on Christian principles, is, no doubt, a Christian duty. Hospitality, as the word is used in Scripture, means the entertaining of travellers and strangers, or the receiving of friends, not without a view to mutual edification. But hospitality, as commonly practised in the world, may spring from mere vanity, or ambition, or the love of pleasurable excess in meats and drinks and idle conversation. Call therefore not your friends, but the poor. Call that is if your friends, yet the poor far more. If you spend aught in what may very probably lead to waste, or idleness, or excess; if you spend aught in what will almost certainly yield a return of like entertainment here; spend more in what wastes no time, in what leads to no excess, in that from which you look for no return on earth, on those who can here give you no recompense. "And thou shalt be blessed;" "for thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just."

2. The second rule I have hence to draw for your direction in almsgiving, is

that you look not so much to what is called the worthiness of the persons, as to the urgency of their want. Poverty, and not worth, is the real title to our relief. Christ saith not, call the worthy, but "call the poor." Not that He would have us encourage purposely any thing that is sinful; not that He would have us countenance, by indiscriminate bounty, either idleness, or wastefulness, or debauchery. Against this He has sufficiently elsewhere provided; teaching us, among the very highest of Christian duties, to promote ever to the utmost of our ability the growth of true holiness and devotion. But in almsgiving, the fear of encouraging the unworthy is not unfrequently a mere excuse for uncharitableness. And therefore has Christ insisted chiefly on want, and not on worth, as the ground of claim to Christian assistance.

Turn not then away, without enquiry, from the beggar, whose worthiness you may most justly suspect. Enquire, with a view to learn whether he is in want;

for many, we know, beg, who have less need than those who work. Once satisfied that he is in want, such as you are able to relieve, make no doubt as to the duty of relieving it. Only if you think his need has sprung from sinful waste, with your alms give also counsel, Christian counsel, enforced by the example of Christian practice. Let him be made aware, that though you know his unworthiness, you give none the less kindly, because you give not for his sake, but for Christ's; not for the return of his gratitude, which you scarce expect, but for that recompense which you surely hope for at the resurrection of the just.

Thus should you give like that heavenly Father, who "maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matt. 5. 45.) Thus should you give like that blessed Saviour, who, when we were most unworthy of his love, gave for us Himself the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God." (1 Pet. 3. 18.) Thus would your gift be doubly profit

able; if, besides relieving the wants of the poor, it were to soften the hearts of the profligate, to convert their souls, and to win them, by the evidence of Christian practice, to the adoption of Christian faith. And thus would you who give be most surely blessed; as giving where the world will least approve, where those you give to can least return, where nothing can induce you so to do short of faith in Christ, and God's good grace, and hope of his glorious recompense at the resurrection of the just.

SERMON XX.

CHRISTMAS SEASON.

1 THESS. 4. 1.

We beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk, and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.

THE season now present is by many noted rather for its worldly uses, than for its spiritual enjoyments. To clear up their accounts, to clean out their dwellings, to entertain with good cheer their friends and relations; this is all that Christmas means, in the apprehension of those who know not Christ. The preacher who has been told that the children of this world are "in their generation wiser than the children of light," (Luke 16. 8.) may do well to take a hint from these