ardness and impenitence is the result. The conscience
is dead, and, to use S. Paul's words, "there remains no more sacrifice
for sins, but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery
indignation, which shall devour the adversaries."

CONCLUSION.--Let us, therefore, be very cautious of adding sin to sin,
that grace may abound, but rather fly from it as from the face of a
serpent. We know not what is the number of our days determined by God,
and we know not what is the number of our sins beyond which there is no
forgiveness.

XLV.

_CASTING BLAME._

8th Sunday after Trinity.

S. Matt. vii. 15.

"Inwardly they are ravening wolves."

INTRODUCTION.--A Schoolmaster finds one day that several of his
scholars are playing truant. The morning passes and they do not
arrive. At last, in the afternoon, the truants turn up. The master
has a strong suspicion where they have been: however, he asks, "Why
were you not at school this morning?" "Please, sir, mother kept me at
home to mind the baby." "Indeed--let me look at your mouth." He opens
the mouth, and finds it black inside. "Ah! I thought as much,
rambling in the woods, picking and eating whortleberries." So with the
others, they make their excuses, but he looks into their mouths, and
the black colour betrays them.

Now, my friends, I am almost afraid to look in your mouths, lest I
should see them black, not with whortleberries, but with something much
sweeter, blame and fault-finding. You are, I suspect, all of you
nearly fond of abusing your neighbours, of finding fault, of telling
unkind things of them, of blackening their good names.

SUBJECT.--I am going to take as my subject to-day the Casting of Blame.

I. "Be ye merciful," said our Lord, "even as your Father which is in
heaven is merciful." He did not mean only in our dealings with others,
to be merciful to their bodies, and merciful in not exacting debts, and
merciful in not punishing neglect, and so forth, but He meant also that
we were to be merciful with their characters. We are not to be ready
to impute evil, not ready to cast blame, not ready to believe hard
things of others and retail them to our neighbours, but to be very slow
to suspect evil, very slow to charge it on others, and exceedingly slow
to say what is evil of others.

"Charity," says S. Paul, "is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil,
rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all
things, b