honours also a happy man; and that he does not honour murmuring, thankless, complaining, and dissatisfied men. If our sins should humble us, our mercies should make us thankful. Sins can never be over-punished; mercies can never be over-acknowledged. In our sorest sufferings we have reason to be silent; in our least mercies we have reason to be thankful. I believe that he who is an unthankful possessor of mercies will not be a long possessor, or a quiet possessor. God treats your mercies as the bee treats the flower. The bee gathers its nutriment from the flower; and the flower, instead of being injured by the bee's application to it, is, as the botanists will tell you, positively benefited and nourished. We are to receive the blessing, but the tribute God exacts from us is the tribue of thanksgiving and praise. If our cup runs over, it is that the overflowing of it may reach those that need it, and that in the brightness of it we may see the face of him that filled it.

Let me gather one or two lessons from this. First, it is possible to receive temporal blessings from God, and yet none for the soul. Do not conclude, therefore, that because it is well with you in your temporal estate, it is necessarily well with you in your spiritual state. In the next place, adversity, tribulation, and affliction make those friends and brothers who formerly were enemies. We find there were here Jew and Samaritan together, when suffering a common calamity. But it is still possible to be as those described by God himself, "They poured out their prayer when under my chastening hand, but afterward they forgot me." Read some of the Psalms, and you will see how often the Jews were delivered, and how often they forgot their deliverer.

Let me apply this. Of those who have been spared in the epidemic that so severely smote our country so very

recently, how many are there who will not be a whit more spiritual, more devoted, more thankful! Think of this.

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God expects thankfulness for the benefits we receive. Christ said, "Ten have got benefits; where are the nine?" So he said, "Lo, these three years I came seeking fruit from this fig-tree, and I find none." So he says of his vineyard, "I looked for grapes, and it brought forth wild grapes." God looks at, and counts, and weighs the privileges, the opportunities, the means, the money, the influence, the blessings that we have; and he watches for the use we make of them; he waits for gratitude to acknowledge them, and for a good use to be made of them. Let me next draw this lesson-that what your conscience shows to be right, when that conscience is enlightened by God's word, you must not hesitate to do because many the very opposite. Nine laughed at the idea of returning to thank their Benefactor. No doubt they reasoned, as some newspapers reason on other benefits: "It is a change in the weather; it is a finer climate we have got into; no doubt, in going to the priest, we have eaten something that has agreed with us; or it is good exercise we have taken; it is a great law;' there is a change in the air, the weather has become colder, or warmer; and as for the idea of returning and thanking Jesus of Nazareth, why, the thing is absurd." And I have no doubt that the priests, and scribes, and Pharisees, and rulers of the land agreed with them, and laughed at and made excellent fun of that pious Samaritan, who felt the weather and its sunshine as they did, but returned amid all the weather, and saw that there was present in his cure the touch and the goodness of the Lord of life, the Healer of disease, the Fountain of health. In these times we must not mind standing alone. If nine thousand, or nine millions, should go the

wrong way, we must still go the right way. We must learn to be a peculiar people; we must not mind being scoffed at; we must not care if newspapers turn us into ridicule, if the whole world should mock at us. Hold by your duty; fix your hearts upon what is right, and true, and holy; and if the multitude laugh at you, pity them, and pray for them. "As for me," let your answer be, “I will serve the Lord."

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Then Jesus went thence, and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for she crieth after But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to the dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table. Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.-MATT. xv. 21–28.

IN the Gospel of St. Mark, where the parallel passage occurs, and in which the same miracle is related, we read that our Lord would have no man know it, when he arrived at the coasts of Tyre and Sidon; but the more he seemed to conceal himself, the more he became known. It was indeed impossible that such light should be buried in a world of darkness, that so great a Physician should be unnoticed in a world of sickness, that the very Fountain of life, that overflowed with life, should not be approached where it was unsealed in a land where death revelled and spread around him the trophies of his all but almighty power. His name was as ointment poured forth, and its perfume penetrated all obstructions, and diffused itself over the length and breadth of the land. So will it be with

true Christians in their measure. Christianity cannot be hidden. To say one's Christianity is hidden, is equivalent to saying that there is none. If you live, life will develop itself; if grace be within you, that grace will show itself. Hide the sun, and conceal the stars, and you may hide the life and the love of God existing in your hearts.

This woman, who appealed to Christ, was a Canaanite, or a Syro-phenician, and therefore, of course, a Gentile. Her nation's history was dotted with judgments from the Lord; its guilt had risen to heaven and cried for vengeance, and corresponding retributions had lighted upon it; but in spite of all the guilt which cleaved to her land, in spite of all the estrangement which she inherited, as a Canaanite, from a country stained with infamy and sin, in spite of her own deep sense of personal demerit, she rushed to him under whose wings the guiltiest sinner, seeking forgiveness, may nestle, and in whose blood the greatest sin may be washed away. She fled to him, in spite of her sins that drew her back, and would have plunged her into despair, and sought forgiveness. I may notice that the difference between a conviction of sin that is saving, and a convictin of sin that is damning, is this-that the conviction of sin which is from beneath leads one to despair; on the other hand, the conviction of sin that God's Spirit implants carries us on the wings of an irresistible impulse to a Saviour's presence, there to pray and wait till these sins are forgiven.

This woman's prayer is in these words, "Have mercy on me, for my daughter is vexed with a devil." This state was not bodily sickness, or epilepsy, but literally, truly, an evidence that one of Satan's fallen spirits, that accompany him and act with him, inhabited and kept possession of the woman's soul. One reason that confirms this opinion, is the fact that where God has a work of any kind in the