the city, the awful conclusion, "For I say unto you that none of those men that were bidden shall taste of my supper." How think you the feast went on then? What were the feelings of those who knew that the parable was spoken about them? Who knew that they were among the bidden guests, and yet had made all their life long one ever varying excuse for rejecting the call of the great King-who were driven. to remember that it might be very easy and very pretty to talk general platitudes about future blessedness, but that the practical, the important, the only real question was, what were they doing now?

I am not going, brethren, into any examination of the parable. I limit myself; I would concentrate your attention on the text and its circumstances.

Remember, wherever religion is heard of, there are those who are ready to dwell upon its future blessedness, and to assume that that blessedness is for them. Never perhaps was the habit of religious talk more prevalent than now. Go where one will, in places of public resort, in private assemblies, as we travel from place to place, as we catch fragments of conversation from those we pass in the streets, religion is the frequent subject, religious platitude the favourite form. Christ's words are heard, read, repeated, commented on, but the distinctive features are taken out. The Cross is popular, but it is ornamented that it may deck our persons; no sharp corners or edges are left, lest they should hurt or irritate. And is there to be no voice heard on Christ's side, no one to take His words and plainly lay them before the world?

M

Are we to rest contented with the self-satisfied assurance that we shall be guests at the marriage supper of the Lamb, without the serious, daily, recollection and acceptance of the invitation that is given now? Oh brethren, it is not the invitation that will save us, it is not Christ's death that will save us, it is our acceptance of the invitation, our realization of His Death.

And now when we are at the point of drawing nigh to celebrate the Holy Feast, can we not specially apply some of those thoughts?

See

See the banquet spread again, but not in the Pharisee's house-it is in the House of God. Christ by Faith again present, but not as the Guest, as the Host. Himself the Feast and the Master of it, Himself the Priest and the Sacrifice. See Him, I say, by Faith, and mark Him examining everyone's heart. Each communicant's outward deportment, each communicant's inward motive is bare before Him, every feeling of pride, every breath of selfishness. Those who come looking down on their neighbours, either in spiritual or temporal concerns, are rebuked; those who do not humble themselves in the presence of their Lord, who come to the burning bush, as it were, of Christ's presence and do not put off the shoes of earthly habits and desires, who come as to a common meal, rather priding themselves upon coming; who come without repentance, and therefore with their sins thick upon them, or without self-examination, and who therefore do not know what and how great their sins are-oh, to such the loving Lord speaks loving words of rebuke. Or again, those who

come with a regard for themselves upon them, whose lives are governed by self-interest, who will only do a kind deed, or lay out money, or enter upon a business, or make a friend, with the view of what return they will gain in this life, they, too, may sit at the same board with Jesus as truly as did the men in the Pharisee's house, but they, too, will gain nothing from the Searcher of hearts except a rebuke for religious pretence which has no root in the inner life. It is sad to think of such. Invited, present, yet neither accepting nor accepted. God help them if there be such among our Christian congregations. But we, brethren, may in real not affected humility, in deepest thankfulness feel that we are among the lame, and the blind, and the halt, and the maimed, whom the dear Lord came down to heal; the dwellers and the wanderers in the streets and lanes of this world whom He came to seek and to save; the stray sheep, who can cause joy, even amid the joy of heaven, by turning to the Good Shepherd, Who comes to find us; the guests who come clad in no rich garments of our own, but with the marriage robe of the righteousness of Christ, units in that great multitude whom no man may number, which yet cannot outnumber the mercies of Christ, faint yet pursuing in our weakness the guidance of Christ's messenger to that banquet hall of heavenly love, where, dear friends, one and all, for those who have accepted the invitation there is a place prepared; where for those who at present are without, who still are staying away, still obstinate, still ignorant, or still undecided, "yet there is room.'

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XVII.

TONGUE OR HEART?

S. MATT. vii. 21.

Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

REALITY in religion may be taken almost as the keynote of the Sermon on the Mount. A ruthless breaking through of popular ideas, and even of respectable fallacies; a relentless penetration beneath the action itself to the motives from which it sprang; removal of every conventional standard of religion, till God. Himself and not man is made the interpreter of His own laws, summed up at last in the all inclusive command, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect "-this is the complexion of that most prominent of all our Lord's addresses, which is sometimes appealed to as overriding dogma, and suggesting the most valuable because the most practical religion that the world has ever known.

And not only this positive side, but the negative is also set before us. This clear enunciation of the highest rule of life is coupled not so much with con

demnation of those who openly reject it, as with searching warnings to those who would substitute a counterfeit. Religious duties with the most binding obligation are spoken of: but we are told also of those who perform these duties only to their condemnation. When ye fast, when ye pray, when thou doest thine alms, be not as the hypocrites.

The tone of the whole Sermon places the familiar words of my text in closest connexion with prayer; the place they occupy in the Communion Office shows how the Church associates them with Almsgiving. Fasting may require a little more special explanation to show the connexion, not from any real inapplicability, but because Fasting has so strangely dropped out from our so-called religious life, that comparatively few people practise it at all, and there is the less apparent scope for the warning not to do it to be seen of men.

Especially this morning let us dwell upon one subject as connected with Prayer and all our worship. And let us begin by taking the dark side, Unreality in worship. And first as to Public Worship. It is not hard to see how the temptation to unreality there enters in, too often successfully. There are the crowd of worshippers. It is well; but are they worshippers? they are a congregration, but of what? Worshippers of course. Hear them, watch them; the frequent response; the rolling Amen; the burst of song; the fervent Litany; do not all these show the worshipper? Oh brethren, if we have these outward indications, still beware; look below the surface; what do they spring from? Whither do they tend? Hear our Lord in