ELEVENTH ADDRESS.

SOME time ago, my dear children, as you are aware, we commemorated the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. Easter is a season of great joy and praise to the true believer. On good Friday, he calls to mind the sacrifice and final sufferings of his Redeemer, and on the following Sabbath his rising from the tomb and triumph over death.

In his Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul makes an admirable and important use of this fact, as being typical of the renewal of our fallen nature, -"dead in trespasses and sins," is the Scripture description of man's moral and mental condition; nor, until quickened by the good Spirit of God, is that condition changed or that death destroyed. The evidences of conversion are these," a deadness to sin, and a living unto righteousness." Where these exist, the heart has unquestionably been changed; where these

do not exist, a change of heart is a matter which is yet to come. By these tests, may all prove themselves; knowing this, that if they have been planted together in the likeness Christ's death, they shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection! This, then, is the subject which I would for a few moments set before you: the resurrection of Jesus-a type of man's dying from sin and rising again unto righteousness. The analogy, however, does not hold good in all points; few analogies indeed do. Christ, for instance, was held in the embraces of death, but for three short days, we have been sleeping in forgetfulness of God days without number; Christ arose from his slumbers in glory, we rise from ours in deep humility and selfabasement.

But the life to which we arise, is in itself as glorious as that to which he awoke. He, having as we may say, "broken the gates of brass and smitten the bars of iron in sunder," ascended to the right-hand of the Father; we too, if we are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth at the right-hand of God! The agency employed

upon the one occasion, is identical with that employed upon the other, for Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father; and the same great and merciful Being that raised up Christ from the dead, quickens also our mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in us. What, my dear children, know you, what understand you, what feel you of these things? You know, for often have you been taught the lesson, that man is a lost and ruined creature; that he needs quickening by the Almighty's grace and Holy Spirit, to a life of holiness! Have you felt this, your miserable state? have you been thus raised to a life of righteousness?

Understand it, and remember that you cannot serve God with the wills and tempers, the desires and affections, which are natural to you-with which you are born. Those wills and tempers are adverse to his commandments, those desires and affections are opposed to his purity. Before you can become servants of God, having your fruit unto holiness, and in the end everlasting life, those wills must be changed, those tempers softened, those desires

rectified, those affections reformed; for all have now a pernicious tendency to evil.

Is this, then, so in your case ? Do you, as you increase in stature, increase in wisdom likewise? Or, does day after day, adding itself to the past, serve merely to confirm you in impenitence, and lead you to laugh at the means employed to reclaim you? Do you frequently and solemnly implore of God, to grant you the help and assistance of his Holy Spirit, to enable you to forsake the company of the wicked and to join the society of the righteous? And do you, being thankful for the stated opportunities afforded you in this place, of acquiring a religious education, question yourselves from time to time upon your improvement and attainments?

Every succeeding Sabbath, as it passes on, should leave you spiritually wiser and better than it found you; every Address that you hear, feeble as it may be, should give you some fresh thought as an encouragement or as a warning: as an encouragement to persevere in good, as a warning to flee from evil.

"Speak unto the children, that they go forward," a text used with remarkable propriety

upon the question of religious progression,-is as much opposed, recollect, to standing still as it is to going backward. If, then, after this day's labor on our part, and attendance on yours, you are stationary,-if you are just occupying the same ground you did last Sunday, and no other, without any fresh accession of knowledge, without any increase of holiness,— the day has been spent but to very little purpose, either by yourselves or by us; 'tis as though it had never been, nay, even worse than that, a blessing has been refused, a talent neglected! Have we, then, who have been baptised, died from sin and risen again unto righteousness? Are we in the habit of continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living? Have we gone to Jesus, as the only hope of helpless sinners, as the way, the truth, and the life? Are we endeavouring to correct our faulty points and to fortify our weak ones, by a continual recourse to the life that He lived and to the example that He left? Do we cultivate a pious, a meek, a forgiving frame of mind, in all things doing to others as we would have