We are now ready to receive your money for Missionary purposes; and while you are casting it into the treasury, let me remind you that your gold and your silver are beautiful birds plumed for flight, that Christian liberality is the scissors with which you may clip their wings, and a short winged bird is better than none. May we all act to-day as stewards of the Lord, in the immediate presence of our Master, before whom we must soon appear to account for the use made of our talents; and when the time of reckoning shall come, may each receive the gracious plaudit—“Well done, good and faithful servant! thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many! Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord!” Amen. SERMON VIII. THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST. “_Who_, _his own self_, _bore our sins_, _in his own body_, _on the tree_; _that we_, _being dead to sins_, _should live unto righteousness_; _by whose stripes ye were healed_.”—I Peter ii. 24. WHAT great encouragement to patience and fortitude is afforded the followers of Jesus, by the apostle’s contrast of the light and transient afflictions of the present time, with the eternal weight of glory reserved for them in heaven! How forcible the argument which he draws from the approaching scenes of another world, to urge Christians in this to a life of holiness and self-denial! How vivid and terrible his picture of the dissolution of nature by the great conflagration! Imagine the heavens wrapped in dissolving flames, and the elements melting to the centre of the globe. The victorious and inextinguishable fire towers to the empyrean; the magnificent palace of creation is lost in the smoke of its own burning; and the ear is stunned, and the soul is horrified, by the crash of its final fall. “Seeing then, that all these things must be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness; looking for, and hasting unto the coming of the day of God;” “using all diligence to make your calling and election sure;” “that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blameless;” that “so an abundant entrance may be ministered unto you, into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ!”