You know how our streets and lanes in this world are defiled and made hideous by vile language. Can you fancy that sort of talk in the streets of the Heavenly City? No, there shall not enter there anything that defileth, peace is upon her palaces. The swearing tongue, the impure tongue, the angry tongue, can find no place there. The cruel, slandering tongue talks many a soul into ruin, for they have no room for the scandal-monger in Heaven. Let us guard our speech, brethren, let us remember that, as Heavenly citizens, our lips should be sanctified by the fire of God's Altar. "Whoso keepeth his mouth and his tongue, keepeth his soul from troubles." Once more, as citizens of Heaven, we must keep our home ever fresh in our minds. Here we are strangers in a strange land. You know how we English abroad always cling to anything which reminds us of _home_. The settler in the Australian Bush keeps Christmas Day beneath the burning summer sky exactly as he always kept it amid the snow and ice of an English winter. When letters come, how eagerly are they read if they come from home! Many a rough miner on the other side of the world grows gentler as he looks at the faded photograph, or the yellow note paper; they remind him of home. Well, here in earth, far from our Heavenly home, we have certain means of keeping its memory fresh. We can go to God's Holy Church, and there join with Angels and Archangels and all the company of Heaven in praise and adoration of our King. We can read our Bible, and then we gaze, as it were, upon the picture of Saviour Jesus, and upon the faces of our brother citizens who have entered by the gates of pearl. We can pray, and so send a message to our City, and get an answer back again, a blessing coming like a sweet flower sent from the fields of Paradise. When our soldiers do noble deeds abroad, their thought is--what will they say in England? Let us do our duty here in a strange land, thinking--what will they say in Heaven? My brother, my sister, let this thought help you to struggle against temptation--I must walk worthy of my vocation, I am a citizen of Heaven. SERMON LIX. THANKFUL SERVICE. (Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity.) COL. i. 12. "Giving thanks." In one of our northern coal-pits there was a little boy employed in a lonely and dangerous part of the mine. One day a visitor to the coal-pit asked the boy about his work, and the child answered, "Yes, it is very lonely here, but I pick up the little bits of candle thrown away by the colliers, and join them together, and when I get a light I sing." My brothers, every day of our lives we are picking up blessings which the loving Hand of God has scattered around, every day we get the light, but how many of us sing?