when these rules are obeyed for conscience sake, obeyed because they are rules, and rules imposed by an authority which has a lawful claim on our compliance; and the good of so obeying in the formation of the character is not inconsiderable. Not indeed if manhood were really, as some falsely talk, a state of independence; if the moment of your leaving school would be the last in which you would have any thing to do with obedience. But he who so looks on life is little likely to make it the beginning of life eternal. I do not speak only of those professions or situations in which obedience, in the most common sense of the word, is so strictly required; nor yet of the respect which our parents must claim so long as they are spared to us. But I speak of the habit of giving way to others, of not pressing our own will against theirs; that Christian habit which St. Peter calls "being subject one to another;" and I speak still more of the habit of obedience to God and Christ, as distinct from what we mean by the words virtue and duty. There can indeed be no obedience to God without these, but the word implies something more, it implies doing our duty because God commands it, it implies a deep and abiding sense of our relation to him, that we are not, nor ever can be independent

beings, but dependent creatures; and that, by practising obedience to our Maker, by doing his will because it is his will, and because we love him, we shall be raised to a higher and more endearing name; no longer creatures, but children.

On the other hand, the habit of disobedience may be learnt here no less readily. To hate authority, to evade it whenever you can, and to make a boast of doing so, there are many opportunities, there is the temptation of much vulgar applause, to lead you to this; and with the feeling of independence thus full grown, as it were, in early youth, are these the times, or is this the country in which it will be diminished in manhood? Will it not be strengthened into all that selfish indifference to law and to authority of every kind which is now SO common? And will he, who despises man, indeed reverence God? Or will he not, does he not, as a matter of experience, find Christ's yoke hard also? and does he not strive to free himself from it at every turn? How far is he then removed from the hardness of Jehoiakim?

truly hate and defy

And does he not as God's word in his heart

and life, as if he were to utter his blasphemies aloud, and revile the Scriptures, or mock at Christ's worship and ordinances?

SERMON XXVI.

JUDICIAL BLINDNESS.

1 SAMUEL II. 25.

They hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them.

EZEKIEL XVIII. 31, 32.

Why will ye die, O house of Israel?

For I have no plea

sure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord God: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye.

LET no one for an instant suppose that I have chosen these verses for my text with any intention of plunging into questions perfectly beyond the reach of man's understanding, and therefore perfectly incapable of affording us any benefit. The question which properly belongs to these verses, which I have purposely placed side by side of each other, is merely this, What is the lesson that they were intended to teach us? What is the lesson? not, What is the truth which may be drawn

from them as a conclusion from its premises? Again, is the lesson of these two verses intended for the same persons, or for the same person at the same time? or if for different persons, or for the same person at different times, what are the differences either of persons or of circumstances? And no man asking such questions as these of the Scripture is likely to ask in vain; whereas no man who asks what is the general truth, as in philosophy, which is to be gathered from these, and almost all other passages relating to God, is likely to be satisfactorily answered.

Now, first, what is the lesson taught us by the words out of the book of Samuel? "They hearkened not unto the voice of their father, because the Lord would slay them."

"The Lord would slay them!" it is a dreadful sentence, and we would fain know of whom it was uttered. It is spoken, we see, of some particular persons, not generally; and who were these persons? The account shows us that they were the sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, two men of great and instructive wickedness, the sons of a priest, brought up amidst holy things from their childhood, and themselves, when they grew up, called to minister in the priestly office. What more

could have been done unto the vineyard? What greater means of knowledge, what better opportunities of being impressed with a sense of God's majesty and holiness, could possibly have been granted them? But these means and opportunities had been neglected, till what was food at first was now their poison. They had gained such a habit of seeing and hearing holy things unmoved, that nothing could possibly work on them. It is probable that every fresh service which they performed about the tabernacle did but harden them more and more. How, then, could they hearken to the voice of their father, a kind old man, indeed, and a good one, but one with none of that vigour of character which commands respect, even from the evil. Were his words of gentle rebuke likely to move those hearts which for years had served every day in the presence of God, and had felt neither fear for him nor love of him. Vain was it to hope that such hearts should be so renewed to repentance. The seal of destruction was set on them but too plainly; the Lord would slay them; the laws of his providence, his unchanged and unchangeable providence, had decreed that their case was hopeless for they had hardened their hearts