quite aware that we are placed here for something else than to indulge such a temper as this. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness have no necessary connexion; the lightest spirits, which are indeed one of the greatest of earthly blessings, often play around the most earnest thought and the tenderest affection, and with far more grace than when they are united with the shallowness and hardness of him who is, in the sight of God, a fool. It were a strange notion, that we could never be merry without intoxication, yet not stranger than to think that mirth is the companion only of folly or of sin. But, setting God in Christ before us, then the conscience is awake; then we are in earnest; then we measure things rightly; then we feel them strongly; then we love those that are good, and shun those that are evil; then we learn that sin is no matter of laughter, that it ill deserves to be clothed under a ludicrous name; for that thing which we laugh at, that which we so miscall, is indeed the cause of infinite evil; for that Christ died; for that there are some who die that death which lasts for ever. LECTURE XVIII. * * * * * GENESIS xxvii. 38. _And Esau said unto his father, Hast thou but one blessing, my father? Bless me, even me also, O my father_. MATTHEW xv. 27. _And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master's table_. Of these two passages, the first, as we must all remember, is taken from the first lesson of this morning's service; the second is from the morning's gospel. Both speak the same language, and point out, I think, that particular view of the story of Jacob obtaining the blessing which is most capable of being turned to account; for, as to the conduct of Jacob and his mother, it is manifestly no more capable of affording us benefit, as a matter of example, than the conduct, in some respects similar, of the unjust steward in our Lord's parable. The example, indeed, is of the same kind as that. If the steward was so anxious about his future worldly welfare, and Jacob about the worldly welfare of his descendants, that they did not scruple to obtain their ends, the one by dishonesty, the other by falsehood, much more should we be anxious about the true welfare of ourselves and those belonging to us, which no such unworthy means can be required to gain. But the point of the story to which the text refers, and which is illustrated also by the words of the Syrophoenician woman, is one which very directly concerns us all, being no other than this,--what should be the effect upon our own minds of witnessing others possessed of greater advantages than ourselves, whether obtained by the immediate gift of God, through the course of his ordinary providence, or acquired directly by some unjust or unlawful act of those who are in possession of them?