A boy, nearly broken-hearted with grief, stood by his mother's coffin. "Oh! let me see my dear mother once more, only once more," he pleaded. A man who was about to screw down the coffin-lid thrust him aside with brutal violence, and even struck the orphan child. Years afterwards that man stood in the dock, to be tried for his life as a murderer. He had no counsel to defend him, but just as the case commenced a young barrister rose in court, and offered his services to the prisoner. His speech for the defence was so eloquent, and so convincing, that the prisoner was acquitted. Outside the court he turned to thank his preserver. The stranger looked at him steadily, and said, "Do you remember years ago, driving a poor, broken-hearted boy from his mother's coffin with a curse and a blow? I was that boy." The man was overwhelmed with shame and confusion. "Why have you given me my life?" he asked. "To show you," answered the other, "that I can forgive." Oh! my brothers, if we would find pardon for our many sins, let us ask Him who prayed for His murderers to teach us how to forgive. "Walk with care 'mid human spirits, Walk for blessing, not for ban; 'Twere better never to have lived, Than lived to curse a deathless man. SERMON LVIII. THE FREEDOM OF THE CITY. (Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity.) PHIL. iii. 20. "Our conversation is in Heaven." People often fail to get at the meaning of this glorious text because they mistake that word _conversation_. Really the text means--our citizenship is in Heaven, we belong to the Eternal City. Once S. Paul declared with pride that he was a Roman citizen; and when the Chief Captain in surprise declared that he himself had purchased that privilege at a great price, the Apostle answered, "but I was free born." Every Christian has the right to call himself a citizen of Heaven, and to declare that he is free born. When in Holy Baptism we were born again of water, and of the Holy Ghost, the freedom of the City was given to us, and we were made a peculiar people, citizens of the Heavenly Jerusalem, with all the privileges, and all the responsibilities, belonging to such a position. Get this glorious fact into your minds, brethren, not that you are _going_ to belong to Heaven, but that you _do_ belong to it now. Here in earth you are foreigners, strangers and pilgrims. Here God's Israel is in exile by the waters of Babylon, Jerusalem on high, the Heavenly Sion, is yonder, and that is home. Heaven is yours now, if you forfeit it, if you lose your inheritance, it will be from your own fault, your own sin.