sign; all things continue as they were from the beginning of the world; evil abounds, and therefore the faith of many waxes cold; but Christ was and is amongst us; and we need no surer sign than that sign of the prophet Jonah—­Christ crucified and Christ risen—­to make us feel that we may live with God daily upon earth, and doing so, shall live with him for an eternal life, in a country that cannot pass away.

LECTURE XXIII.

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SUNDAY NEXT BEFORE EASTER.

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MATTHEW xxvi. 40, 41.

What, could ye not watch with me one hour?  Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation:  the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

These words, we cannot doubt, have an application to ourselves, and to all Christians, far beyond the particular occasion on which they were actually spoken.  They are, in fact, the words which Christ addresses daily to all of us.  Every day, when he sees how often we have gone astray from him, he repeats to us, Could ye not watch with me one hour?  Every day he commands us to watch and pray, that we enter not into temptation; every day he reminds us, that however willing may be our spirits, yet our flesh is weak; and that through that weakness, sin prevails over it, and having triumphed over our flesh, proceeds to enslave our spirit also.

And as the words are applicable to us every day, so also are they in a particular manner suitable now, when the season of Lent is so nearly over, and Easter is so fast approaching.  Have we been unable to watch, with Christ one hour?  Already are the good resolutions with which, we, perhaps, began Lent, broken in many instances; and the impressions, if any such were made in us, are already weakened.  They have been a burden, which we have shaken off, because the weakness of our nature found it too heavy to bear.  Sad it is to think how often this same process has been repeated in all time, how often it will be repeated to the end.

Let us just review what the course of this process has probably been.  Now, as the parable of the Sower describes three several sorts of persons, who never bring forth, fruit; so in the very same persons, there is at different times something of each of the three characters there described.  We, the very same persons, are at one time hard, at another careless, and at another over-busy; although, if compared with, other persons, and in the general form of their characters, some are hard, and others are careless, and others over-busy; different persons having different faults predominantly.  But even the hardness of the road side, although God forbid that it should be our prevailing temper, yet surely it does sometimes exist in too many of us.  In common speech, we talk of a person showing a hard temper, meaning, generally, a hard temper towards other men.  We have done wrong,