loved him, and gave him abundantly to partake of His Love.

"But the same servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants which owed him an hundred pence, and he laid hands on him, and took him by the throat, saying, Pay me that thou owest; and his fellow-servant fell down at his feet, and besought him, saying, Have patience with me and I will pay thee all. And he would not, but went and cast him into should pay the debt."

prison till he

The wicked Christian forgetting what he has received, breaks again the Law of Love which had been given him to keep. The Gift of Righteousness brings forth no Fruit in him, but is neglected and despised. It is therefore forfeited; and dreadful beyond expression is the consequence of its forfeiture. "His Lord was wroth and delivered him to the tormenters till he should pay all that was due unto him."

This parable is employed by our Lord to illustrate the obligation of one duty in particular, viz., that of forgiveness of injuries. But it most assuredly applies to all. See, then, my brethren, what God requires of us. He requires that we

should use the Gift which we have received; that having been, when we were yet in our sins, accounted righteous in His sight, not for any deserving of our own, but solely for the merits of our righteous Saviour, we should now "do righteously;" that having been grafted into the Righteous Branch, and rescued from the curse of barrenness and bitterness which belonged to our fallen nature, we should now grow in Him who hath taken us unto Himself, and be "filled with the Fruits of Righteousness which are by Jesus Christ to the Glory and Praise of God." He requires that we should not return to the state from which we have been delivered. He requires that we should no longer bring forth "briars and thorns," but be "fruitful in all good works." In what measure He requires this, is another and a very momentous enquiry. How much of sin, and how much of sloth, will cause us to fail in what He requires, He only knoweth. To some He has given more, to others less; the measure will be according to that which each has received. This only we know that to each of us some measure is appointed; from each of us something is ex

pected. If we fail of this, we reject the salvation of God; His mercy has been shewn us in vain; His Righteousness has been given us in vain and now is taken away; Christ has died for us in vain; the Holy Spirit has visited us in vain; and since it is not for the Glory of Almighty God that we should receive His Gifts in vain, it remains that the same Glory which we have refused to promote, willingly and thankfully, by the homage of our hearts and the active obedience of our lives, be at length, against our will, promoted and declared, in the sight of men and angels, by the severity of our condemnation. From so terrible a doom may the grace of God deliver us for the sake of Christ Jesus our Lord.

SERMON XII.

THE MANY AND THE FEW.*

S. MATT. xxii, 14.

66 MANY ARE CALLED BUT FEW ARE CHOSEN."

THE very awful fact expressed in these words is the moral, so to speak, which our Lord Himself attaches to one of His own Parables. He likens the Kingdom of Heaven "unto a certain King who made a marriage for his son." To this marriage those who were first bidden, though summoned twice and with great earnestness, most ungratefully refused to come; and

The principal matter of this Sermon was suggested to the writer by one which he heard preached, several years ago, in the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Oxford.

For

not only so, but they refused in a scornful and contemptuous manner; they "made light" of the King's invitation, and instead of obeying it, went about their usual business; and some of them even carried their contempt so far as to ill-treat and put to death the very servants whom he sent to call them to the wedding. this conduct they were, as we might have expected, most severely punished; they were judged unworthy of being present at the marriage; they were never again summoned to it; but the King "sent forth his armies and destroyed those murderers and burnt up their city." Yet the King would not have the marriage of his son to be without guests. He sent his servants therefore into the highways with a charge to bid to the marriage as many as they should find. "So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all, as many as they found, both bad and good, and the wedding was furnished with guests." It was not to be expected, however, that the bad guests, if they continued bad after so much favour and honour had been conferred upon them, would be suffered to remain at the marriage of the King's