lent and necessary grace is especially commended

and enforced.

I shall endeavour to aid her pious design by taking for the subject of my discourse those verses of the passage which you have heard, and in so doing I shall discuss two points which the two main clauses of them obviously submit to our consideration. I shall speak,

I. First, of the perpetuity of the obligation. which lies upon us to cultivate and exercise the principle of love or charity towards our neighbour; and,

II. Secondly, of the universal efficacy of this inward principle, so as to show how much it will do, and how far it will regulate us, if we be possessed of it.

I. And first as to the perpetuity of our obligation to cultivate and exercise the principle of love or charity towards our neighbour. This is indicated in the form of expression which, in requiring our love, the apostle uses. It is a singular way of speaking, and a very instructive one. "Owe no man anything, but to love one another."

He had been speaking before of justice: "Render unto all their dues-tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour." When the your labourers who have reaped wages of down your fields are due, they must be paid :

and if they are kept back beyond the day, or deduction is made, "the cry of the oppressed entereth into the ears of God." When your tradesman makes his demand for his own he must be satisfied, and you must not (as you fear God and value your own souls) defraud him, or needlessly keep him waiting; and if you are yourselves the traffickers, or the labourers, you must, in return for payment, render, as the case may be, good weight and full measure and quality according to agreement, or an honest day's work for your wages; otherwise you are thieves. These things are debts, and debts which it is quite possible fully to discharge; and which, therefore, on the one hand, you must pay, and not owe; but which, on the other hand, having paid, you are thenceforth clear of obligation. Your duty in those special cases is finished. But there are other debts besides debts of justice. Charity, according to the apostle, is a debt too; that is, a thing by strict obligation due from you to your neighbour. And in this way it is spoken of elsewhere. "With

hold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not to thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give, when thou hast it by thee."* It is true, the obligation of justice comes first. Till you have made good your contracts, * Prov. iii. 27, 28.

VOL. III.

F

and paid every man what he has earned from you, you have nothing by you that is properly yours; what you have is his, and to give that away to the needy would be like "robbery for burnt-offering," which God says he hates. But supposing that you are clear of the obligations of strict justice, then so long as your neighbour is in want or distress, and you are able to relieve or comfort him, you owe him your help; and according to Solomon, whose words I have quoted, if you so much as delay to afford it to him,—if you do but put him off till to-morrow when you might serve him to-day, you are guilty. Charity is a debt which you must begin to pay at once, in the way of giving if you are able to give, and your alms are needed and in all other branches of it, of course, in which you may be useful, though giving is either impossible or not required.

But now, which is the point specially before us, you must observe there is this main difference between the debt of charity and other debts. It is a debt from which you can never be absolutely released. It must be always in a course of payment; but yet it is never fully paid out; and you must never consider it as paid, or consider yourselves as acquitted of the obligation, to go on paying still. This is the apostle's doctrine. I do not mean that it will be imputed to you to your con

demnation, that you never can be discharged of this debt. On the contrary, if you will be content to acknowledge yourselves debtors to the end, and will act accordingly, this is just what God requires, and will, in Christ, both accept and recompense. Neither do I mean that you must give all your goods to feed the poor, so as to leave yourselves destitute, and put yourselves out of that influential station to which God has called you, and through which culiar means of usefulness. of charity to be liberal to the poor, and God hath ordained that the poor shall never perish. out of the land; then, having been liberal once, you must be so still-you must never be weary of well-doing. Of whatsoever you have, the

you have your peBut if it is a branch

poor must have their share, and you must act with reference to your substance as faithful stewards of God's bounty to the last. And so in all other cases. As the rivers run perpetually into the sea, and yet the sea is never full, but the rivers still pour in their streams, so must be your charity. If you are to forgive your brother his trespasses, having done it seven times, you are to go on to seventy times seven, if need be. If you are to think well, hope well, and speak well of all; you are to persevere : your neighbour will always want your charity in

some mode or other of it. There will always be some way, in which you can bestow it upon him. And God's word still demands it of you on his behalf. The poor possibly may be very ungrate ful; the ignorant very troublesome; the feebleminded very wearisome; your enemies very provoking; and it may become harder, upon longer experience, to put a favourable construction upon many persons' conduct; but all these are still your brethren, and God's creatures, and Christ's sheep; therefore the reasons for loving them, and for doing the works of love towards them, as you have opportunity, remain still in their original force, and must still be recognised and respected.

This is the first thing to be gathered from the text, that christian charity must be an abiding principle.

II. We are instructed, next, respecting its universal efficacy where it does abide; or, in other words, how much it will bring to pass, and how far it will regulate our conduct.

"He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law."

Charity, as far as our obligations to our neighbours are concerned, is capable of duly regulating the whole man both in heart and practice, making us to be in all things devoted to our brethren's service, so that we shall want no other