the other from the very same causesnegligence, ignorance, and obstinacy; and succeed by the very same means—attention, knowledge, and industry. Thus considering ourselves and all around us as men devoted to a pursuit, bound to a master, and educated and destined for one great end, we shall walk in the sight of the world as if our vocation were constantly before our eyes and in our thoughts; learning from the worldly a lesson in spiritual things, and imitating them in their industry, zeal, and forethought, as earnestly as we are avoiding them in the object of their pursuit. We shall thus gradually advance in religious knowledge and experience as we advance in age; and having constantly been pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus, we shall be in some degree prepared for the final reckoning, when each shall give an account of his stewardship. Then, when every moment of our time shall be reviewed, and our disposal of it faithfully examined, happy indeed shall we be,

should it be seen that we have spent it in our vocation-in " continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living."

SERMON VII.

THE EARLY LIFE OF OUR BLESSED

SAVIOUR.

LUKE ii. 51.

And he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them: but his mother kept all these sayings in her heart.

AFTER our blessed Saviour's birth, and the signs and wonders which attended it, a period of thirty years elapsed before his entry on his public ministry, during which the evangelists are almost silent respecting him. No doubt, the reasons for this silence are good and wise. The events of his early youth are not recorded, because not necessary to be known; and one of the strongest proofs of the honesty and divine commission of the evangelists is drawn, not from what they have written

on this subject, but from what they have forborne to write-from the circumstance that, in recording the history of the most wonderful individual that ever appeared in the world, they have passed over, in almost utter silence, that interesting period of his life, on which the imagination most of all delights to dwell-his early habits and actions, and the first tokens which he showed of those wonderful gifts and graces which were afterwards to astonish and reform the world. Yet true it is, that we are told almost nothing of the youthful days of our Saviour; and the gospel before us1 (which is very properly selected by our Church, to follow the celebration of the feasts of the Nativity, Circumcision, and his Manifestation to the Gentiles), contains almost every particular that we are permitted to know on this point. It deserves, therefore, and will receive, the serious attention of every one, who wishes to trace with accuracy the life and character of his divine Master; and

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more especially so, because the events here recorded, are open, more than almost any others in his life, to our direct imitation.

In most cases, we feel that it is rather the principles on which he acts, than his actions themselves, that we are called upon, or can be expected, to imitate. The unusual duties which he had to discharge, and the divine power which he possessed to enable him to discharge them, elevate his life above our sphere of daily experience ;-but here, this difficulty can hardly be said to exist. His divinity is almost kept out of sight, and his perfect humanity is the conspicuous point of the narrative.

In this practical view, then, let us proceed to consider the particulars of the history before us.

The evangelist opens his account, by stating, for the information of his readers, that "the parents of Jesus went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover." Now it was commanded in the Mosaic Law, that all the males should appear three times a year before the Lord-at the

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