delights to come? Justly; do you try in every relation of life to do to others as you would like to be done by? Godly; are you faithful in your duties to religion and to God? Ah, how true it is that Christ was set for the ruin of many and a sign that shall be contradicted; for alas! there are many temples into which He has not entered, nor cast thence them that buy and sell therein. Again, this shall be a sign unto you. You shall find the infant wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger. Is your soul a proud, obtrusive mansion, or a humble stable in the background, warmed by the spirit of love as was that of Bethlehem by the breath of the kine? Ah, Brethren, it is all very well to receive Christ in communion, but He will not be born in us unless we permanently amend our lives. Nay, such communions lead to final impenitence. Christ said to the adulterous woman : " Go, and sin no more, lest something worse befall thee.,, And Judas, you know, had scarcely received holy communion when he rushed off to betray the Lord.
Brethren, no man can serve two masters, God and the world. The world reminds me of an obsequious innkeeper; you put up at his place for a while and he effusively gives you the freedom of his house and encourages you to eat, drink and make merry; but the time of reckoning comes, and the landlord, with a sterner face, declares you shall not go hence until you pay the last farthing. Let us turn from such an artful deceiver to the lovely Babe of Bethlehem; let us learn well the truths that object lesson teaches,
