you, that you are doing all you can to make that hope vain. I must beseech you to look out for safer ground on which to stand. Put not off salvation till the last. may save you now. Take His yoke upon you, and learn of Him. Denying ungodliness and every worldly lust, live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world. So shall you find a true, and not a false peace, in your latter end. So shall your hope be sure, and certain. So, being made free from sin, and become servants of God, you shall have fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life!

Come unto Christ, that He

There is yet another view of our Lord's death which ought not to go unnoticed to-day, and that is the view which is presented to us in the text: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

Now in these words, the sacrifice of Christ is put before us as our example. "He laid down His life for us: we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

This is a side of our Lord's sufferings, on which we do not enough look. And yet, it is of the utmost importance that we should. We are glad enough to go to Christ for pardon-to put His sufferings before us as a cloak for our sins; but

what we need, more and more, is to have fellowship with those sufferings-to arm ourselves "with the same mind" that was in Jesus.

It is to this, brethren, that I would now exhort you to an earnest following of our crucified Lord. Let the sight of His self-sacrifice, which we have witnessed this day, stir us up to a noble emulation in doing good. Let it teach us to live for others, rather than for ourselves-to spend and be spent for our brethren.

Sitting down and watching Him there, let us copy, line upon line, the features of the Divine character: patience, meekness, long-suffering, endurance of grief wrongfully inflicted, entire submission to the Father's will, care for others under His own most bitter pangs, forgiveness prayed on their head, who had wrought His woe. Let us, I say, transcribe in our own hearts all we can of the temper and spirit that was in Christ Jesus. Let us fear that we are not the men we call ourselves; not His disciples, indeed, unless we take up our cross, and follow Him in His own path; unless as He was, so are we in this world: "Herein perceive we the love of God, because He laid down His life for us and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren."

Shiplake, 1856.

SERMON X.

THE PRECIOUS OINTMENT POURED ON JESUS'

HEAD.

ST. MARK, xiv. 9.

"Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this Gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her."

AMONG the many incidents which crowd the Gospel narrative, of our Lord's last days on earth, previous to His crucifixion, one of the most touching, and not the least instructive, is that which St. Mark has recorded in that Scripture which is appointed as the Gospel for the Monday in Passion-week,— "The anointing of Jesus by Mary, in the house of Simon at Bethany."

There is, as you are aware, another act of the same kind—another anointing of Christ recorded in the Gospel—that which we read in vii. chap. of St. Luke. But the two are not to be confounded together. They are unlike in everything except the single fact of the anointing. The character of the women, the description of the host, the sayings

uttered, the time, the place, all are different. All prove that we have, in each case, to deal with a separate, and peculiar incident.

This being remembered, let me call your attention now to the latter of these two anointings,the one brought before us at this season by our Church, and preserved to us by three out of the four Evangelists.

It took place, St. John informs us, six days before the Passover, and the scene of it was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper - Yes, Simon the leper; for this is all we know about him. He had been afflicted with that most loathsome sickness, the leprosy, and he had been healed of it, else he could not have appeared, as he does here, as an entertainer of guests. Who had recovered him from his leprosy is not told us, but conclude that it was Jesus; and now the Lord adds a further favour, by going to eat bread in Simon's house.

we may

Other guests were also there- guests whose names are not strange to us; guests who are associated for ever with the story of our Lord's earthly life. Lazarus is there, the "man raised up by Christ" - the man who for four days had laid in the grave- he is there, sitting at the table with his Redeemer. Martha is there, the sister of Lazarus, and, as we knew her before, busied about