th Christ if
we are to reign with Him, and alas for us if we cannot show the marks
of the nails where we have been fastened to our cross. My brethren,
these are serious thoughts for us all. By our fruits, and by them
only, we shall be known. If our lives show no love, no humility, no
self-sacrifice, no patience, no meekness, how shall we stand when the
great day of ingathering comes? Often the Dresser of the Vineyard has
looked upon some of us, seeking fruit, and finding none, and we know
not how soon the sentence may go forth, "Cut it down, why cumbereth it
the ground."

SERMON XLIV.

RENDERING OUR ACCOUNT.

(Ninth Sunday after Trinity.)

S. LUKE xvi. 2.

"Give an account of thy stewardship."

My brothers, we shall all hear that command one day. When our earthly
business is finished and done with, when our debts are paid, and our
just claims settled, and our account books balanced for the last time,
we must render our account to God, the Righteous Judge. But it is not
only at the day of Judgment that the Lord so calls upon us. _Then_ He
will ask for the final reckoning,--"Give an account of thy stewardship,
for thou mayest be no longer steward." Now, whilst we are yet alive on
the earth, whilst we are still in the enjoyment of our stewardship,
God, at certain times, calls for an account. Whenever the Holy Spirit
touches our hearts, and stirs our conscience, and we look into the
secret places of our life, and examine ourselves, then we hear the
whisper of God, "Give an account of thy stewardship--how much owest
thou unto my Lord?" Then at our dying bed there will be all our past
life; our youth, our manhood, our working days, our times of pleasure,
these will all be clamouring in our ears--"Give an account of thy
stewardship." The dying bed of a sinner, who has wasted his life, will
be haunted by the ghosts and phantoms of the past. Days dead and gone,
sins dead and forgotten, yet not forgiven, will be there to trouble the
thoughts of the dying man, to murmur, "God requireth that which is
past; give an account of thy stewardship." Such a death-bed must be an
awful thing, no wonder that some people are said to _die hard_. It
must be indeed a sad ending to a misspent life, to leave it amid the
shadowy crowd of our former faults and failures; to the sound of the
evil words which we have spoken; to the stern summons of our unquiet
conscience--"Give an account of thy stewardship." May the merci