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is in immediate risk of his salvation, if he has it not. ditional gift is called the gift of perseverance; and it consists in an ever watchful superintendence of us, on the part of our All-merciful Lord, removing temptations which He sees will be fatal to us, succouring us at those times when we are in particular peril, whether from our negligence or other cause, and ordering the course of our life, so that we may die when we are in a state of grace. And, since it is so simply necessary for us,

God grants it to us; nay, did He not, no one could be saved; He grants it to us, though He does not grant even to Saints the prerogative of avoiding every venial sin; He grants it, out of His bounty, to our prayers, though we cannot merit it by any thing we do or say to Him, even with the aid of His grace.

What a lesson of humility and watchfulness have we in this doctrine as now explained! It is one ground of humiliation, that, do what we will, strive as we will, we cannot escape from venial sin while we are on earth. Though the aide which God gives us are sufficient to enable us to live without sin, yet our infirmity of will and of attention is a match for them, and we do not do in fact that which we might do. And again, what is not only humbling, but even frightful and appalling, we are in danger of mortal sin as in certainty of venial; and the only reason why we are not in certainty of mortal is, that an extra ́ordinary gift is given to those who supplicate for it, to secure them from mortal, though no such gift is given to secure them from venial. In spite of the presence of grace in our souls, in spite of the actual assistances given us, we owe any hope we have of heaven, not to that inward grace simply, nor to those assistances, but to a supplementary mercy which protects us against ourselves, rescues us from occasions of sin, strengthens us in our hour of danger, and ends our days at that very time, perhaps cuts short our life in order to secure a time, when no mortal sin has separated us from God. Nothing we are, nothing we do, is any guarantee to us that this supplementary mercy has been accorded to us; we cannot know till the end; all we know is, that God has helped us hitherto, and we trust He will

help us still. But yet the experience of what He has already done is no promise that He will do more; our present religiousness need not be the consequence of the gift of perseverance as bestowed upon us; it may have been intended merely to prompt and enable us to pray earnestly and continually for that gift.There are men who, had they died at a particular time, would have died the death of Saints, and who lived to fall. They lived on here to die eternally. O dreadful thought! Never be you offended, my brethren, or overwhelmed, when you find the good and gentle, or the zealous and useful, cut down and taken off in the midst of their course it is hard to bear, but who knows but he is taken away a facie malitiæ, "from the presence of evil," from the evil to come? "He was taken away," as the . Wise Man says, "lest wickedness should alter his understanding, or deceit beguile his soul. For the bewitching of vanity obscureth good things, and the wandering of concupiscence overturneth the innocent mind. Being made perfect in a short space, he fulfilled a long time. For his soul pleased God; therefore He hastened to bring him out of the midst of iniquities.— But the people see this, and understand not, nor lay such things in their hearts; that the grace of God and His mercy is with His Saints, and that He hath respect to His chosen."

Bad is it to bear, when such a one is taken away; cruel to his friends, sad even to strangers, and a surprise to the world; but O, how much better, how happy so to die, instead of being reserved to sin! You may wonder how sin was possible in him, my brethren; he had so many graces, he had lived and matured in them so long; he had overcome so many temptations. He had struck his roots deeply, and spread abroad his branches on high. One grace grew out of another; and all things in him were double one against another. He seemed from the very completeness of his sanctity, which encircled him on every side, to defy assault and to be proof against impression. He, if any one, could have said with the proud Church in the Apocalypse, "I am wealthy and enriched, and have need of nothing;" that he had started well, seemed a reason why he should go on;

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strength would lead to strength, and merit to merit; as a flame increases and sweeps along and round about, as soon as, and for the very reason that it is once kindled, so he promised himself a destiny of greater triumphs as time proceeded. He was fit to scale Heaven by an inherent power, which, though at first of grace, yet, when once given, became not of grace, but of claim for more grace, as by the action of a law, and the process of a series, in which grace and merit alternated, man meriting and meriting, and the God of grace being forced to give and give, if He would be true to His promise. Thus we might look at him, and think we had already in our hands all the data of a great and glorious and infallible conclusion, and deny that a reverse or a fall was possible. My brethren, there was once an Eastern king, in his day the richest of men; and a Grecian sage came to visit him, and having seen all his glory and his majesty, was pressed by this poor child of vanity to say whether he was not the happiest of men. To whom the wise man did but reply, that he should wait till he saw the end. So it is as regards spiritual wealth; since Almighty God, in spite of His ample promises, and His faithful abidance to them, has not put out of His own hands the issues of life and death; the end comes from Him as well as the beginning. When He has once given grace, He has not therefore simply made over to the creature his own salvation. The creature can merit much; but as he could not merit the grace of conversion, neither can he merit the gift of perseverance. From first to last he is dependent on Him who made him; he cannot be extortionate with Him, he cannot turn His bounty to the prejudice of the Bountiful; he may not exalt himself, he dare not presume, but, "if he thinketh he standeth, let him take heed lest he fall." He must watch and pray, he must fear and tremble, he must "chastise his body and bring it into subjection, lest, after he has preached to others, he himself should be reprobate.”

But I need not go to heathen history for an instance in point; Scripture furnishes one a thousand times more apposite and more impressive. Who was so variously gifted, so inwardly endowed,

so laden with external blessings, as Solomon ? on whom are lavished, as on him, the titles and the glories of the Eternal Son, God and man? The only aspect of Christ's adorable Person, which he does not represent, does but bring out to us the peculiarity of his privileges. He does not symbolize Christ's sufferings; he was neither a Priest, nor like David his father, had he been a man of strife, and toil, and blood. Every thing which betokens mortality, every thing which savours of the fall, is excluded from our idea of Solomon. He is as if an ideal of perfection; the king of peace, the builder of the temple, the father of a happy people, the heir of an empire, the wonder of all nations; a prince, yet a sage; palace-bred, yet taught in the schools; a student, yet a man of the world; deeply read in human nature, yet learned too in animals and plants. He has the crown without the cross, peace without war, experience without suffering, and this not in the mere way of men, or from the general providence of God, but from His very hands, by a particular designation, and as the result of inspiration. He obtained it when young, and where shall we find any thing so touching in the whole of Scripture as the circumstances of the grant? who shall accuse him of want of religious fear and true love, whose dawning is so beautiful? When the Almighty appeared to him in a dream on his coming to the throne and said, “Ask what I shall give thee;" "O Lord God," he made answer, "Thou hast made Thy servant king instead of David my father; and I am but a child, and know not how to go out and come in. And Thy servant is in the midst of the people which Thou hast chosen, an immense people, which cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude." Accordingly, he asked for nothing else but the gift of wisdom to enable him to govern his people well; and as his reward for so excellent a petition, he received, not only the wisdom for which he had asked, but those other gifts for which he had asked not: "And the Lord said unto Solomon, Because thou hast asked this thing, and hast not asked for thyself long life, nor riches, nor the lives of thine enemies, but hast asked for thyself wisdom to discern judgment, behold,

I have done to thee according to thy words, and I have given to thee a wise and understanding heart, so that none has been like thee before thee, nor shall rise after thee. Yea, and the things also, which thou didst not ask, I have given to thee, to wit, riches and glory, so that none has been like to thee among the kings in all days heretofore."

Rare inauguration to his greatness! the most splendid of monarchs owes nothing to injustice, or to cruelty, or to violence, or to treachery, nothing to human art or to human arm, that he is so powerful, so famous, and so wise; it is a divine gift which endued him within, which clothed him without. What was wanting to his blessedness? seeking God in his youth, growing up year after year in sanctity, fortifying his faith by wisdom, and his obedience by experience, and his aspirations by hablt, what shall he not be in the next world, who is so glorious in this? He is a Saint ready made; he is in his youth what others are in their age; he is fit for heaven ere others begin the way heavenword: why should he delay? what lacks he yet? why tarry the wheels of his chariot ? why does he remain on earth, for a good old age, when he has already won his crown, and may be carried away in a happy youth, and be securely taken into God's keeping, not with the common throng of holy souls, but like Enoch and Elias, up on high, in some fit secret paradise till the day of redemption? Alas! he remains on earth to show us that there might be one thing lacking amidst that multitude of graces; to show that though there be all faith, all hope, all love, all wisdom; that though there be an exuberance of merits, it is all a vanity, it is only a woe in the event if one gift be wanting,-the gift of perseverance! He was in his youth, what others hardly are in age; well were it, had he been in his end, what the feeblest of God's servants is in his beginning!

His great father, whose sanctity had been wrought into him by many a fight with Satan, and who knew how difficult it was to persevere, when his death drew near, as if in prophecy rather than in prayer, had spoken thus of and to his son and his