beautiful image, and such, I trust, as will be productive of our spiritual good, if we permit them to sink into our hearts.

I. The expression of the text calls us, in the first place, to the recollection of our Baptism,when we were taken from the wilderness of nature, and engrafted into "the true vine." In the innocence of childhood we were admitted to that high distinction; and he who said, "suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not," in that hour received us unto the arms of his love, and even incorporated us into his own mystical body, and breathed upon us the regenerating influences of his Holy Spirit. It was the greatest hour of our mortal existence,-for it was the hour which gave us the earnest of immortality. It was the hour in which we were "born again,”-not into a world of decay and of sin, but into a system of unperishing righteousness and perfection. We have, at this time, beheld many of the young taking upon themselves the vows of that initiatory Sacrament, and we naturally look back upon the period which we ourselves have passed, since this first dedication to the Father of our spirits. How have

our lives, my brethren, corresponded to that beginning? Have we, as branches, continued in the true vine? or have we not, rather, run wild among the disorders of nature, and our own extravagancies and corruptions? There is not one of us, alas! who can look back to that opening of his spiritual course, and who will not mark, in his after progress, the decays of infirmity and sin, and require now to call down into his heart the renewing influences of that Divine Inspiration which can alone establish the vigorous health of the soul. In this retrospect, while we grieve over our own weakness and wanderings, what do we not owe to that Gracious Lord who is still so unwilling to take us away as unfruitful branches, but who, through his gentleness and long-suffering, and even his merciful severities, is ever cleansing us, that we

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may bring forth more fruit!" His eye has been upon us wherever we have wandered. How often has he sought to recall us by the admonitions of conscience, and by the joyful or the sorrowful dispensations of his Providence,— and how gladly has He ever held out to us the arms of his mercy, whenever we have sincerely sought to return! He never ceases to speak to

us as to his disciples, and tells us still, that as "he is the vine, so we are the branches," that the union with his people, which He first cemented with his Blood, cannot lightly be dissolved, and that the record of that hour, in which the Spirit of his Grace descended upon our heads with the waters of our Baptism, cannot readily be expunged from the books of Heaven. Can we then resist this continued manifestation of love? Shall we not be anxious to remove every obstructing prejudice or passion which comes between our hearts and the singleness of Christian duty; which seems to separate the branches from the vine, and hides from us the supreme honour and happiness of that existence which depends upon this holy union alone?

II. If this is the first view which the words of the text present to us-if they show us, that, from the earliest hours of our being, we have been united to Him who descended from the Father to shelter and to save us-if they recall us, therefore, from every distracting error and impurity, they open to us, in a second view, the course of life which we have yet to

run in his service, and show us in what manner we may henceforth abide in Him. They call us to examine His precepts, and to trace His example. They open to us the record of all that He taught, and all that he did, in which we may distinctly see it written, that we are then only truly His, when we keep his sayings, and pursue his steps. They hold up to us those pure and warm sentiments of devotion, in which He has ever instructed us to elevate our hearts to "our Father which is in Heaven;" they point to the steady light of his own piety, and tell us to follow Him into his secret prayers and meditations, and to carry that constant impression of the Divine Presence which ever dwelt upon His hallowed Spirit. They tell us, farther, to attend him in his active exertions for the good of men, to feel that tie of brotherhood which binds us to all mankind in every varied relation of life ; in whatever direction we can benefit them, there to follow Him, and to open our souls to all those inspired sentiments of universal charity which He ever bore in his intercourse with his earthly brethren. If we draw this sincere and lively nurture from the true vine, then we are,

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indeed, its branches; then we shall be made clean through the word which He has spoken unto us, and shall abide in Him, and He in us, and shall bring forth much fruit. How constantly does He impress upon us, that it is in those hours. chiefly when we go forth into the world in his spirit, and with the energy of his love, that he regards us as living in Him, and for Him; that it is by uniting our hearts and our hands to every good work, that we are most closely united to Him; and that, when we give bread to the hungry, clothes to the naked, or visit the sick, and the prisoner, we are then ministering to the Son of God himself! How amiably in this representation does he identify Himself with every thing in Human Nature upon which the charity of his Gospel can in any way be exerted! and in what manner, then, can we form a part of His Mystical Body, except in being bound by the intimate ties of love to the great visible body of Mankind?

III. The contemplation of this day, my brethren, calls us to a third view of this great doctrine. We are united to the Son of God in his death, and it is from this union that we are