Lord and your King. And if you do so, you will find yourselves the better for it, when this world comes to an end. While others, who do not wish to know the Saviour on earth, will be accosted by him thus in Heaven, Depart from me, I never knew you; it will be your happy fate to hear from him this joyful sentence, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you before the foundation of the world.

And now to God, &c.

LECTURE XXXV.

ST. MATTHEW xv. 3, 4.

But he, (that is Jesus,) answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition: for God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and thy mother; and, he that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.

THE Pharisees were our Lord's greatest enemies. I have told you already who they were. The Scribes too were often joined with them in doing all they could to contradict and oppose the blessed Jesus. These two sorts of people came to him with a question, which they thought would shew him how nice and particular they were in all acts of outward clean

liness, and therefore, as they wished him to think, in all things belonging to inward cleanliness and purity, the cleanliness of the heart. You all know, I suppose, what I mean by cleanliness of heart. You know what is meant by cleanliness of body. Cleanliness of heart means its being cleansed from all its guilty thoughts and wishes, bad lusts, and bad passions. The Bible promises to the pure in heart that they shall see God: it commands us to prove by ourselves, as Jesus Christ is pure, and tells us, that if we are pure, we shall see Christ in the next world as he is, in all his glory. Now, I cannot tell you too often, that you can never be clean, unless God's Holy Spirit makes you so. This Spirit is given to us at our baptism, and therefore water is used in baptism, to shew us that water cleanses the body, so the Holy Ghost cleanses the soul. I would therefore beg you to pray every day for the Holy Spirit of God to enter into your hearts, and to wash them

from sin, to give them holy desires, good counsels, and just works. Our Saviour tells us, that we cannot see the wind, which you all know is the case: you see what it does: you hear its sound: you feel its force. So with the Holy Ghost. You do not see him: you see what he does by what a good Christian does, when the Holy Ghost dwells in him. The Bible tells us that love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, patience, temperance, are the fruits of the Spirit. Therefore when you see a man kind and obliging to others, with an easy and cheerful conscience, hoping and looking for another and a better world, bearing injuries and affronts with good temper, gentle and humble and quiet in his disposition, meek, and not passionate, patient under affliction, temperate and chaste, neither drunken, nor loose and lewd in his behaviour, such a man you would say is governed by the Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost. You see this by his works. Now I wish

you to strive to be all this in reality. The Scribes and Pharisees (for I now go on with telling you what they did) mended outward things. They cleansed the outside, they thought not of the inside, that is, ofthe heart. They came and asked our Saviour why his disciples did not follow their rules by washing their hands often. It is easier, you know, my friends, to wash the hands than the heart. Our Saviour's answer was: Why do you disobey God's commandment: you mind the rules of men: you do not mind the orders of God. For God commanded, saying, Honour thy Father and thy mother and he that curseth Father or mother let him die the death. Now the Pharisees had said, that if a man pretended to devote to God what he possessed, he could not take away any part of it to support his father or mother. How wicked and how foolish! God wanted nothing from their hands: their parents did. But it was a mere excuse when they did not wish to provide for their father or mother.