decorous and regular, but equally worthless and equally irreligious system of sober sensuality, which too often consumes the morning in protracted sleep, and the evening in the protracted banquet, with just so much bodily activity as preserves health, without being directed to any object of utility to man, or glory to God; and just so much reading as gives amusement to the mind and volubility to the tongue, without supplying or communicating a single ray of important knowledge or awakening a single spark of Christian piety.

In all these incessant pursuits, whether of business or of pleasure, the government of temper and the improvement of the heart, are equally neglected; no moral vigilance is maintained, no serious self-examination is practised, no private prayer is offered up, and the study of God's word and God's will is totally forgotten. Meanwhile your dependents neglected, if not oppressed; your children embellished perhaps with frivolous accomplishments, or fitted for professional exertions, but undisciplined in moral principles, uninstructed in religion, and unprepared for heaven-all attest that to give an account of your stewardship never once forms an object of your care. Thus like the ignorant savage who barters the solid golden bullion, of which he knows not the value or the use, for shining glass, painted toys, or intoxicating poison; so man, senseless man, barters the inestimable treasures of his time and his reason, his property and his influence, his powers of body and of mindtreasures conferred on him in order to promote his virtue and prepare him for heaven-he barters them for the gaieties of fashion and folly, or for the maddening draughts of debauchery and vice.

How different, my friends, are such pursuits from the objects of that sacred trust, which has been reposed in you, and for the discharge of which you shall surely be brought to strict

account.

The gifts of creation, redemption, and grace were not intended to be thus squandered away. They were bestowed by infinite goodness for far nobler purposes. First, to seek the glory of your God, by the extension of His holy religion, and the enlargement of His kingdom over the hearts and lives of men. Secondly, to promote the temporal comfort of your fellow

creatures, by attending to their feelings, enlightening their ignorance, relieving their wants, consoling their sorrows, and smoothing their way through earth to heaven; and lastly, as connected with these, and resulting from them, the advancement of your own virtue, and the perfection of your own nature, by purifying your hearts, by subduing every malignant passion, by rising superior to the empty pride of ambition, and the selfish sordidness of avarice, by expanding your charity, by animating your devotion, and planting in your inmost souls that root of true religion, genuine Christian faith, which even in the bleak and chilling atmosphere of this inferior world, will produce the precious germs of holy tempers, virtuous conduct, and internal peace, and when transplanted to its native soil above, will pour forth in full profusion, the fruits of eternal life.

Let me hope, my friends, that all the considerations I have pressed upon you, will have their due weight in determining your conduct on the occasion which has now collected you together. Can you prove you are faithful stewards of the God of mercy better than by assisting, liberally and abundantly assisting the objects you are now called upon to provide for?

You are implored to supply the means of relieving the destitute of this poor and populous district now groaning under the pressure of disease, which so often in the bleak, and to the poor the comfortless season of winter, visits the hovel of the labourer, paralyses his efforts for his family, sinks his head to earth, and wounds his heart with all the sorrows of a parent who sees his children weeping around him for that food which he can no longer procure.

Some of you, my friends, may have felt the languor of disease, the depression of spirits, the aching head, the drooping heart, the piercing pain, the fever's fire. But around you, every thing was collected to soothe, to comfort, to restore-skill to advise and affluence to procure every aid which medicine could supply. Your friends crowded round your bed, watched every motion, hung on every look, anticipated every want and every wish, Yet with all these alleviations, how severe the sufferings of such a state! How embittered then must such sufferings be, when aggravated by the distresses of poverty, the absence of every aid and every help-no medicine to relieve disease, and scarcely

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any food to sustain life-when the presence of the wife and of the numerous flock of children, brings not relief and consolation, but agony and horror-the agony of parental affection viewing the sufferings of those it loves, the horror of seeing them pine in famine and despair.

Sometimes on the contrary the unhappy sufferer is destitute and friendless, without wife or child to attend, or watch, or cheer-a burden upon some other son of poverty, as poor and destitute as himself. One such instance I myself have seen in this parish a poor old man who was known to be honest and industrious, was found lying on a damp clay floor, with scarce a handful of straw for his bed; a single thin and worn blanket for his covering-water his only drink-and left, necessarily left alone the whole day long, while the family (who afforded him all they could give, an asylum in their house) were employed in their various labours abroad. Such was his state when discovered. Relief came too late death soon terminated his sufferings.

Your contributions this day will be applied to prevent the recurrence of such distress; to remove or alleviate sufferings such as these. Oh let not this appeal to your mercy be made in vain. In this season of almost unprecedented distress, when embarrassment and bankruptcy have engulphed such multitudes, you have been preserved. Providence has placed a hedge about you and all that you possessed, and on every side blessed the work of your hands. Prove yourselves therefore faithful stewards of these mercies of your God, by dispensing the goods he has committed to your care, to these your fellow-creatures, whom, aged and miserable, or oppressed with disease and poverty, pain and sorrow, He has, as it were, laid at your door. And so when He calls you to give an account of your stewardship, may their prayers and blessings go before you; and may He, who has found you "faithful over a few things," make you "Rulers over many things," and welcome you for ever "into the joy of your Lord."*

* Matt. xxv. 21, 23,

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VOL. IV.

386

SERMON XXXVII.

THE CHARACTER ASCRIBED TO JESUS CHRIST, IN THE GOSPEL HISTORIES, AN INTERNAL EVIDENCE

OF THEIR TRUTH.

(Preached on Good Friday.)

ST. LUKE XXIII. 47, 48.

"Now, when the Centurion saw what was done, he glorified God, saying, certainly this was a righteous man."

ASSEMBLED as we are by the sacred call of religion, to commemorate this day of shame, rebuke and blasphemy, on the part of those who crucified, and of an apostate world that still rejects, our blessed and only Saviour-this day of triumphant mercy and love displayed by Him who submitted to death for our salvation-every believing soul amongst you is, I doubt not, engaged in contemplating that stupendous and infinitely interesting subject, the sufferings of your Redeemer; and every contrite heart is swelled with those emotions of piety and gratitude which such a scene is calculated to awaken. To direct your thoughts to any other object, to check this holy current of your feelings, would be as unwise as it would be assuredly unseasonable.

But amongst the infinitely various lights, in which that awful event may be viewed, it is necessary to select some one to fix our attention; and, as I have already, on former occasions, pointed out those more practical, obvious, and cheering ones which, through the overflowing mercies of the God of Hope, abound with "all joy and peace in believing," to every truly penitent soul, so it may not be now amiss to dwell on another, which may be regarded, though not of equal, still of considerable importance, when we take into account its tendency

* Romans, xv. 13,

to establish our faith, and to expose the folly of one of the boldest assertions ever resorted to by sceptics or infidels. As long as the opposer of the Gospel history confined himself to textuary objections and doctrinal cavils, or even to attempts to impugn or explain away its miracles, the sincere Christian could with confidence appeal to the sentiment contained in my text. Putting all other considerations out of the question, and confining himself to the character and conduct exhibited by the Founder of our faith, the astonishing and awful scenes before us, he could with the centurion terminate his inquiry at the foot of the cross, and with him glorify God, and say, "certainly this was a righteous man;" "truly this man was the Son of God." ”老

Taking his stand on this certainty, he could proceed to accept and believe all the rest of the Gospel for no one who went so far could, in words at least, deny that our Lord's conduct during this last and fearful scene of trial and suffering, displayed the most perfect excellence, and an exalted dignity of character every way suitable to the Teacher of Righteousness, and "the Son of God," and, consequently, that such conduct and such a character demand the humblest reverence, justify the firmest faith, and should therefore form a model for our constant direction. To overturn this stronghold of the penitent Christian's hope, some daring and reckless opponents, vexed and disappointed with the failure of the puny efforts of more timid sceptics to attack in detail the Gospel history, by verbal cavils and special objections levelled at particular passages, have hazarded at once the bold assertion, that the whole was a fiction-that such a man, indeed, as Jesus of Nazareth existed, and was put to death by the Jews; but that all the rest is an invention fabricated by wily impostors, and received by a credulous world.

This wild and extravagant position could be answered, and has been abundantly answered, by an appeal to those external evidences which establish the authenticity and integrity of the Gospel records. But how could the poor and labouring and illiterate Christian, follow out this investigation in all its difficult,

St. Matt. xxvii, 54. St. Mark, xv. 39.