she is scarcely remembered in the Reformed Church, because sinfully reverenced in the Roman Catholic? This has been through no fault of the Reformers themselves: for they did not fail to appoint services which might remind us of the mother of our Lord. But we have been so shocked at seeing Mary exalted by the Papists into a Mediator, endowed with Divine prerogatives, and crowned with Divine honours, that we have forgotten the claims which she really has on the affectionate homage of every believer in Christ. No eminent saint of whom we read, whether in the Old or New Testament, is perhaps so little thought of by us, or so little commended, as she whom the Angel Gabriel was commissioned to

address as "highly favoured", "blessed among women".

In proof of this, let me remind you that this is Lady-Day. Perhaps some of you are scarcely aware that Lady-Day is an appointed festival of our Church; that the Church directs us thereon gratefully to commemorate that great event, the Annunciation by an Angel to the Virgin Mary, that she should be miraculously the mother of the long-expected Messiah, The term Lady-Day perhaps suggests no idea but that of paying or receiving money few remember that ecclesiastically the day is set apart to the celebration of one of the chief mysteries of our faith, with which indeed is bound up the whole sum and substance of Christianity. And although on most Sabbath evenings of the year we join in that beautiful hymn which commences, "My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour", how seldom do we call to mind from whose lips the hymn