LECT. earth.
II.

The Harvest of our Lord, is the end of the world; and as furely as the course of the year brings us about to that season, fo furely will the difpenfation of God, now on its progrefs, bring us to a fight of that other harvest: and it behoves us to confider well what part we are likely to bear on that occafion.

From the feafons let us turn our eyes to the animal creation; at the head of which is man, an epitome of all the other works of God.

The œconomy and difpofition of the human body is used as a figure of that spiritual fociety, or corporate body, which we call the Church; and God is faid to have difpofed the offices of the one in conformity to the order obfervable in the other. The head is Chrift; the eyes appointed to fee for the rest of the body, are the prophets and teachers, antiently called feers. The hands that minifter are the charitable and merciful, who delight in supplying the wants of their fellow mem

bers.

As

II.

bers. The feet are the inferior attendants, LECT. whofe duty it is to know their place, and be fubfervient in their proper callings. Each hath his proper gifts and his proper station; and as there is no refpect of perfons with God, no man fhould pay any undue refpect to himself; but all fhould unite with humility and piety in fulfilling the great purpose of God, who hath joined them together in one communion. there is no divifion in the natural body, but all the limbs and members have care for one another, and one life animates them all; fo it fhould be in the church, where there is one body and one Jpiit. In this form hath the apostle argued against the divifions and jealoufies then prevailing in the church of Corinth*: and if his argument was confidered as it merits, and in that spirit of fervent zeal and love with which it was written, there would be no fuch thing as fchifm in the church, or faction in the state.

The bodily fenfes of men are used to

*See I Cor. xii.

E 3

denote

LECT. denote the faculties of the mind: for the

II.

In

foul has its fenfes; but as we cannot fee
their operations, it is neceffary to speak
of them in fuch terms as are taken from
the visible powers of the body. He that
does not understand the language of the
fcripture, is faid to have no ears; he that
does not see spiritual things, to have no
eyes; he that cannot make confeffion of
his faith with his tongue, and has no de-
light in the praifes of God, is dumb.
short, every unregenerate man, who is
without the knowledge of God, and has
nothing but what nature and his own va-
nity give him, is in the nature and condi-
tion of a beggar, poor and blind and na-
ked ; and he who is not yet alive in
fpirit, is even taken for dead and buried,
and is called upon to arife from the dead,
and awake unto righteousness.

The foul being invifible, its diftempers are fo; therefore the facred language describes them by the diftempers of the body, A nation or city, in a state of fin * Rev. iii. 17.

and

11.

and impenitence, are reprefented to them- LECT. felves as a body full of difeafes and fores.pward In this ftyle the spirit fpeaks by the prophet Ifaiah of Judah and Jerufalem; the whole head is fick, and the whole heart faint. From the fole of the foot even to the head, from the loweft of the people up to their princes and rulers, there is no foundness in it, but wounds and bruifes and putrifying fores. In the fame way, the works of the devil in stripping and abufing the nature of man by the fatal introduction of fin, are reprefented as wounds given by a thief, who meets him on the road, and leaves him naked and halfdead upon the earth.

tention of that parable,

This is the in

which defcribes

the fall and falvation of man, as the relieving and curing of a wounded traveller.

The support of man's fpiritual life is like the fupport of his natural; and the facrament of the Lord's fupper, (which fome of late have taken great pains to undervalue

E 4

LECT. dervalue and misinterpret) is built upon

II.

this fimilitude.

Man is fent into the world to earn his bread by his labour, and fome think he is fent for nothing else; but this is only a fhadow of his proper errand, which is, to work out his own falvation with fear and trembling: and for this work he has need of fuftenance, as much as for the daily labours of his life. Therefore God has provided a supply of a spiritual kind, fignified outwardly by the figures of bread and wine, the commemorative facrifice of the death of Chrift, and the inftituted means of conveying the benefits of it to the fouls of men. Beafts killed in facrifice were fed upon by the offerers; and Christ's death being a facrifice, he is fed upon in faith by those who thus commemorate his death; and the confequence is the strengthening and refreshing of their fouls: if not, this abfurdity fhould follow from the parallel, that eating the flesh of facrifices was a meer ceremony which contributed nothing to the nourishment of

the