deavour to cherish; such the principles we are bound to adopt; such the pattern we are called on to imitate. He left us "an example," that we "should follow his steps; who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously." And here, my beloved friends who now surround me, let me earnestly entreat you to compare these feelings with your own; these principles with those on which you habitually act; this example with that conduct you almost invariably pursue. Alas, how striking the contrast! Our divine Lord exhibited His dignity by patience and silence, not by resistance. You maintain yours by prompt resentment, vigorous opposition, violent retaliation. Our Lord returned good for evil-overcame hatred with mercy; persecution with forgiveness; injuries with benefits; curses with blessings. You will not endure the smallest injury without insisting on immediate atonement, or inflicting immediate vengeance. Pride you encounter with superior pride; fierceness with more violent fierceness; anger with more inexorable anger. The slightest stain on your reputation, the slightest suspicion of your veracity, must be expatiated by blood. The friendship of years is obliterated by a single affront. You think yourselves debased and degraded if you do not return railing for railing, threatening for threatening, wrong for wrong. Alas! my friends, is this Christianity? Is this following the example of your heavenly Lord? But this spirit of mildness and meekness, of forbearance and mercy, you find it impossible to preserve. The injuries which you sustain are too great; the aggravating circumstances which attend them too provoking; your feelings too acute; your reputation too sacred. What, have you compared yourselves in all these points with that divine Master, whose example you are called on to imitate? Have you contrasted the injuries inflicted on Him with those, which you suffer?-His reputation assailed by calumny; His person loaded with insult; His life pursued by a furious and insatiable malignity! What imagination could paint severer sufferings; what reality in any degree approach them? Yet, all these wrongs He bore; their authors He pitied, He forgave-and you think it impossible to forgive the slightest whisper of calumny, to bear even an insulting glance, to submit with patience to the smallest injury ! But you complain of the peculiar ingratitude which adds an intolerable sting to every injury. Those whom you have loved are cold and insensible; those whom you have obliged forgetful and thankless; your associates, your friends, join to wound and offend you. Yet, what is all this to the ingratitude displayed to that Jesus, who had spent his life going about doing good, instructing ignorance, healing every disease, pardoning guilt, assuaging misery? Still, that very people who had seen these wonders of mercy, clamoured for His destruction! His "own familiar friend," who did eat of His bread, "lifted up his heel against Him.' One apostle betrayed, one denied, and all deserted Him! The treason, it is true, His justice condemned-every other wrong His mercy forgave. But your character, your station, your dignity, aggravate the offence. Well, and who is that personage whose patience and forbearance you are called on to imitate?-Even the King of Israel, the Judge of man, the Son of God-before whom all created beings sink into contempt. Yet He was mocked, and scourged, and basely insulted, and under all He prayed for his relentless persecutors! Do you, my fellow-Christians, wish to imitate this model of divine meekness, forbearance, and mercy? Seek then through the grace which He has purchased for you, to acquire a due estimation of yourselves. Learn "not to think of yourselves more highly than you ought to think, but to think soberly."t For pride, open or concealed pride, is the deadly root from which spring all the bitter fruits of captiousness, and resentment, and revenge. This it is which advances excessive claims, and maintains an offensive superiority; which demands that our rights, our merits, our accommodation, our interests, should be universally acknowledged and attended to by every human being, with whom we hold converse, in preference even to their own. It is this, which aggravates inadvertence and neglect into deliberate injury or insult, and deems every injury or insult an *Ps. xli. 9; John, xiii, 18. ↑ Rom. xii. 3. inexpiable crime. Be it yours, my friends, to imitate the humility of your divine Lord; to "learn" of Him to be "meek and lowly," and so "shall ye find rest unto your souls"-that rest from fretfulness and discontent, from suspicion and malignity, from pride and passion, which nothing but prostration at the foot of His cross, in the deep sense of your own sinfulness and of His pardoning mercy, can bestow. Learn next to be candid in judging of the conduct of your brother, even where it injures yourself. Suspect not more than you know to be true. Impute not to the worst motive, that which is certain. Rate no injury as of higher malignity, than the perpetrator really felt when he inflicted it; and make every due allowance for the effects of ignorance and prejudice, mistaken appearances, and sudden irritation on the mind of the offender." Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."-Let this sentence be ever engraven on your hearts. For say, my friends, is it not on the extension of this same sentiment to our own cases by our merciful Judge, that we can build alone any hope of pardon at that hour, when stripped of all mortal distinctions, we shall stand naked before the judgment seat of Christ. Have we violated the laws of God? have we by our unworthy deeds brought a scandal on that holy Gospel, which we profess to obey; trampled perhaps on that cross and sacrifice, in which we profess to trust; and put Him to open shame, whom we call our Lord and Master? And is it for beings such as we are, to be "strict to mark what is done amiss"* against ourselves to be severe, relentless, unforgiving? Surely not, my brethren." Forgive," as you hope to "be forgiven,”† is the dictate of reason and repentance, as well as of the promise of the Saviour; the covenant of divine mercy with human delinquency; the confession that identifies us with the followers of the Lamb; the temper that bows us before His cross here, and prepares us for His presence hereafter. Further, my brethren, think on the real insignificance of all those injuries, which mortals can inflict on mortals like themselves, Except only those cases, where they can lead you into guilt, St. Luke, vi. 37. • Ps. cxxx. 3. every other mischief is transitory as the morning cloud. But a moment passes, and the offender and the offended sink into a common grave, their ashes perhaps mingling in one undistinguished mass. Rival statesmen, rival warriors, rival monarchs-I myself, have seen their remains mouldering in the same tomb! You receive, as you term it, some injury, some affront never to be forgiven; you rush upon your enemy, and behold, before you can strike the meditated blow, he drops at your feet a senseless corpse; and you yourself, perhaps in the instant after, stumble into the same grave; and it closes on you both for ever. Such things happen every day, every hour; and still will men forget, that " vengeance belongeth" not unto them. Consider also, that if the injuries offered you shall, by exercising your patience and forgiveness, prepare you for heaven, they are the greatest blessings divine mercy can bestow. Then only can they prove real injuries, when they infect the soul with that malignity which is destructive of virtue, hateful to God, and inconsistent with spiritual joys. Think on these things, my fellow-Christians, and remember, that wherever you seek for pretexts to shelter and palliate resentment and revenge, you meet at every turn in the conduct of your divine Lord, that spotless mirror of all perfect mercy which exhibits in all its hideousness their complicated guilt-a guilt so odious and destructive, that no human soul contaminated therewith can be permitted to partake, or indeed could be capable of enjoying the happiness of heaven. 317 SERMON XXXI. CHARACTER OF THE PHARISEE. LUKE XVIII. 9. "And he spake this parable unto certain who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others." Or the various characters which our divine Lord has drawn, to illustrate the true meaning of the precepts which He incul cates, scarcely any are more striking and impressive than those which He employs in the parable thus addressed to certain who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others. The character of the Pharisee is regarded with universal aversion and contempt. We conceive of him, as uniting in himself all the odious depravities, which in different parts of the New Testament are stated as frequently belonging to that sect as one, who though perhaps keeping a fair exterior of sobriety and religious austerity, was "within full of hypocrisy and iniquity;" one, who however attentive he might be to forms and ceremonies and minute observances, such as "giving tithe of mint and anise and cummin," yet neglected altogether "the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith;" as one of those who "devour widows' houses, and for a pretence make long prayers," and who therefore "shall receive the greater damnation;" as one who required from others with the most inexorable severity, the strictest adherence to the strictest commands, and the most laborious observances of the Jewish law, binding upon them burthens too "grievous to be borne;"§ while he himself would not touch them with one of his fingers, but allowed himself to indulge in secret in every § Ibid. 4. * Matt. xxiii. 23. + Ibid. + Ibid. 14. |