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SERMONS

PREACHED IN

ENGLAND.

BY THE LATE RIGHT REVEREND
REGINALD HEBER, D.D.
ZORD BISHOP OP CALCUTT.^;
FORMERIT RECTOE OP HODNET, SALOP; PREBENDARY OF ST. ASAPH; AND
PREACHER AT LINCOLN'S INN.

NEW-YORK:
SOLD BY E. BLISS; C. S.FRANCIS; WHITE, GALLAHER & WHITE;
COLLINS & CO. ; COLLINS & HANNAV ; D. FELT ; O. A. ROORBACH];
N. B. HOLMES; W. B. GILLEY; G. & C. & H. CARVILL; T. & J.
SWORDS.
PHILADELPHIA— TOW AE & HOGAN ; T. DE SHAVER; J. GRIGG  -
BALTIMORE— W. & J. NEAL.  BOSTON— RICHARDSON & LORD,

1829.

J. SEYMOUR, \
CLAYtSn &VAN NORDEN, [ Printers and PobUshers forthe Trade.
H. C. SLEIGHT, )
Orders addressed to E. B. CLAYTON, New-York.

H354

TO
SIR ROBERT HARRY INGLIS, BART. M.P-
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME,
AS A TOKEN OP GRATITUDE FOR THE AFFECTION
SHOWN TO MY HUSBAKd'S MEMORY,
BY THE KIND AND JUDICIOUS ASSISTANCE
HE HAS AFFORDED ME IN THE PUBLICATION OP HIS WORKS.

AMELIA HEBER.

Bodryddan, St. .Asaph,
Dec. 31,1828.

PREFACE.

Several of the sermons now offered to the pubhc
were prepared by their Author for publication, and
the remainder are considered as so far fitted for
the press, as to be entitled to admission in the
same series.
This volume will shortly be followed by a dis
tinct work, containing sermons preached in India ;
and the Editor hopes, at some future period, to
print a selection from the parochial sermons
preached by her husband at Hodnet.

PREFACE

BY THE

AMERICAN PUBLISHERS.

This edition of the " Sermons of Bishop Heber
preached in England," is respectfully presented by
the American PubUshers to the literary and reli
gious community. It has been executed with
great care, page for page with the London edition,
and it is believed that it will be found Kttle inferior
to that as respects the quality of paper and the
style of printing. No expense has been spared;
for the object of the Publishers was not so much
pecuniary profit, as to evince the respect with
which the character of the late Bishop of Calcutta
is viewed in this country. Few individuals of
the present age, born and nurtured and perform
ing their important functions at so great a distance
from us, have ever excited such warm or such
general interest in their favour. He was indeed a

VI PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS.
scholar, and the republic of letters extends over
the whole surface of the globe — he was a poet,
and increased the literary treasures of a language
which is also our mother tongue j but more than
all, he was prominent in a cause which breaks
down all barriers of distinction between men, and
unites those who are engaged in it, in bonds of the
most affectionate brotherhood. A devoted friend
to the cause of missions, during his whole profes
sional life, and at last a voluntary martyr to that
sacred cause, it was in this character he excited
our deepest interest, and in contemplating it with
admiration and respect, his elegant attainments,
his extensive learning, and poetical inspiration,
were comparatively unobserved. Now however
his various excellences have been placed before us
in a strong light, and in him we see and acknow
ledge, "splendid talents, profound learning, culti
vated taste, poetic imagination, the loveHness
of domestic virtue, saintly piety, and apostoKc
zeal, combining together to form a character
almost perfect."
All these estimable qualities are amply illustrated
in his " Journal in India," — a work too well known
and too highly estimated to need commendation,
and one that willmake all who have read it, desi-

PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS, vil
rous of perusing whatever else may be presented
to the public from the same source.
The American Publishers have been anxious to
gratify this curiosity by the early publication of the
present volume. The Sermons it contains, as will
be seen by the English preface, were in part pre
pared for publication by the lamented author. The
others were selected by the editor — his widow, —
of whom it will be acknowledged, that as she is
more deeply interested in his fame than any other
person can be, so has she proved by the past exe
cution of her editorial duties, that there are few
more competent than herself to extend and esta
blish this fame, both by the publication of his
remaining works, and by the Memoir of his hfe
which is promised. The Sermons preached by
Bishop Heber while in India, and also a selection
from the parochial sermons at Hodnet, are an-
nounced in the^ preface to the jpresent work. We
anxiously look forward for the reception of these
volumes, and particularly the latter. The clear and
forcible exhibitions of scripture truth, the earnest
appeals to the conscience, and the affectionate ex
hortations of such a man as Heber in the discharge
of his duties as pastor of a beloved flock, must
possess deep interest, and be calculated for exten-

VIU PREFACE BY THE AMERICAN PUBLISHERS.
sive usefulness. The Sermons in the present vol
ume, although by no means deficient in the above
qualities, nay, on the contrary, distinguished for
the union of practical reflection and exhortation,
with ingenious and learned disquisition ; yet being
prepared for public occasions and delivered princi
pally before learned bodies, are less adapted to
universal perusal than parochial sermons would be.
To the man of letters, and the theologian especially,
the present work will prove a valuable acquisition,
and the Publishers have great satisfaction in thus
presenting it to their notice.

New-York, Jime, 1829.

CONTENTS.

SERMON I.
TIME AND ETERNITY.
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, 1823, and at Madras,
March 4, 1826.]
2 CoR. iv. 18. PAGE
We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things
which are not seen ; for the things which are seen are
temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal . . 1
SERMON II.
ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS.
[Preached before the University of Oxford, 1818, and at
Lincoln's Inn, Jan. 1822.]
2 Kings vi. 16.
Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they which
be with them  18
SERMON III.
ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS.
[Preached before the University of Oxford, 1818, and at
Lincoln's Inn, 1822.]
2 Kings vi. 16. ^
Fear not, for they that be with u^, are more than they which
be with them  42
SERMON IV.
ON THE EXISTENCE AND INFLUENCE OP EVIL SPIRITS.
[Preached before the University at Oxford, 1818, and at
Lincoln's Inn, 1822.]
Ephes. vi. 11, 12.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to
stand against the wiles of the Devil. For we wrestle
not against flesh and blood, but against principalities,
against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this
world, against spiritual wickedness in high places  64
b

vi CONTENTS.SERMON V.
ON THE INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH.
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, November 10, 1822.]
ExoDtJs iii. 14. PAGE
And God said unto Moses, I am that I am ; and He said,
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am
hath sent me unto you  102
SERMON VI.
CHARACTER OF MOSES.
[Preached at Lincoln Inn, Nov. 17, 1822.]
Exodus iii. 14.
And God said unto Moses, I am that I am ; and He said,
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am
hath sent me unto you  124
SERMON VII.
god's DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH.
[Preached before the University of Oxford, 1818.]
Exodus ix. 16.
In veiy d#ed for this cause I have raised thee up, for to
show in thee my power, and that my name may be de
clared throughout all the earth  146
SERMON VIII.
ON THE DECREES OF GOD.
[Preached in the Cathedral of St. Asaph, 1819.]
:'|'^ St. Luke xix. 42.
If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day,
the things which belong unto thy f)eace ! But now they
are hid from thine eyes  , 167
SERMON IX.
THE EXTENSION OF CHRISt's KINGDOM.
[Forthe Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
Preached at Shrewsbury, 1821.]
Daniel xii. 3.
And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the
firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as
the stars for ever and ever  i . . . . 189

CONTENTS. vii
SERMON X.
THE CONVERSION OP THE HEATHEN,
[Preached for the Church Missionary Society, at Whittington,
Salop, April 16, 1820.]
St. Matt. vi. 10. PAGE
Thy kingdom come  193
SERMON XI.
THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
[Preached for- the British and Foreign Bible Society, at
Shrewsbury, September 5, 1813.]
Rev. xiv. 6.
I saw another Angel fly in the midst of Heaven, having the
everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell in the
earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and
people  211
SERMON XII.
THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY.
[Preached at Chester, 1819.]
St. Matt. ix. 38.
Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will
send forth labourers into his harvest  232
SERMON XIII.
THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR.
[Preached before the Society for Promoting Christian Know
ledge, at St. Paul's Cathedral, June^ 1823.
St. Luke vii. 22.
To the poor the Gospel is preached  255
SERMON XIV.
RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY.
' [Preached at the Assizes at Shrewsbury, 1821.] "
.Tekemiah xxxv. 18, 19.
Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab
your father, and kept all his precepts, and done accord
ing unto all that he hath commanded you, therefore thus
saith the Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel ; Jonadab the
son of Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me
for ever   275

viii CONTENTS.
SERMON XV.
THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL.
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, 1822, and at Madras, 12th March,
1826.]
Acts xxvii. 23, 24. PAGE
There stood by me this night the Angel of God, whose I
am, and whom I serve, saying, Fear not, Paul ; thou
must be brought before Csesar : and, lo, God hath given
thee all them that sail with thee  298
SERMON XVI.
THE FEAR OP DEATH.
[Preached before the University of Oxford, 1818 ; at Lincoln's
Inn, 1822; and at Madras, 1826.]
Phil. i. 21.
To die is gain  320
SERMON XVIL
THE PEAR OP DEATH.
[Preached before the University of Oxford, May 3, 1818; Lin
coln's Inn, May 5, 1822; and Madras, Feb. 26, 1826.]
Phil. i. 21.
To die is gain  335
SERMON XVIII.
ON THE ATONEMENT.
[Preached before the University of O.xford, 1818, and at
Cuddalore, 1826.]
Romans vi. 3, 4.
Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
Christ, were baptized into his death ? Therefore we are
buried with himby baptism into death, that like as Christ
was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father,
feven so we also should walk in newness of life  352
SERMON XIX.
ON THE ATONEMENT.
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, May 1823.]
CoLoss. iii. 3.
Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God  375

SERMON I.

TIME AND ETERNITY.
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, 1823, and at Madras, March 4, 1826.]

2 CoR. iv. 18.
We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things
which are not seen ; for the things which are seen are tem
poral, but the things which are not seen are eternal.
There is an ancient fable told by the Greek and
Roman Churches, which, fable as it is, may for its
beauty and singularity well deserve to be remem
bered, that in one of the earliest persecutions to
which the Christian world was exposed, seven
Christian youths sought concealment in a lonely
cave, and there, by God's appointment, fell into a
deep and death-like slumber. They slept, the le
gend runs, two hundred years, till the greater part
of mankind had received the faith of the Gospel,
and that Church which they had left a poor and af
flicted orphan, had "kings" for her "nursing fath
ers, and queens " for her " nursing mothers."* They
then at length awoke, and entering into their native
Ephesus, so altered now that its streets were alto
gether unknown to them, they cautiously inquired
if there were any Christians in the city } " Chris-
* Isaiah xlix, 23.
VOL. I. B

2 SERMON L
tians !" was the answer, " we are all Christians
here!" and they heard with a thankful joy the
change which, since they left the world, had taken
place in the opinions of its inhabitants. On one
side they were shown a stately fabric adorned with
a gilded cross, and dedicated, as they were told, to
the worship of their crucified Master; on another,
schools for the pubhc exposition of those Gospels,
of which so short a time before, the bare profession
was proscribed and deadly. But no fear was now
to be entertained of those miseries which had en
circled the cradle of Christianity; no danger now
of the rack, the lions, or the sword ; the emperor
and his prefects held the same faith with them
selves, and all the wealth of the east, and all the
valour and authority of the western world were
exerted to protect and endow the professors and
the teachers of their religion.
But joyful as these tidings must, at first, have
been, their further inquiries are said to have met
with answers which very deeply surprised and
pained them. They learned that the greater part
of those who called themselves by the name of
Christ, were strangely regardless of the blessings
which Christ had bestowed, and of the obligations
which He had laid on His followers. They found
that, as the world had become Christian, Christian
ity itself had become worldly ; and wearied and
sorrowful they besought of God to lay them asleep
again, crying out to those who followed them, "you
have shewn us many heathens who have given up

TIME AND ETERNITY. 3
their old idolatry without gaining any thing better
in its room ; many who are of no religion at all ; and
many with whom the rehgion of Christ is no more
than a cloak of licentiousness; but where, where
are the christians .''" And thus they returned to
their cave; and there God had compassion on
them, releasing them, once for all, from that world
for whose reproof their days had been lengthened,
and removing their souls to the society of their an
cient friends and pastors, the martyrs and saints of
an earlier and a better generation.
The admiration of former times is a feehng at
first, perhaps engrafted on our minds by the regrets
of those who vainly seek in the evening of life, for
the sunny tints which adorned their morning land
scape ; and who are led to fancy a deterioration in
surrounding objects,^when the change is in them
selves, and the twilight in their own powers of per
ception. It is probable that, as each age of the
individual or the species is subject to its peculiar
dangers, so each has its peculiar and compen
sating advantages : and that the difficulties which^
at different periods of the world's duration, have
impeded the believer's progress to Heaven, thougjli
in appearance infinitely various, are, in amount,
very nearly equal. It is probable that no age
is without its sufficient share of offences, of
judgments, of graces, and of mercies, and that the
corrupted nature of mankind was never otherwise
than hostile or indifferent to the means which God
has employed to remedy its misery. Had we lived

4 SERMON I.
in the times of the infant Church, even amid the
blaze of miracle on the one hand, and the chasten
ing fires of persecution on the other, we should
have heard, perhaps, no fewer complaints of the
cowardice and apostacy,the dissimulation and mur
muring inseparable from a continuance of pubUc
distress and danger, than we now hear regrets for
those days of wholesome affliction, when the mutual
love of believers was strengthened by their common
danger ; when their want of worldly advantages
disposed them to regard a release from the world
with hope far more than with apprehension, and
compelled the Church to cling to her Master's
cross alone for comfort and for succour.
Still, however, it is most wonderful, yea rather by
this very consideration is our wonder increased at
the circumstance, that in any or every age of Chris
tianity such inducements and such menaces as the
reUgion of Christ displays, should be regarded with
so much indifference, and postponed for objects so
trifling and comparatively worthless. If there were
no other difference but that of duration between
the happiness of the present life and of the life
which is to follow, or though it were allowed us to
behevethat the enjoyments of earth were, in every
other respect, the greater and more desirable of the
two, this single consideration of its eternity would
prove the wisdom of making Heaven the object of
ouf most earnest care and concern ; of retaining
its image constantly in our minds ; of applying our
selves with a more excellent zeal to every thing

TIME AND ETERNITY. 5
which can help us in its attainment, and of esteem
ing all things as less than worthless which are set
in comparison with its claims, or which stand in the
way of its purchase.
Accordingly, this is the motive which St. Paul
assigns for a contempt of the sufferings and plea
sures, the hopes and fears, of the hfe which now is,
in comparison with the pleasures and sufferings,
the fears and hopes, which are, in another life, held
out to each of us. And it is a reason which must
carry great weight to the mind of every reasonable
being, inasmuch as any thing which may end soon,
and must end some time or other, is, supposing all
other circumstances equal, or even allowing to the
temporal good a very large preponderance of plea
sure, of exceedingly less value than that which,
once attained, is alike safe from accident and decay,
the enjoyment of which is neither to be checked
by insecurity, nor palled by long possession, but
which must continue thenceforth in everlasting
and incorruptible blessedness, as surely as God
Himself is incorruptible and everlasting. But when,
besides this great and preponderating considera
tion, we recollect the hollow and unsatisfactory
nature of all the enjoyments and advantages which
the present life can supply; when we recollect how
small a share of those enjoyments the generality of
mankind can hope for, and that those men who
have seemed to fare most plentifully at the feast of
worldly happiness, have yet, by their own acknow
ledgments, arisen from that feast unsatisfied and

b SERMON I.
disappointed ; when we recollect and feel, as we
may most of us have felt but too keenly, that these
pleasures, short and imperfect as they are, are
dashed and mingled with many inevitable sorrows,
and when we recollect, above all, that there is no
thing in our care of the everlasting world which
necessarily or usually intei;feres with the moderate
enjoyment of those short-lived comforts which the
present world can supply^ it must needs excite no
common degree of wonder and pity for the mad
ness of mankind, to behold them so over-anxious
and over-busy in their pursuit of the less and less
enduring advantages, and so strangely careless and
inactive in their endeavours after those glories which
abide eternally.
It is plain, when so many reasonable beings in
this one instance act unreasonably, that some pow
erful and prevalent causes must be at work to pre
vent or pervert the fair exercise of their under
standings ; and it is evidently most desirable and
necessary to discover and remove the delusions
which hide from our eyes the things belonging to
our peace, which disqualify our spirits from the
discernment of spiritual interests, and render our
hearts unmoved to any good or effectual purpose
by the most gracious promises or the, most awful
threatenings of the Almighty. To point out then
the causes and, under Divine Grace, the most pro
bable cure of this remarkable confusion of intellect,
will be the object of the observations which I shall
now suggest to you.

TIME AND ETERNITY. 7
Of these causes, a want of faith is the most ob
vious, as it is one, I apprehend, of the most fre
quent, and, of all others, where it prevails, the
most fatal. It is impossible that we should please
God ; it is impossible that we should even desire to
please Him, unless we are first assured that He is,
and that He is a rewarder of all such as diligently
seek Him. It is impossible that we should come
to Christ, as Christ requires, with an entire and
exclusive confidence in His merits, with a hearty
and lively thankfulness for His mercies, with an
earnest and effectual desire to offer up ourselves,
our souls, and bodies, to His reasonable and holy
service, unless we are first really persuaded that
the Gospel contains the words of God, and that the
things are true, and that the objects are answered,
which the Lord Jesus is there recorded to have
done, and suffered, and undertaken, and purchased
for us. It is impossible, lastly, that we should re
sist the many and mighty temptations with which
our spiritual adversary assails us, unless we are
convinced of the truth and reasonableness of those
passages in the Gospels, the epistles, and the pro
phecies, which declare a compliance with his en
ticements to be a state of enmity with the Most
High, and which compare, as in the words of my
text St. Paul has done, the short continuance and
minor importance of such sufferings or pleasures as
this life can inflict or bestow^ with the wrath of
Him who, when He hath killed, hath power to cast
into hell.

8 SERMON L
It is in vain to urge, as the ancient teachers of
morality were in their ignorance content to do,
that the guilty pleasures of this hfe are so short
and so poor as to be unworthy of a wise man's de
sire, unless we are, in the first place, talking to
those who profess the name of wisdom, or unless
we can first prove to each individual that, by re
fusing such pleasures, he will get something more
than the barren praise of being wise. It is of little
avail to press on his notice that, by these indul
gences or pursuits, he renounces the far greater en
joyment of a pure and speculative philosophy, when
the sensualist or the ambitious man, (and nine
tenths of the world are naturally either ambitious
or sensual) may reply that, of wordly gratifications,
he takes those which please him best. Nor is it
sufficient to point out to his notice the lassitude and
disease, the remorse and the danger to which an
unbridled indulgence of his criminal desires must,
even in this life, expose him. His answer is easy ;
that he knows how to stop in time ; that others who
have gone as far in vice as he designs to go, have
nevertheless escaped the worst of those penal con
sequences with which we menace him ; or that he
is aware he is shortening his days, and means, there
fore, to make the most of the days which yet remain
to him.
I do not forget, and still less am I inclined for
the sake of temporary argument, to suppress my
conviction that, even in this life, the cup of the
sinner is usually full of bitterness ; and that of this

TIME AND ETERNITY. 9
world, separately considered, the virtuous and the
wise have the best and fairest portion. But I am
convinced that, where the advantages and disadvan
tages held out on both sides are alike only for a
time, the present short-lived enjoyment will gene
rally preponderate over the future short-lived pain ;
and that we must first persuade the sinner that the
things which are not seen, both are, and are eternal,
before he is likely to forego those temporal and
unholy, but powerfully seductive pleasures, which,
at every step, ensnare his eyes and confuse his un
derstanding. But as a want of faith is thus fatal to all good
ness ; so is it a deficiency far more frequent among
men than a careless observer would imagine. I do
not mean that many are to be found so fearfully
abandoned to themselves and to Satan as to main
tain, either with their mouths or in their hearts, that
there is no God. I do not mean that in a Chris
tian land, and among those who, from their child
hood, have been surrounded with the evidences of
the truth, and with the association and example of
all which is good, or great, or holy, the number
is considerable of those who expressly, deny the
Lord who bought them. But this I do mean, and
^ this is unhappily proved true both by reason and
experience, that there is a great difference between
not disbelieving what is related in Scripture con
cerning God and His Son, and actually and habitu
ally believing Jt ; and that many a man has no ge
nuine faith who never in his life either denied or
VOL. I. r

10 SERMON L
doubted the Gospel. Believing, it should be recol
lected, is an act of the mind consequent to atten
tion. We cannot beheve that which is not present
to our thoughts ; we cannot have an habitual faith
in God, without habitually retaining His image in
our minds as the object of our love and reverence.
And when we consider how many men there are
who, to all outward appearance, never think of God
or His Son at all ; and how many more who endea
vour to get rid of religious thoughts whenever they
arise as unnecessary, untimely, and troublesome ;
we must allow, I think, that a want of faith is at
the bottom of the wicked lives of many professing
Christians ; that some who, when the G ospel is
named to them, are very far from doubting its truth,
are yet, during the greatest part of their lives, to all
practical purposes, unbelievers ; while others who,
firom time to time, may perhaps believe and trem
ble, are anxious to make still less the little faith
which yet lingers in their bosoms. To these men
a voice of most awful warning is necessary. They
should be reminded that the Christian religion
must, inevitably, be either false or true ; that its
falsehood or truth is a question of infinite concern
ment to them ; that the things which are not seen^
if such things there really are, are eternal, and that,,
either the Gospel of Jesus Christ is a fraud, and the
best and wisest men of all ages since His death have
been the dupes of a wild imposture ; or else, if it be
true, that their lives cannot be right, that their feet
are treading the downward wav, and their end will

TIME AND ETERNITY. H
be ruin irretrievable. They should be warned, that
not only are sinners of a more enormous guilt and
a deeper defilement to " be turned into hell," but
that " the people who forget God,"* are to find a
proportionate share in those menaced sufferings ;
and they should be urged, for the sake of their pre
sent comfort here, if not for the sake of their ever
lasting happiness hereafter, to study the Gospel of
Christ and the evidences of His rehgion, and to ask
of God to guide their inquiries aright, and to pre
serve in their minds evermore the conviction to
which those inquiries will lead them. It is thus,
and thus only, by a diligent examination of the
Scriptures, and by a diligent use of the appointed
means of improvement and of grace, that the avow
ed and the practical unbeliever may be alike ena
bled to overlook " the things which are seen and
are temporal," and to fix a due share of his atten
tion on " the things which are not seen and are
eternal." Another and perhaps a still more common cause
of this indifference to eternal things, and this per-
verseness of intellect which prefers to them the
fleeting advantages of this world, is the notion that,
for the cares of the other world, whatever may be
at some future time their necessity, there is no pre
sent occasion or, at least, no immediate and urgent
hurry. " The temporal concerns of this life," they
reason, "may be inferior in importance to the joys
* Psalm ix. 17.

12 SERMON L
or sorrows of the life which is to come, but such as
they are, they are present, and they must be pre
sently attended to; whereas the prospects which
religion holds out are certainly future, may perhaps
be distant, and may, therefore, safely be deferred till
to-morrow, or next month, or next year, or ten
years hence, when there will yet be quite sufficient
time to arrange our accounts for Heaven, and repent
at our leisure of whatever forbidden sweets we have
stolen a taste of during our passage through things
temporal." To these men it might be easily and truly an
swered, that there is no such inevitable and univer
sal opposition as they suppose between an adhe
rence to the duties of, Christianity, and the needful
cares of the present world ; that our religion itself
not only permits but enjoins us to unite a diligence
in business to a fervour in spirit ;* and that, if they
will make the just deduction from the claims of
ambition, of avarice, and of idle amusement, they
will find their temporal duties and their real tempo
ral interests consist, for the most part, extremely
well with their care for eternal happiness. But to
men so infatuated as these, on their own shewing,
appear to be ; to men who commit their eternity to
the chance of a life which any one of ten thousand
accidents may, the next moment, bring to an end ;
who lie down securely on beds which they may
change that night for couches of fire, and act as if
?Romans xii. 11.

TIME AND ETERNITY. 13
they alone (of all men living) had made a covenant
with hell, and could muzzle the jaws of the grave
till they were themselves disposed to enter it : to
fools like these what argument can be successfully
offered '? I know no course but to alarm their in
stinctive fears with examples of early and sudden
mortality ; to tell them how such an one went to
his bed a healthy and a prosperous man, /on whose
countenance the shadow of death was dark in the
morning; how the marriage feast was spread in
such a house, and the young bride passed to her
chamber, and knew not that the mirth of her friends
would soon be changed into sorrow over her grave ;
of such a neighbour who went forth to the gate of
the city, and the crowd trode on him that he died ;
of these men slain by robbers ; of those swallowed
up by the sea ; of some that fell victims to the pes
tilence that walketh in darkness, and others whom
a fly, a grape-stone, a flint in the path, or a tile from
the house-top took away, in the morning of their
lives, and the middle of their schemes, and the heat
of their blood and their transgressions, without a
day, an hour, a moment for reflection or for prayer.*
They may be told that the repentance and atten
tion to holy things, on which they reckon as so cer
tainly to take place in themselves hereafter, do not
depend, even should life be spared them, on their
own choice or resolution ; that they are the gifts of
the Almighty, which He may either grant or with-
* Jeremy Taylor's Holy Dying, sect. i.

14 SERMON I.
hold; and that He whose Spirit will not always
strive with man, may be so far provoked by their
present contumacy as to abandon them hencefor
ward to a reprobate mind, and weary them no more
with His mercy and His offers of salvation. And
this, if any thing has that power, may induce them
while the day of grace yet lasts to have mercy on
themselves, to estimate the things which are seen
at no more than their proper value, and to pay that
attention which is just and reasonable to the un
seen things of eternity.
The last cause of this neglect of unseen and eter
nal things is a confirmed habit of sin. Of the un
fortunate persons who are thus tied and bound, it
may be said that they have rendered themselves
absolutely incapable, without a more than usual
share of Divine assistance, of entertaining spiritual
thoughts at all, or even of judging of that religion
which the Son of God brought down from Heaven.
By Christ's own testimony it was needful that a
man should do His Father's will, in order that he
might learn of the Christian doctrine whether it
were true ; and we find by daily experience, that he
who knows his whole life to be displeasing to God,
and yet, from long habit, has neither the power nor
the desire to change it, is' on this very account in
disposed to direct his thoughts either to the joys
or to the sorrows of immortahty. His affections
are of the earth, earthly ; the songs of angels and
the glories of intellectual existence, have no charms
for him ; and if the narrow gate of life were even

TIME AND ETERNITY. 15
now expanded wider for his admission, he would
only miss and regret the indulgence of his recol
lected appetites, amid the splendours of God's
house and the pure gales of Paradise. Or, shall
the terrors of the Lord be urged to him .'' He
trembles like Felix, but hke Felix he turns away i
He cannot forsake his darling habits, though he
already experiences a foretaste of their bitter con
sequences ; and he cries out to God's Spirit, as the
evil spirit cried out to God's Son, " art thou come
to torment me before the time ?"*
Of such as these who are now grown old in ini
quity, there are some it may be feared who are, hu
manly speaking, beyond the reach of any help but
prayer. But the less hardened it may not be useless
to remind of those glorious promises of the Gos
pel, which hold out hopes of success to them who,
even at the eleventh hour, repent and seek forgive
ness; to remind them that to forsake their evil
habits will be a task the more difficult the longer
it is delayed, and that the most rooted habit may
yet give way to a steadfast determination of will,
to a reasonable retirement from the objects which
most enslave them, to hearty and persevering prayer,
and to that prevailing help of the Most High, which,
where prayer is, will never long be absent.
But of all these victims of delusion, of him who
disbelieves, or altogether disregards the Gospel, of
him who, admitting its truth and its importance,
defers its necessary cares to a future and indefinite
* St. Matt. viii. 29.

16 SERMON I.
period ; of him who is so immersed in sin that he
has neither eyes nor affections for the concerns of
his soul and the blessings or terrors of Christianity;
for all these different symptoms of the same inter
nal weakness and corruption, the cure is, in S, great
degree, the same. As they all err from a too great
attention to the objects which, in the present life,
surround them, it should be the endeavour of them
all, by attendance on the outward means of instruc
tion and of grace, by a study of the Scriptures, by
a participation in the solemn ordinances of religion,
by a steady and resolute contemplation of the evi
dences, the commandments, the promises, and the
threatenings of the Gospel, to impress their souls
with the comparative littleness of all earthly pros
pects, and with the constant recollection of that
event which is, every moment, approaching nearer
to all of us, and which will enable us all, though
perhaps too late, to estimate both temporal and
eternal things at their real value.
We read of a certain youth in the early days of
Christianity, (those periods of historic suffering and
heroic patience and legendary wonder to which I
have already ventured to call your attention) — we
read of a Christian youth on whom his persecutors
had put in practice a more than common share of
their cruel ingenuity, that by his torments (let
those who will, or can, go through the horrible de
tails) they might compel him to deny his Lord and
Saviour. After a long endurance of those pains
they released him in wonder at his obstinacy. His

TIME AND ETERNITY. IT
Christian brethren are said to have wondered too,
and to have asked him by what mighty faith he
could so strangely subdue the violence of the fire,
as that neither a cry nor a groan escaped him.
"It was, indeed, most painful," Was the noble
youth's reply ; " but an angel stood by me when
my anguish was at the worst, and with his finger
pointed to Heaven." Oh thou, whoever thou art,
that art tempted to commit a sin, do thou think on
death, and that thought will be an angel to thee!
The hope of Heaven will raise thy courage above
the fiercest threatenings of the world ; the fear of
hell will rob its persuasions of their enchantments .
and the very extremity of thy trial may itself con
tribute to animate thy exertions by the thought
that the greater thy endurance now, the greater
will be thy reward hereafter. The wildest tempta
tion must shortly have an end; the fiercest flame
must burn out for want of fuel; the most bitter
cup, when drunk to the dregs, will trouble thee no
more. These things are temporal, and hasten,
while 1 speak, to pass away ; but the hope which is
visible to the inward eye of faith is unfading, eter
nal, heavenly. Bear up, a little while bear up in
the cause of immortality ! If thy trial is intolera
ble,' it will by so much the sooner have an end.
Thy heart miay break, but thy good angel points to
Heaven, and One, greater than the angels, will, ere
long, fulfil His promise, "Be thou faithful unto
death, and I will give thee a crown of life!"
VOL. t. D

SERMON II.

ON THE PRESENCE OP GOOD ANGELS,
[Preached before the University of Oxford, 1818, and at
Lincoln's Inn.]

2 Kings vi. 16.
Fear not, for they that be with us are more than they which be
with them.
In a war between the kings of Syria and Israel, the
prophet Elisha had, on various occasions, given
warning to the latter sovereign of the enterprises
of his enemy. The plans of the invader being thus
repeatedly defeated, he determined to revenge him
self on the person whom, with good reason, he
apprehended to be the cause of his disasters, and
he despatched a body of strong men by night to
surprise Elisha in Dothan. Accordingly, the sacred
historian informs us, " when the servant of the man
of God was risen early and gone forth, behold an
host compassed the city both with horses and cha
riots. And his servants said unto him, Alas, my
master, how shall we do.'' And he answered. Fear
not, for they that be with us are more than they
which bewith them. And Elisha prayed and said,
Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes that he may see.
And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man,
and he saw, and behold the mountain was full
of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha."

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 19
The conclusion of the history I need not repeat
to you ; the use which I now design to make of it
is to urge on your attention, first, the nature and
certainty of that invisible protection which the Al
mighty, m this life, affords to those who love and
fear Him ; and, secondly, the number and power of
Jhe heavenly spirits, by whose agency He thus sup
ports and protects them under those necessary evils
which His wisdom sends to try and purify them,
and against those innumerable dangers which His
mercy will not suffer to overwhelm them. Both
these doctrines, I apprehend, are implied, if not
expressed, in the answer of Elisha to his terrified
servant, and in the miracle by which that answer
was confirmed. For if God is not accustomed to
interfere in the defence of His servants, the presence
of the angels, who are God's ministers, could have
been no further ground of confidence to the pro
phet than the height of the neighbouring moun
tains, and the splendour of the morning sun ; and if
there were no angels, or if the angels were not the
usual ministers of God in such works of mercy and
protection, Ehsha could not have appealed to their
numbers and fiery chariots as his reasons for de
spising the armies of Syria. The history, there
fore, should seem to teach the doctrines of a par
ticular Providence, arid of the existence and minis
try of angels.
That " the eyes of the Lord are over the righte
ous," and that " His ears are open to their prayers,"*
* 1 Peter iii. 12

¦20 SERMON Ii.
that He, without whom not a sparrow faileth to the
ground, regardeth His servants as of more value
" than many sparrows ;"* that our times are in His
hands, and that, by the promise of deliverance. He
hath encouraged us to call on Him in the day of
trouble; are doctrines which, in some sense or
other, must be admitted by all who admit, the in
spiration of Scripture ; and they are so consistent
in themselves with the attributes of God, and so
necessary amid the dangers and sufferings of our
mortal existence, that if something of the kind were
not to be found in Scripture, the omission might
be almost enough to make it probable that our re
ligion 'did not come from God.
Yet it has been the endeavour of many specious
reasoners to contract within narrow bounds their
i
acknowledgment of a superintending and directing
Providence; to refer all things which are done or
endured, either in us or around us, to an impulse
given by God, in the first instance, to His creation ;
or, at most, to a pervading energy whereby the
course of events is conducted in an even tenour, and
controlled by him to the ^ewera/' furtherance of
His great designs, and the general interests of His
creatures. They are content to thank the Almighty
for the beauty and harmony of that goodly fabric
which His right hand hath builded, and for that
knowledge of his own nature, and our eternal ex
pectations, which he hath given us through His Son.
They are content to implore (as an acknowledg-
* St. Luke xii. 7.

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 21
ment of their dependence on Him) the continuance
of His general protection, and the accomplishment
of His general promises ; but they find it hard to
believe that any of the separate occurrences of life
can proceed from separate and particular interpo
sitions of His power ; that His hand is, in any case,
immediately exerted to protect or punish indivi
duals ; that the arm of a particular enemy is ever
weakened ; that the stroke of a particular disease
is ever interrupted ; that individual nakedness is
ever clothed, or individual hunger satisfied, by the
direct act of His will, or as a definite answer to our
petitions. These things depend, they tell us, on that wheel
of events, which, however its issues are at first sight
various and infinite, yet, on the whole, and when
viewed by the comprehensive glance of an historian
or a philosopher, is found to perform its revolutions
with an uniformity most mysterious and terrible ; of
which the machinery is too vast to be discomposed
for the sake of such worms as we are, and of which
the consequences must, therefore, happen indiffer
ently " to the righteous and to the wicked, to the
good, and to the clean, and to the unclean ; to him
that sacrificeth, and to him that sacrificeth not."*
Thus they observe, first, that so close and necessary
is the connexion between events and their causes,
and so high may this connexion be traced in its
ascent to the First Cause of all, it is impossible to
* Eccles. ix. 2.

22 SERMON IL
conceive that certain causes should fail to produce
certain consequences ; that the chain of causes and
effects Once begun could be interrupted without a
miracle ; or that any of these, when the first link in
the chain was framed, could thenceforward be con
tingent or uncertain. But it is difficult, they con
tend, to believe that God should continually or fi-e-
quently interfere, by miracles, to change an order
of events which He has Himself appointed ; and it
is still more difficult to shew that any of those
circumstances which we regard as providential
interpositions, have happened without a sufficient
natural cause, or in a manner at variance with the
natural succession of causes and consequences. It is,
therefore, they tell us, most reasonable to suppose,
that the Almighty conducts the affairs of men on the
same general principles, and with the same unde-
viating and implacable firmness as He administers
the great revolutions of nature ; neither repenting
Him of His purposes, nor varying His conduct, as
one by whom nothing from the beginning was un
foreseen, and whose first designs were too nice and
perfect to need any future revision.
And this doctrine, they maintain, is remarkably
confirmed by the fact that of all the casualties, as
we term them, which befall a given number of men,
the average amount may be very exactly calculated
beforehand, insomuch that it is not only probable,
but so nearly certain, as to be the common princi
ple on which many pecuniary speculations are
founded, that of so many individuals of a given age.

ON THE PRESENCE OP GOOD ANGELS. 23
such a number will, in the course of a year, be at
tacked by death, disease, or accident ; that of so
many houses, such a proportion will become a prey
to the flames ; that of so many vessels, such an
amount will perish amid the rage of the elements.
"How then can we dream," they exultingly demand,
" that our lives or interests are of such importance
as that God should, for them, suspend the march of
His creation.'' How dare we pray to be freed fi-om
our allotted share of those evils, which, if they do
not fall on us, must necessarily be laid as an addi
tional burden on some of our fellow-creatures .-*"
It is not only the plausibility of these opinions,
or their apparent inconsistency with the doctrine
implied in my text, which makes me anxious to
shew their inherent fallacy. They conduct to so
much practical as well as speculative evil, to conse
quences so impious in themselves, and productive
of so much present and fiiture misery to those who
adopt them, that this, in itself, may induce a suspi
cion that the doctrine cannot be true, which, when
carried to its full extent, will land us in such con
clusions. Of the consequences which result from the
denial of a particular Providence, the most evident
as well as the most obnoxious, and that which, as
we have seen, its supporters are least anxious to
conceal, is one, nevertheless, extremely offensive to
Christian ears, and extremely contrary to the gene
ral tenour of, the Gospel. It is, that aU prayer for
earthly blessings is nothing else than an idle cere
mony. It is but in vain that they would make a

24 SERMON IL
distinction between prayer for general and for par
ticular blessings, as if the former could be reason
able subjects of entreaty to the throne of grace,
while the latter were vain and impious. A general
blessing means, if it means any thing, the aggregate
of many particulars ; and it is the same thing in
effect, since the one is only an abridgment of the
other, whether we ask for God's favour and protec
tion simply, or whether we specify in our prayer all
the different circumstances in which His favour is
exhibited. The advantages or disadvantages of
either method of devotion are found in their effect
on our own hearts only. It may be wise to exercise
ourselves to a sense of our own ignorance and weak
ness by leaving the detail of our wants to God's all-
seeing care, content with such general applications
for His help as may ensure to us that help in what
ever instance it is most expedient for us. It may
be wiser still, and I believe it to be most conforma
ble to the nature of man, and the course recom
mended in Scripture, to quicken our tardy zeal, and
Avarm our languid piety, by the enumeration of all
those things which we most desire or dread at God's
hands, submitting ourselves, in eaph particular, to
His Almighty will and wisdom. But, however our
prayers may be worded, our desires, if we pray earn
estly, must always dwell on those precise instances
of blessing or dehverance which are the nearest, for
the time, to our hearts. Even in a wish, we cannot
separate the general idea of happiness from those
component parts for which happiness is only a com-

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 26
prehensive term ; and it matters not to Him " who
knoweth what is in the miiid of the spirit," whether
our aspirations approach Him in the " groanings
which cannot be uttered"* of St. Paul, or in the
various supplications and deprecations of the long
est litany.
It is plain, then, both that a petition merely ge
neral is in effect a species of prayer which, however
it may have been uttered by the lips, never yet was
conceived by the heart of man ; and also that, even
if it were offered up, it could only be fulfilled by
the gift from God of those particular blessings, or
the major part of them, which together make up the
complex idea of protection or of happiness. If God
will not interfere to give us the items, it is certain
that He will not interfere to give us the sum ; and if
prayer for the particular interposition of Providence
is vain and superstitious, we can pass no other cen
sure on the most general application for His favour.
" But prayer may still be well-pleasing to God,
as expressive of our dependence on Him." Now
here, in the first place, it is not easy to perceive how
any unprofitable and unmeaning action can be ac
ceptable to an aU-wise and perfect Being. But,
secondly, what is meant by our dependence on a
Being whom we can neither provoke to our fiirther
misery, nor conciliate to our further happiness; who
has already, by an irrevocable fiat, stamped the
character of our lot in life, and put it beyond His
* Romans x. 26.
VOL. 1. E

26 SERMOiN 11.
power to alter our position in the world, except^
which it would be impious to look for, at the ex
pense of His own consistency.'' Dependence involves
in itself the notion of contingency. Whatever is
determined, is, in a certain sense, already past, and
the past may be the subject of gratitude or sorrow.
but is placed beyond the reach of hope or anxiety.
But it is not for earthly blessings alone that
prayer is rendered vain by the doctrine which I am
now considering. It is not a temporal fatalism only
which follows from denying that the events of this
life are influenced by a particular Providence.
In this span of earthly being we might endure to
take our chance of happiness or misery, content to
bear our allotted burthen without a murmur or a
prayer, if the world to come were free from the in
exorable, rule of destiny, and if it depended on our
selves so to pass through the present valley of tears,
as to secure the hope of future and eternal felicity.
But how (if our worldly and physical visitations be
regarded as the result of an unalterable chain of
causes and consequences) how can the human will
or the moral actions or habits of mankind be ex
empted from the same necessity .'' Are not they links
in the same chain .'' Are not our moral characters
frequently influenced by external occurrences ? Do
they not often produce, in their turn, an effect on
the external circumstances of ourselves, and of
those around us .'' Of those casualties of which the
regular and computed recurrence has been advanced
as an argument to show their fatality, can we for-

, ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 27
get that a great, perhaps the greatest, proportion
have their origin in some voluntary action or habit
of individuals .i* It is not the fire of Heaven, it is
not the rage of elements, which our houses or our
ships have only to apprehend, but the carelessness
of intoxication, the malice of the incendiary, the
armed violence of the pirate or mutineer. Of
deaths, too, (and out of every number of deaths
which the calculation of the ensurer anticipates,
how many may be named which do not proceed
from the decay or diseases of nature, or from the
natural, though mortal dangers which hover in
every breeze and lurk in every thicket ?) how many
are there which may be traced to guilty violence,
or to equally guilty indulgence, to the actions
of our enemies, our progenitors, or ourselves, ac
tions for which they or we are one day to render a
most strict account, and for which, according to
their atrocity, or to the repentance and faith with
which they have been followed, the Judge of men
and angels will exact a less or greater punishment ?
But if the circumstances of hfe by which the moral
habits of man are formed, if the accidents of hfe to
which these moral habits give occasion, if these are
the results of a bhnd and capricious fate, or of a
pre-determined and inevitable arrangement, is it
not certain that the intervening link must also be
fixed in the chain ; that there must be a certain
and necessary amount of moral guilt and virtue
among mankind, which cannot be increased or di
minished by us, and that it is as vain in man to

28 S^ERMON II.
endeavour to reform the world or himself, as it
would be unjust in him to seek to be freed from
that lot of vice which, if he did not bear it, must
be transferred to some of his fellow-sufferers .'' But
though these horrible consequences are admitted
without scruple or qualification by the sturdier
class of fatahsts, the bare enunciation of them may
be thought sufficient with rational deists, to prove
that doctrines cannot be true which are so incon
sistent with all we beheve or know of God, of our
selves, and our future destiny.
Still it may be urged (not, surely, by those zea
lots of the unitarian school who deny the ordinary
help of God's Spirit, nor by those followers of
Augustin and Calvin who ascribe the gifts of the
Holy Ghost, like all other good gifts, to a previous
and unalterable purpose of God) it may be urged by
some that, allowing the course of nature to be bound
by fate, the human will may still be free, and that
the soul of man may be so influenced and assisted
by the gracious inspiration of the Most High, as to
rise superior to the chances and changes of the
world, and even convert to his spiritual aliment
those trials and temptations which appear, at first
sight, most formidable to his virtue. But they who
thus distinguish between a material and spiritual
destiny, have surely forgotten the continual influ
ence exerted, not only by external circumstances
on the will of man, but by the will of man on ex
ternal circumstances. If man has freedom of choice
at all, the actions consequent on such choice, and

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 29
the effects of those actions on things around him,
must depend on that choice alone, and have no
connexion whatever with the events which preceded
it. If God's grace, by which that choice is influ
enced, be a contingent, not a predestinated blessing,
we admit at once an immediate interposing cause,
which experience proves to have power to deter
mine to the greatest extent, the temporal as well
as the eternal happiness of individuals and commu
nities. In the one case the chain of causes and
events is cut short never to be re-united ; in the
other, we have a stone hewn without hands, which
must dash to pieces the complicated and gigantic
idol of destiny, and scatter its iron, its clay, its
brass, its silver, and its gold, " like the chaff of the
summer threshing floor which the wind carried away,
that no place was' found for them."* There can be
' no qualifications of fatalism ; the whole vast bubble
bursts if we impugn it in any one particular, while if
we contend for any part of it, all moral obligations
fall to the ground, and we must make our option in
theology between admitting the existence of a power
superior to the Almighty, or divesting the All-good
of His noblest attributes of justice and mercy.
With good reason, then, have the great majority
of rational theists, in every age and country, agreed
to recognise, in the course of events around them,
no other agency than the Providence of the Most
High, applied to particulars ; a Providence which
He exerts, indeed, in its grander features, according
* Dan. ii. 35.

30 SERMON IL
to an uniform system, but which (in its detail and
minuter circumstances) He may and does continu
ally and infinitely vary, according to the necessi
ties, the exertions, the merits, and the prayers of
His creatures.
For it is not a doctrine of revealed reUgion only,
that God is the moral as well as the physical Gov
ernor of the world, and that the course of events
is so arranged by Him, as, even in the present life,
to promote the interests of virtue, to cross the
schemes of impiety, to consult the happiness, and
to be influenced by the prayers of the righteous and
the penitent. This has been the hope, this the
faith, this the fear, this the "religion of every nation,
how rude soever, by whom, under whatever name^
the Almighty has been named, or His altars, with
whatever worship, honoured. True it is that they
have not supposed in this world a perfect retribu
tion, or anticipated an exact adjustment of earthly
good or evil, according to the virtues or the demerits
of individuals. This they have believed to be re
served to a future state of being, in which the
inequalities of the present life were to be redressed,
and the good rewarded richly for their patient en
durance of those calamities which had been, for wise
ends, imposed on them. But that, even in the pre
sent world, impiety and oppression were sometimes
exemplarily punished ; that, in this valley of tears
and darkness, the virtuous were sometimes exem
plarily delivered and supported ; that prayer might
conciliate, and repentance appease, and virtue se
cure the favour of the Sovereign ruler of events and

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 31
their causes, are opinions coeval and coextensive
with a belief in God's being at all, or only lost amid
those miserable savages to whom the difficulties of
procuring subsistence have left no time for medita
tion, and who, in the pressing wants of the passing
day, have ceased to regard the invisible world with
hope or apprehension.
Where the idea of God is admitted at all, it is
hard, indeed, to represent to ourselves a God who is
indifferent to the distresses or the conduct of His
creatures ; and the possibihty of such a divinity was
conceived by Epicurus only, when he had divested
him of his character as Creator. A mere bystander
may, indeed, be supposed to retire into the unap
proachable recesses of an unmoved and happy im
mortality ; he may avert his eyes from the vast and
disfigured scene of blood and misery to some hap
pier spot, if such is to be found, of comparative
peace and virtue.*
But though the bystander might enjoy his own
quiet amid the wretchedness of nations, the parent
may be naturally expected to feel for his children's
wants, and to hear his children's petitions. The
same instinct which inclines us to watch over the
welfare of our own little ones, that instinct leads us
* Tobs f*eu £« irugoi, vrifSdi leivov r lxEf*ei' ^ou o'l^uv
NwXEfAEWS* ai3Tof Sk itcCKiv rgsfsii. odds qtasivu
No'tf(piv £(p' i**o*oXwv ©gipiCiv xttSogunsms aiax
Murfwv t" dyxsjAaj^wv, jcai ayauuu 'I**»j(AoXyuv
rXaxTo(paywv, 'AjSiwv <rs, StxaioTci/rtiiv dvigii'iru);.
Hom. II. N. 2.

32 SERMON IL
to expect relief from our unseen Father when, in
bitterness of heart, we call on Him ; and there are
times of mental calamity in which, even if prayer
were useless, or even sinful, it would be next to
impossible to abstain from it. , Nor do I know a
greater presumptive proof of the reasonableness of
any practice, or any expectation, than its universal
reception among mankind, its entire conformity
with our natural wants and feehngs, and that it be
longs to the number of those primary tenets, those
avvoiai, which, if not born with us, yet necessarily
and speedily arise within us from the constitu
tion of our nature and the disposition of things
aroynd us.
Nor is this opinion really at variance with the
facts alleged against it, or with the degree of regu
larity found in the recurrence of those dispensations
which, by storing the experience, assist the foresight
of the calculator. That regularity, such as it is,
depends not only on the natural exhaustion of the
human body, on the natural phenomena of the
earth, the water, and the air, but still more on the
continuance of a certain state of civil society, on
the civil tranquillity or moral habits of a people, on
the facilities afforded, or the barriers opposed, to
crime, and on the degree in which that indigence,
which often leads to crime, is alleviated or pre
vented. Accordingly, to two nations or two periods
of society differing in these respects from each .other,
the same calculation will not apply. A very differ
ent ratio 'of casualties belongs to Norway and to

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 33
France, as well as to France during the rage of re-«
volution, and France during its previous tranquil
lity. The ensurer must reform his tables if he car
ries them fi-om England into Turkey, and in Eng
land itself a difference, notoriously springing from
moral causes, has arisen within the present age in
the average of longevity.
But, further, it being granted that the moral and
religious habits of a nation exert an influence over
the casualties to which the individuals of that na
tion are exposed, it is plain that there are two ways
in which the manner of that influence may be stated ;
and that it is as allowable in the asserter of a pecu
liar Providence to say, that God gives health and
prosperity to the virtuous, as it is for his opponent
to explain the whole phenomena by the physical
effects of temperance and industry. Nor will the
regularity with which these dispensations succeed
each other have power to surprise the believer who
reflects that, while the morals and rehgion of a
country are stationary, an equal number of crimes
will call down an equal number of chastisements!
and that th^ same prayers may generally receive
the same answers from the God who " maketh a
fruitful land barren for the wickedness of them that
dwell therein," and who hath promised to " hear in
Heaven, His dwelling-place, and forgive and do, and
give to every man according to his ways."*
* Psalm cvii. 34. 1 Kings viii. 39.
VOL. 1. F

34 .SERMON IL
For that the Christian is encouraged thus to
speak of God, and thus to look up, in every dispen
sation of mortality, to the immediate hand of a pre
siding and pervading Providence, is plain, not only
from the example of Elisha in Dothan, but from
very many texts of universal application in which
this doctrine is expressed or implied. Implied it
is, indeed, in every passage of Scripture which in
culcates the duty and efficacy of prayer either for
spiritual or, still more, for temporal blessings. For,
as prayer would be vain and presumptuous unless
God may be thereby induced to grant what He
would otherwise have withheld from us, so, as
prayer is recommended and enjoined, we may be
sure it is neither presumptuous nor vain, and that,
when we ask for daily bread, for peace, for dehver
ance from sickness or from danger, for the welfare
of our friends, of our nation, or of our governors,
or for any other of those particular blessings which
we are encouraged in Scripture to seek from the
bounty of the Most High, we ask for that, our ob
taining of which depends on an act of His will, and
which He is the more inclined to bestow on us in
consequence of such our petitions : nor is more re
quired to show that the world is not a machine, but
a kingdom, in which events do not blindly or ne
cessarily succeed each other, but rational agents are
governed and rewarded by Him who is Himself Rea
son and Wisdoiri, whose eyes follow us, whose hand
holds us, whose Spirit lives within us, but who re-

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 35
gards with a very different eye, and governs with a
very different sceptre, the children of His love, and
those whose ways are perverse before Him.
Still, however, it will be said that experience is
against the doctrine ; that strong as these expres
sions are, and plausible as is the system which we
build on them, the truth still is that in this world
there is no visible difference made betvyeen the
righteous and the wicked; that injustice often tri
umphs ; that innocence is often depressed ; that the
servants of God, so far from having less, are directed
by Christ Himself to prepare for more than their
share of certain species of affliction ; insomuch that
a prosperous condition in this life is made an un
favourable symptom of our spiritual state, and we
are expressly told, that " whom the Lord loveth
He chasteneth."*
I answer that, to the first part of this objection
the second is, in itself, a sufficient reply, inasmuch
as admitting, in its fullest extent, the fact that the
righteous are, in this world, often miserable, yet
would this fact be reconciled to the doctrine of an
especial Providence, by the knowledge that these
sufferings-are not casual or fatal, but chastisements
inflicted by a wise and tender Parent. The pre
sence and care of the physician is as surely recog
nised in the severest inflictions of his skill, as in the
anodyne or in the cordial; the mercy of God was
as surely displayed when the vanity of St. Paul was
* Heb. xii. 6.

36 SERMON IL
reproved by the buffetings of Satan, as when the
same apostle was saved from the waves of Melita,
or upborne by the Spirit above the regions of mor
tality to catch the triumphal hymn, and behold the
ineffable glories of angels and saints in Paradise.
Nor is more promised to the most illustrious of
God's favourites, nor can more be reasonably de
sired by a passenger through the wilderness of the
present life, than that such afflictions, and such
only, shall visit him, as have a tendency to expedite
his journey, and that so much, and no more, of
temporal happiness shall be afforded him as is con
sistent with the far nobler prospects of eternity.
Still less have the righteous cause to distrust the
care, or murmur against the justice of Providence,
when they behold, with David, the wicked in out
ward prosperity, pr the enemies of God exalted to
a power of oppressing and insulting His servants.
Why should we envy another those advantages
which God only withholds from ourselves because
He knows them to be inexpedient for us ?' Or how
can we forget that even the wicked, in the stations
where God has placed them, are no more than the
blind executioners of His will, and, therefore, only
tolerated as instruments of unintended good, or of
needful correction to those whom the Almighty fa
vours ? Or shall we grudge the tares their rain
and sunshine, when we know that these tares are
allowed to stand in mercy to the wheat which is
mingled with them ? Or shall we not rather make
it the subject of our hope and our intercession, that

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 37
the bounties showered on them, and the afflictions
which we complain of, may be medicines alike,
though medicines of a different character, to the
heahng of their sickness and our own .''
It is further to be recollected that the outward
signs of happiness and prosperity are often, to the
last degree, deceitftil ; that there are rods in God's
hands which have power to make the ambitious
person wretched on a throne, to cause the volup
tuary to eat his feast in bitterness of heart, and
the miser to weep over his accumulated treasure.
" There is an evil which I have seen under the sun,
and it is common among men; a man to whom God
hath given riches, wealth, and honour, so that he
wanteth nothing for his soul of all that he desireth ;
yet God giveth him not power to eat thereof, but a
stranger eateth it ; this is vanity, and it is an evil dis
ease."* And, omitting that still small voice of con
science which alone was accounted sufficient by the
sages of antiquity, to incline the balance of worldly
happiness to the side of virtue, yet, if the absence
of worldly care, if constant anduseful occupation, if
the love and veneration of the truly wise and good,
and the buoyant sense of successful resistance to
persecution be indeed pleasurable sensations, who
shall say that Paul was not far happier in his bonds
than Nero on his golden bed, or than that Fehx who
trembled on his judgment-seat ? In point of exter
nal circumstances the apostles of Christ were indeed
* Eccles. vi. 1, 2.

38 SERMON II.
of all men most miserable ; but that their employ
ment and situation afforded them many compen
sating enjoyments, may be apprehended not only
from the reason of the case, but from the promise
of their omniscient Master, that whosoever had
abandoned houses and lands, and wife and children,
for His name's sake, should receive manifold more
of blessing in the present life, as well as in that life
everlasting, where his toils were finally to be re
warded.* But after all, with the exception of some pecuhar
dispensations, it will be by no means easy to shew,
on any grounds of Scripture or experience, that the
balance of good and evil is, in this life, unfavourable
to the virtuous even in those outward gifts of Pro
vidence, in which, till they are tried, it is natural
for flesh and blood to look for happiness. Perfect
bliss, indeed, is not to be found below ; and even if
bliss unafloyed were the promised reward of virtue,
I know not where we should seek for that perfect
virtue which could claim it. But is it reaUy true
that, in the ordinary dispensations of Providence, no
advantage is given to virtue.'' Why then does every
instance of successful vice, or virtue oppressed, ex
cite not only our murmurs, but our astonishment .''
On what principle but that of experience could the
heathen orator pronounce it impossible for the im
pious and perjured man to found a lasting empire .''
Or was it not an inspired experience which led the
* St. Matt. xix. 29.

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS, 39
Psalmist to declare that, in the course of a long life,
he had never seen the righteous forsaken ? Perfect
fehcity, I repeat, is given to none; and that definite
fehcity, which arises from wealth and power, is no
where promised to God's children. But the pro-
raise is most blessed which, without determining
the exact share of temporal advantages which may
fall to them, assures them, in every state of life, of
support, of comfort and protection, and so much,
and no more, of worldly happiness or wordly suffer
ings, as He who loves them best, and knows them
best, perceives to be most for their advantage.
It yet remains for me to discuss the nature and
number of those spirits, by whose agency, as dis
closed in my text, the Almighty interposes in the
defence and assistance of His servants. This wiU
be the subject of a future sermon. But I cannot
conclude my present discourse without shortly call
ing your attention to the practical results which
flow from the doctrine of a particular Providence,
in the hope that God may bless their consideration
to our holiness here, and our everlasting happiness
hereafter. In the first place, few considerations are more full
of comfort, or more apt to excite in us an unbound
ed gratitude or veneration, than the knowledge
that the events of life are not administered by blind
chance or inexorable destiny, but by the immediate
superintendence of the wisest and best of Beings,
by whom our wants are known, by_ whom our
prayers are heard, by whom our exertions after hap-

40 SERMON IL
piness are rendered efficacious and successful, who
" eareth for those who cast their cares upon Him,"
and makes " aU things work together for good to
those who love " Him. Verily " the Lord reigneth,
let the earth rejoice, let the multitude of isles be
glad thereof" " We give Thee thanks, O Lord God
Almighty, because Thou hast taken to Thee Thy
great power, and hast reigned."*
Secondly, it must shew how greatly godliness has
the advantage in this world as well as the world
to come, if we consider that, as neither good nor
evil is dispensed to mankind at random, so if we are
fit for good, good will come to us; while if we are
ready to faint under the gracious chastisement of
God, the surest way to obtain relief is, by the dili
gent amendment of our lives, to render that chas
tisement unnecessary. Nor can a stronger induce
ment be found to think humbly of our own success
in life, and charitably of the failures of other men,
than the assurance that both they and we can only
so far succeed as God has determined for us, and
that " it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy."t
And, lastly, when we accustom ourselves to look
up to God as His daily and hourly pensioners, and to
ascribe whatever we receive or obtain to His boun
teous and only dispensation, we may learn to look
on prayer not only as a duty but a privilege, and to
* 1 St. Pet. V. 7. Rom. viii. 28. Psalm, xcvii. 1. Rev. xi. 17.
t Romans ix. 16. , ' *

ON THE PRESENCE OF GOOD ANGELS. 41
apply to His throne for the good things which we
desire from Him, with as much earnestness and re
gularity as we now betake ourselyes to the outward
and ordinary means of obtaining the gratification of
our wishes. Yea more, with this pervading and
abiding sense of God's infinite presence and power,
the necessary pursuits of the present life will, them
selves, become devotional, as we go forth to our
toil, and commence our studies in His name from
whom every good gift proceeds, and consecrate to
His service whatever increase He shaU bestow of
knowledge, or renown, or prosperity!

VOL. 1.

SERMON IIL

ON THE MINISTRY OP GOOD- ANGELS.
[Preached before the University of Oxford, 1818, and at
Lincoln's Inn.]

2 Kings vi. 16.
Fear not ! for they that be with us are more than they which
are with them.
We are now arrived at the second branch of the
inquiry which these words have suggested, the ex
istence, namely, and the number of those invisible
beings, by whose agency the Almighty (as in the
case of the prophet Elisha) protects or consoles
His servants.
For that they were spiritual and celestial guards
to whose presence Elisha thus referred, and on
whose power and numbers he reposed his hope of
safety is plain, both from the reason of his words
themselves, and from the miracle by which those
words were corroborated, when the eyes of his at
tendant were so purged from the film of mortality
as to behold those terrific ranks, whose chariots
thronged the mount, and interposed their burning
wheels between the prophet and his Syrian enemies.
But though the literal and obvious sense of the
words is thus undoubted, a question has still been

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 43
raised whether the expression of Elisha is not ca
pable of a figurative meaning; whether by the
angels who are thus said, in Scripture, to encamp
around the righteous, any thing more is intended
than to express, in lively colours and imagery fami
liar to eastern eloquence, the ever-watchful care and
ever-ready help of Providence ; or at most those
powers of the material world which are wielded by
the immediate and invisible sway of Him, who
"maketh the winds His messengers," in whose cause
the heavenly bodies " in their courses fight toge
ther," and to whose caU " the lightnings answer."
The " famine," " the pestilence," and " the sword,"
are apostrophized and personified as His servants in
the same glowing flights of oratory ; and His glory
is said to be proclaimed, and His praises sung by
"the deep," "the mountains," "the corn-fields,"
and the " morning-stars." We know what is meant
when Minerva reminds Achilles of that which his
own reason might well have suggested to him ; and
the prudence of Jacob, and the blessing which the
Almighty bestowed on his labours might, with equal
propriety, be described in the sacred volume as
"the angel" which led him by the way, and deliv
ered him in aU his troubles. There are instances
in the Apocalyptic visions where the mortal pro
tectors of the Church, or the mortal invaders of the
Roman empire are supposed to be allegorically de
scribed as angels engaged in the execution of God's
judgments. The plagues and diseases which befel
trie Egyptians, are spoken of by the Psalmist as

44 SERMON IIL
" evil angels sent among them ;"* and a very little
extension of the same principle may tead us to sup
pose that no more was meant by the words of
Elisha than to express his confidence in that divine
protection which, in fact, did not preserve him by
the shields and spears of any celestial guards, but
by blinding the eyes and confusing the understand
ing of the Syrians sent to surprise him.
" Why, indeed," it has been further asked,
" should such intermediate agents be employed by
a God who is omnipresent and almighty .'' It is
only the imperfection and weakness of earthly mo-
narchs which are disguised by the flimsy veil of
solemn and ceremonious attendance, and which
compel them to receive their information or accom
plish their designs through the eyes and hands of
others. But how different is the case with Him
who beholds, and embraces, and pervades, and sus
tains the universe; and how superfluous does it
seem to crowd the court of Heaven with these un
meaning pageants, whose praises, and homage can
confer no honour on Him from whom aU things are
derived; whose swiftness is idle with Him from
whom nothing can escape, and whose fiery chariots
are but an empty show in His presence who need but
withhold His breath to reduce His enemies to their
original nothing ! It is more reasonable then," they
teU us, " and more reverential towards the Al
mighty, to give an aUegorical interpretation to
* Psalm Ixxviii. 49.

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 45
passages which are very susceptible of it, rather than
to ascribe to Him, in reality, those appendages of a
mortal king which, however they were adapted to
the prejudices of a wild and ignorant race, are incon
sistent with the more enlarged ideas which Chris
tians should entertain of His nature."
Even " those visions of angels " to men, which
are so frequently recorded in the Sacred Volume,
are treated with as littl#ceremony by these intre
pid reasoners, as the words of God's prophets, and
of His Son. " They were condescensions, they
tell us, " to the prejudices and weaknesses of man
kind; a part of those paraphernalia of an earthly
potentate which it pleased God to assume in His
intercourse with the Jewish people, and no more
to be received as real existences than the sapphire
pavement and crystal canopy of His throne, and
the wheels full of eyes on which Ezekiel beheld
Him drawn by cherubims. In aU these appear
ances there are many things," they proceed,
" which even the warmest advocates of the hteral
interpretation must admit to be. illusions only.
Even if angels exist, and are such as we believe
them to be, there are few who suppose that spirits
are attired in such white and flowing robes as they
have presented to the eyes of mortals, that they are
fiirnished, according to the occupations in which
they are engaged, with harps, or ink-horns, or
slaughter-weapons, or that they keep guard, in the
array of ancient warriors, with chariots and horses
of material fire at the doors of God's distinguished

46 SERMON IIL
servants. But if these circumstances are illusive,
how much remains which is to be accounted real ^
Or where is the difficulty in supposing that (as God
in such particulars, avowedly condescends to the
imperfection of His creatures) so the forms them
selves, to which this attire belongs, may be no more
than splendid phantoms employed by God to im
press on the mind of the beholder a sense of His
power, His presence, or His protection ; but phan
toms StiU, not real and intelligent personages, and
without habitation or existence except in the ima
gination of those whom God has been thus pleased
to visit or enlighten."
Opinions like these were, most probably, enter
tained by the ancient Sadducees, who could, in no
other way that I am aware of, make their denial of
angels accord with the authority of the books of
Moses. From some passages in the Leviathan
they seem to have been revived by Hobbes, and
they have since been advanced by Dr. Priestley,
though I do not know whether they have made any
considerable progress among his adherents. To afl
such doctrines a sufficient answer might, perhaps,
be obtained by a reference to those arguments for the
hteral in preference to the allegorical sense of Scrip
ture which I have, on former occasions,* presumed
to offer to your notice. But as the objection is of
that popular class which may attract the notice of
many who have neither leisure nor inclination to
* Bampton Lectures, 1814

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 47
investigate the general principles of allegory and
metaphor, I am unwilling that the particular diffi
culty should pass without a particular reply.
The question, indeed, is one of far less practical
importance than the admission or denial of provi
dential interposition. If the arm of God is, in any
form, extended over His servants, it may seem to
signify but little whether He protects us by His own
immediate fiat, or by theijagency of glorious spirits
always at hand to work His wiU, and guided by His
good pleasure only. But nothing can be really un
important which our Heavenly Father has thought
fit to reveal to us concerning the manner and ma
chinery of His providence ; and so many valuable
lessons of instruction and comfort may be derived
by Christians from the consideration of our angelic
aUies and fellow-servants, that it would iU become
us to give place, in such an article of faith, to the
unreasonable scepticism of those who, while they
cling to the name of Christianity, seem anxious to
prune away from the common creed, whatever
Christian doctrine transcends the limits of earthly
experience, or distinguishes the faith dehvered to
the Saints from the imperfect elements of natural
deism. It is, in the first place, aUowed on all sides, that
the allusions to angels as existing, and the express
or implicit assertions of their existence and agency,
are, in the Sacred Volume, extremely numerous
and forcible. There are, indeed, not much less
than a hundred passages in the Old and New Tes-

48 SERMON III.
laments where angels are either spoken of as real and
active creatures, and servants of the Most High, or
where they are actually described as having appear
ed to mortals, not in dreams or prophetic visions,
(for these I would not urge too strongly)but openly,
and to the waking eyes of many persons together.
Now, of the texts which assert or imply their ex
istence, there are many which cannot, without the
greatest violence to the propriety of language, be
regarded as rhetorical figures. When Daniel ex
pressed his conviction that " God had sent his
angel to stop the hons' mouths,"* is it likely that
he would have said this to a heathen sovereign, had
he not believed in the reality of such a mission .''
When the Psalmist speaks of man as " made a
little lower than the angels,* could he mean that a
real existence is at all inferior to a phantom .'' or
a rational being to the accidents of the material
world, however figuratively described, or however
providentially directed .'' Is it of a band of shadows,
a troop of rhetorical ornaments, that Christ is said
to be made the head .'' Or can accidents desire to
look into the mysteries of the Gospel.'* Are they
nonentities to which, in the world to come, the
righteous are to be made equal .'' Or would Christ
and His apostles, in describing the most solemn
event in which the human race can be interested,
have so luxuriated in superfluous imagery as to enu
merate the angels among the agents concerned in
* Dan. vi. 22. f f'salm viii. 6.

ON THE MINISTRY Of GOOD ANGELS. 49
the day of judgment, if the behef in angels be an
error ? Let us pause, in God's name, before we thus
degrade the Holy Scriptures into one interminable
allegory, or, in the name of common sense, let us,
at least, place the controversy on its proper footing,
and, if the doctrine in question be really absurd or
impossible, let us abandon, as an imposture, the re
ligion which so authoritatively declares it.
For let it not be pretended that the conventional
use of language has, in these respects, been changed
by the encroachments of later superstition; that
terms which were familiarly employed and under
stood by the ancients as rhetorical and figurative
only, have since been erroneously received in a
literal sense among those platonic Jews or Chris-
tians^ by whom the venerable stream of truth has
been troubled and polluted in its middle channel.
It would, in the first place, have been not unrea
sonable to expect that, in an inspired discourse, no
metaphor would have been adopted, which was cal
culated, in the times immediately succeeding its
delivery, to afford a reasonable ground for pervad
ing and universal error. But, secondly, so long as
we can trace the opinions of the ancient Jews at
all, we know that the word angel or spirit must
have conveyed to their ears precisely the same
meaning which it now conveys to ours ; and that, if
the opinion be erroneous, no method could have
been devised more effectual for the propagation and
perpetuation of error than that which the authors
of Scripture have, in this instance, followed.
VOL. I. H

50 SERMON in.
Nor can it be said that it was an error so harm
less in its consequences as to be left by God to find
its level in the gradual progress of the human mind,
and in the eventual triumph of those philosophical
interpretations with which it is the boast of our
antagonists to have illustrated the Sacred Volume.
However blameless and comfortable in itself, and in
its necessary results, the doctrine of intermediate
spirits is prone to abuses of the most mischievous
character. It has been made in every age and coun
try the main spring and parent of idolatry, from the
schamanism of Siberia, to the polytheism of Greece
and Rome, and the more modern but not more
excusable superstitions of the Romish Christians.
Two-thirds of the Old Testament are taken up with
endeavours to reclaim the people to whom it was
addressed from the superstitious reverence of
creatures : and it has been ingeniously suggested by
Chrysostom and Athanasius, that Moses has omitted
to describe the creation of angels, lest the splen
dours of such a theogony should have tended to
confirm his countrymen in the homage which they
were too prone to pay to the spirits of the air, and
the host of heaven.*
i But if Moses spake less of the angels than he
otherwise might have done, to avoid giving a handle
to idolatry, would he not, a fortiori, if the angels
had beeJi fabulous, have avoided the mention of
them at all } Would it not have been a stronger
* Chrysost. 1. Hom. in Gen. torn, i, p. 81. Athans. Quest.
iv. ad Antioch, torn. iii. p. 333.

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 51
argument than any which he has advanced against
the worship of the host of Heaven, if he had assured
his followers that no such host as they dreamed of
existed ? Was it not as easy for Elisha to express
his trust in the general providence and protection
of God, as to employ expressions obviously calcu
lated to promote a popular error, and then to pray
for a miracle by which that error might be con
firmed .'' It was a subhme expression of Moham
med, (whether prompted by a lofty enthusiasm, or
by a deep and daring hypocrisy) when reminded by
Abubeker, in the cave of Thor, that they were only
two against a multitude: "There is a third with
us, even God." But how different is this from the
words of Jehovah's prophet, and from that vision of
fiery warriors to which he appealed, in proof that
more were on his side than against him .''
But it is at the tribunal of human reason that the
doctrine of angels is next arraigned ; and even here
the orthodox Christian has no cause to decline the
contest. It win, in the first place, indeed, be readily
aUowed that neither the existence nor the ser
vices of angels can be, in the smallest degree, need
ful to the felicity or the providence of the Infinitely
Wise and Mighty ; but it is a very weak and faulty
inference which proceeds to tell us, that because
He does not need. He, therefore, has not created,
and will not employ thfem. " Deus," in the language
of the schools, " non ope indiget ullius creaturae."
But who will, therefore, deny that the works of God
are manifold and wonderful, and that from all His

52 SERMON in.
reasonable creatures He requires rational praise and
duty .''*
Nor since, in by far the greater part of those
daily dispensations of His providence of which we
can trace the progress, and of which we are our
selves, in no smaU degree, the instruments ; since,
in all these, the wisdom or the folly of mankind are
advisedly or blindly agents for the accomplishment
of His will, can it be inconsistent to apprehend that
the invisible things of His creation may be in like
manner administered, under Himself by beings
adapted for such an office, and that many of the
events of life, and many of the phenomena of na
ture may be produced by hands which we cannot
see, and labours which, as He directs. He can only
appreciate. That there may be countless rational creatures
in the universe besides mankind, and superior in
happiness and intellect to man in his present con
dition, will be hardly denied by those who recollect
how very smaU a portion of that universe is occu
pied by man, and who believe that man himself has
reason to anticipate a removal after death into a
higher order of existence. It is surely not unrea
sonable in man, thus circumstanced, to conjecture
that the happiness which he hopes for himself is
not without a precedent in the works of his Hea
venly Benefactor; that other beings, whether at
* CO SsTrai, says Theodoret, tuv ifivouvTwv h AsttfoTvis Qsis, —
i5i' dyadoTYiTa dl (/.iviiv km d.yyskms xoi 'A^ayyiXoig xai icluStt tJi
siriffji fo sTvai SeJu^riTan— Theod. Quaest. IV. in Genes.

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD
first so framed by Infinite Love, or admitted to such
privileges after a previous state of trial, are, even
now, in the situation to which we aspire, our elder
brethren in immortality, and that a part of their
happiness may consist in those habits which are,
of aU others, most proper to constitute the felicity
of a reasonable creature, in expressing their grati
tude to the common Parent of all, and in works of
love and mercy to us who are as yet their inferiors.
But this, in few words, is all which we believe of
angels, and this is precisely the degree of informa
tion which the Scriptures communicate respecting
them. To the objection which arises from the forms and
circumstances under which those angels have ap
peared who have revealed themselves to mortal
eyes, it would be, perhaps, enough to answer, that
as we know nothing, or next to nothing, of the na
ture of these celestial strangers, it is impossible for
us to determine whether they are devoid of any
appropriate form, or what form or ornaments may
best become their situation. But though we should
aUow, as is most probable, that the wjhite robes and
fiery armour of the seraphim are assumed as con
descensions to the weakness of mankind, and no
less -illusive than the apparatus of mortal majesty
and dominion through which, in the visions of His
prophets, the Almighty Himself has shadowed His
unapproachable glories, yet in the one case as rea
sonably as in the other, a substratum of reality may
be insisted on. Our antagonists will not deny, that

54 SERMON III.
it was the true and living God who, from His bright
and overshadowing cloud, bore testimony to His
beloved Son on the mount of transfiguration. Yet
God is no more like a cloud than His attendants
are like mortal warriors ; and He who, in the first
instance, has seen fit to " make His angels spirits,"
may, with equal propriety, send them forth on a
worthy occasion under the likeness of " flaming
fire."* As, indeed, I am disputing with those who pro
fess themselves Christians, and who, though they
suppose the angels who have appeared to be illu
sions, yet acknowledge them to be illusions sent by
God, and intended as proofs of His presence and
protection; I would ask them what they mean by
an illusion sent from God, through which God
speaks His wiU to mankind, and yet which is an
illusion only, and not personally distinct from God.
Is not this God Himself assuming a particular form,
declaring, in the hkeness of a cloud, a fire, a man
in long linen garments, or a being with six wings,
and four faces. His power and His gracious pleasure."*
But whence comes it, then, that the persons thus
described have spoken of themselves as " sent" by
God, as acting under God's authority, as His ser
vants, yea, and the feUow-servants of them " that
have the testimony of Jesus .f"'! There are those,
indeed, but they do not faff within the list of crea
ted nature ; there are those to whom the name
* Psalm, civ 4. f Rev. xix. 10.

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 55
both of angel and God may be applied with equal
propriety. And when the Word of God, the Angel
of the Covenant appeared in the bush to Moses,
and to Abraham under the oak of Mamre*, how
different were His claims to reverence, and how
much greater his tone of authority than those ordi
nary messengers of Heaven dared assume, who are
sent forth to minister to the meaner heirs of salva
tion. "Put off thy shoes from off thy feet," said
the Vision in Horeb, "for the place whereon thou
standest is holy ground."t " See thou do it not,"
were the words of the angel when St. John bowed
down before him; " I am thy fellow-servant ; wor
ship God."| But if this last were God, what higher
name than God shaU we find out for the former, or,
if both were the same Being differently manifested,
wherefore so great a distinction between the ho
nours which were at these different times to be paid
to Him.?
The meaning then of Scripture in these passages,
its obvious and only meaning, is estabhshed, I trust,
beyond the reach of cavil. That this meaning is
consistent with the attributes of God, the analogy
of His creation, and the course of His providence in
those things which are objects of our daily experi
ence, maybe regarded as also proved. And no
reason remains why professed believers in Chris
tianity should not consider the doctrine as certain,
* Gen. xviii. I . Exod. iii. 2. t Exod. iii. 5.
X Rev. xxii. 9.

.56 SERMON III.
and proceed to inquire, with the caution and reve
rence which such investigations demand, what that
is which is communicated to us in Scripture con
cerning the power, the numbers, and the ministry
of these blessed and immortal creatures.
The power of God's angels might have been rea
sonably presumed to be great, even if we knew no
more of them than their dignity, their immortality,
and their invisibility. Of those who are placed,
comparatively, so near to the fountain head of Might
and Majesty, who stand in the presence of God as
ministers to execute His commands, we are natu
rally inclined to form a high and reverential opinion,
as the first fruits and flowers of creation, and the
most adorned with every gift which the Author of
good things dispenses to the objects of His favour.
Concentrating in their minds the experience of
many thousand years, we may conceive them dart
ing from their high vantage ground a comprehen
sive glance through all the kingdoms of nature,
understanding, so far as a finite being can under
stand, the ways of that Providence of which they
are in part the agents, and in God's own strength,
and the might of His name, unwearied and irresist
ible, planting their footsteps in the deep, and in the
clouds fulfilling His word. In the very notion, in
deed, of an invisible power, there is something which
affords a very awful subject of meditation, and
which (like to the mechanical effect produced on the
mind by darkness) affects us with an impression of
reverence not unmixed with fear. The strength

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 57
which we cannot appreciate, the blows of which we
cannot parry, and which may wound without our
distinguishing the hand that smote us, is from this
very obscurity more dreaded and, in itself, more
formidable. Nor when we reflect on the possibility
of our being surrounded by evil as well as invisible
agents, can we fail to appreciate the value of such
defenders as are fully able, in God's name, to pro
tect us from spiritual malice, and to thank Him that
there are not only mightier but more on our side
than against us.
But it is not on conjecture only that we are au
thorised to build this opinion. They are likened
in Scripture to fire for their purity, their swiftness
and their formidable power. " The mighty," " the
kings," " the angels which excel in strength," are
among the titles most frequently given to them ;
and, above afl, more than a single passage may be
found where they are called by the still more awful
and extraordinary name of "the gods;" ??rT7N.
That their numbers are great might have been
inferred fi-om the single fact of that mighty army
which was assembled on the hill of Dothan. But
here also we have express testimony, in the word
of God, to the twenty thousand angelic chariots
whom the inspired poet, David, beheld encamping
round Mount Zion; to the twelve legions, whose
fiery swords would have been drawn at the word of
the Messiah ; to the " thousand thousands, and ten
thousand times ten thousand," whom Daniel saw
standing before the Ancient of Days ; and to the
VOL. I. r

58 SERMON in.
multitude, to express which excelled the power of
the apostle of the Revelations, when he beheld them
standing on the sea of glass, and around the ever-
msting throne, and ascribing (in that hymn, of which
all nature swelled the chorus) " Power, riches, wis
dom, strength, honour, glory, and blessing, to the
Lamb that was slain."*
To the nature of their ministry the testimonies
are still more explicit and numerous. For greatly
do those men Wrong the zeal, and greatly do they
undervalue the happiness of angels who dream that
the first is suffered to evaporate in incense and
adoration, and never-ending minstrelsy, or that the
second consists in luxurious ease alone amid the
groves of Paradise or the splendours of the empyrean.
Heaven has, no less than earth, its active duties;
the blessedness of Heaven is an useful and ener
getic blessedness; and they who are sometimes
painted as feasting in the kingdom and enjoying
the presence of their Maker, are at others described
as engaged in battle with the great dragon and
his adherents, as stopping, in the cause of the
saints, the mouths of lions, and subduing the vio
lence of fire, as keeping guard roimd the prophets
of the Lord, and as bearers of His orders to them ;
as ministering to the Son of God after his tempta-
* Psal. Ixviii. 17. Matt. xxvi. 53. Dan. vii. 10. Rev. v. 12.
It is a striking suggestion of Ambrose (p. 1748), that as the
sheep which was lost was but a hundredth part of the flock, the
collective descendants of Adam may be supposed to bear the
same proportion to the spirits who have kept their integrity.

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 59
tion, and in the hour of His mortal agony consoling
and sustaining Him ; as anxious and exulting wit
nesses of the progress of His Kingdom upon earth ;
as calling the Gentile Cornelius to be the first fruits
of Christian adoption; as smiting with an invisible
sword the arrogant and persecuting Herod, and
breaking down before the apostle Peter the chains
and gates of his captivity.
Nor is it only in these more conspicuous and
supernatural dispensations of the Almighty that we
may trace the agency of His messengers. It is
indeed, as I apprehend, an unauthorised opinion
which assigns to the nations of the world each one
its tutelary governor ; or which allots a separate
genius to each believer with the name and com-
mission of a guardian. But of some one or more
celestial spirits (if our hearts be right with God)
we are assured that we shaU obtain the protection.
And do not those hearts burn within us when we
read of these mighty beings mingling in the con
verse, assuming the forms, and partaking of the
hospitality of mortals; when we learn that not a
sinner repents on earth but the angels rejoice in
Heaven; that the celestial warriors encamp not
only round the houses of the prophets, but around
the person and property of every servant of the
Almighty; that even the weakest and humblest
believer is an object of interest to those who are
themselves privileged to behold the face of the
Heavenly Father ; and that the death-bed struggle
ended (and who knows how greatly their unseen

60 SERMON IIL
presence may support us under it ?) it is they who
carry the soul of the humblest saint to Paradise .-*
All these things are written for our instruction !
It is to little purpose that we occupy our minds,,
or amuse our fancies by speculations on the num
ber and dignity of these invisible warriors, if it is
not at the same time impressed upon our hearts
and our conduct, that the eyes of such as these
pursue us into our most secret retirements ; that
they who rejoice in our repentance must also blush
with indignation at our sins ; and that if we desire
their vicinity and protection, it behoves us that our
daily practices be such as an angel may not feel
pain in witnessing.
MffTO;Saivwfi,sv ivTsvkv, let us depart hence, said the
invisible guardian of the Jewish Temple, when the
provocations of that infatuated race were about to
receive their punishment ;* but woe, eternal woe
to that nation or individual from whom the angels
of God turn away as from a polluted thing, the
habitation, thenceforth, of dragons, and the cage
of every unclean and every hateful power !
Nor, secondly, when we contemplate the un
wearied activity in the service of God, ihe match
less condescension to the necessities of their younger
brethren by which these high and holy spirits are
distinguished among the creatures of God : when
we behold the rulers of the elements keeping guard
in a sick man's chamber, the inhabitants of God's
* Josephus Bell. Judaic. IV. 5.

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 61
presence protectirig the slumbers of a child, the
gods themselves (for such, as we have seen, the
inspired writers are not afraid to call them) con
ducting the soul of a beggar to the bosom of peace
and happiness,* how deeply must we be affected
with the necessity of those devotions which even
angels are required to pay, with the dignity of
those works of love and mercy in which the angels
find their chief employment .'' Yea, more, it is an
examination on which it behoves us seriously to
enter, though it is an examination in which the
best and boldest of us all can hardly proceed with
out alarm, how far the present tenour of our actions
and our thoughts as men, are suitable to that hope
which we entertain, through Christ, of being re
ceived among the angels hereafter ? And, when
we reflect how little the uncleanness and excess,
the pride and avarice, the indolence and self-indul
gence of mankind can accord A'vith the circumstances
and employihents of the spiritual servants of the
Almighty, we may be induced to shun more cau
tiously the sins by which we are led astray, to per
ceive more clearly the dangers of our natural con
dition, and more earnestly to seek His help, in whose
name alone the angels are become our friends, and
of whose grace only it cometh that His will is done
either in iearth or in Heaven.
And, lastly, since, in the creation of God, the
number of his faithful servants is thus great and
* Luke xvi. 22.

w

62 SERMON IIL
infinite, how wretched, even on their own principles
of action, does the folly of those men appear, who,
against their better knowledge, against their habi
tual feehng, and in defiance of their secret and
reasonable fears, surrender the hopes of virtue and
piety, without attaining the brief happiness of vice,
and follow what they esteem "the multitude to
do evil !" I will not ask them to weigh the real
importance, I will not entreat them to count the
real numbers of those whose idle mockery they so
greatly dread, whose applause they prefer to their
own peace of mind,andthe approbation, through life,
of the truly wise and estimable. But, even if the
preponderance of the public feeling were not, as it
is on the whole, in league with consistent virtue ;
if the case were actually what they now persuade
themselves, and they, and a few like them, were
alone in an apostate world, we have no reason to
apprehend that this world itself is among the most
populous parts of God's creation,' and if the virtuous
man were really opposed in his practice and princi
ples to all his fellow mortals, there would still be
more with him than with them. They are not the
minority who devote themselves to the service, and
submit themselves to the reproach of their Re
deemer. His flock may seem in the world which
now is, " a little one," but " other sheep there are
which are not of this fold ;"* and when the seats are
fuU in the marriage supper of the Lord, and when
* St. John X. 16. '

ON THE MINISTRY OF GOOD ANGELS. 63
the new Heaven and new earth in which dwelleth
righteousness, have received, in the day of His
power, their holy and happy multitude, we shall
understand how few in comparison have been the
clamorous adversaries which, in this life, disturbed
our repose; how blind the cowardice which, with
the angels on our side, would have turned back in
the day of battle !

SERMON IV.

ON THE EXISTENCE AND INFLUENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS.
[Preached before the University of Oxford
and at Lincoln's Inn, 1822.]

Ephes. vi. 11, 12.
Put on the whole armour of God, that ye maybe able to stand
against the wiles of the Devil. For we wrestle not against
flesh and blood, but against principalities, Against powers,
against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiri
tual vnckedness in high places.
It was an usual practice with St. Paul to describe
the profession of a Christian, under the likeness of
a soldier on duty, and, by allusions to the oath,
dress, and discipline of the Roman military, tosha-
dow out the several obligations, and graces, and
privileges which distinguish and support the fol
lower of Jesus Christ in his warfare with the ene
mies of his salvation. The whole of the passage
from which these words are taken, is pervaded by
this kind of allegory. In it he expects the Ephe-
sian disciples to prepare themselves for this holy
quarrel, as soldiers for the battle, or gladiators for
the arena, and to case their souls in the panoply of

ON' THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 65
Heaven against the force or fraud of their oppo
nents. The nature of this armour he explains in
the following verses, in which he compares, with
great liveliness of fancy and description, the^ entire
equipment of an ancient warrior, with the graces
and virtues of a worthy foUower of the Messiah.
To the helmet of the first he likens that exalted
hope of salvation which is, to the latter, a defence
and a crown. The impenetrable breast-plate of
the soldier corresponds with the righteousness and
good conscience of the saint; the iron-studded
sandal of the one with that Gospel of peace which
prevents the foot of the other from sliding ; and
the shield, which it was death to forsake, and the
sword which was, in closer fight, the Roman's only
weapon, with that faith from which even fiery
darts fall blunted and powerless, and with that
knowledge of God's word, the edge of which no
sophistry can withstand.
To point out, as it deserves, the beauty of this
parallel, is not my present purpose. It is enough
to observe, first, that those powers and graces are
called God's armour, inasmuch as we derive them
from God's free bounty; and, secondly, that the
danger must needs be great against which so great
precautions are enjoined us.
While describing that danger, the utterance of
the Apostle almost seems to labour for words suffi
ciently strong to express the strength of his con
ceptions, and the most awful figures of might, and
malice, and mystery, are coflected to alarm us into
VOL, I. K

66 SERMON IV.
watchfulness. Principalities and powers are leagued
against the soldier of the cross, and the believer
has to contend against the united violence of the
rulers of this world's darkness, and the spiritual
wickedness which is in high places. High sound
ing words these, doubtless, are, and tremendous
attributes of guilt and power ; and it must deeply
concern every one of us to understand their mean
ing rightly. To arrive at that meaning it may, in
the first place, be observed, that aU these terms
are evidently employed by the Apostle in explana
tion of a phrase which he had used in the foregoing
sentence, and which he had more briefly assigned
as the reason why we should betake ourselves with
out delay to our celestial weapons. " Put on the
whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand
against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle,"
he continues, " not against flesh and blood, but
against principalities, against powers, against the
rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiri
tual wickedness in high places." It is plain, there
fore, that the enemy with whose wiles we have to
contend, is the same with those who are spoken of
under the several names of " principalities," pow
ers," and " rulers," and that, these several antago
nists are included under the same term of " the
devil;" either because " devil" is a. generic name
which applies to their whole multitude, or because
these principahties and powers are the subjects and
soldiers of one powerful and malicious being, to
whom the name of " devil" is peculiarly, and by

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 67
way of eminence assigned ; who lays wait, by their
agency, for the souls~ of men, and who directs and
stimulates their craft and violence in the manner
most likely to destroy or injure us.
By which of these suppositions- we explain the
words of St. Paul, is a matter of indifference ; the
consequences deducible from either are, in all their
bearings, the same, and either is consistent with
the application of this particular passage, and with
the general terms of the Gospel. It is certain that
the term " devil," or " wicked one," is often apphed
inclusively and generally to very many beings, who
are represented as in perpetual hostility with God
and good men ; and it is also certain that these
beings are described as under the government of
one particular prince, whose angels they are, and
with whom they are, hereafter, to be punished
everlastingly.*
* St. Matthew xii. 26. St. Mark iii. 26. St. Luke xi. 18. Grotius
ad Marc. " Satanas videtur mihi hoc loco dici, tota uriiversitas
malot'um spirituum, quomodo 6 avSguifos (homo) pro genere Im-
ruano aut natura humana. Non enim solus Princeps Spirituum
sed omnes impuri spiritus eo nomine censentur." In conformity
with this interpretation; St.' Chrysostom observes that Christ did
not use a plural term when speaking of the devils on the above
occasion, but called them under one name Satan, to express the
union which subsists among them, oux slire rois Saifi^ovas. Ssixviig
fl'oXXi^v airoTg iffog oiKKifkove rfufiipojviav oiirfav. Archbishop Sharpe's
Sermons, v. 3. p. 72. " When we are speaking of the devil,
we are not to understand any one particular being, or any one
particular evil spirit, but the whole aggregate or company of
evil spirits, which inhabit round about us in the lower regions of

tjb SERMON IV.
A more important question, and one to which,
for many reasons, it behoves us to be able to give
an answer, is that which relates to the real nature
of the enemies thus described. Are we to under
stand these alarming expressions in the plainest
and most obvious sense, as instructing us that we
are really surrounded by invisible foes ; by beings
superior to mankind in present power, but who envy
mankind their hopes of future glory, and endeavour,
in concert with each other, and in obedience to a
common leader, to pervert our integrity, and de
stroy our happiness .'' Or are we rather to under
stand by the principalities here alluded to, those
men who fight for, and forward the cause of Satan
upon earth ; those deceivers who would entice, and
those persecutors who would terrify the Christian
from his Heaven-ward journey .'* ShaU we go farther
StiU, and deny the existence of the wicked power
that these enemies are said to serve ? Is it only
by a figure that they are represented as subject to
one commander.'' Is that commander no more
than an allegorical and abstract name for all which,
in, the visible world, opposes the establishment and
progress of Christ's kingdom; an imaginary evil
the air. All these are, in the Scripture language, and in common
speech, called by the name of the devil." That, nevertheless,
there is one person peculiarly, and by way of eminence, thus
called, as the general of a hostile army is called " the enemy,'*
is plain from St. Matt. xxv. 41. Rev. xii. 9. "Inter impuros
spiritus unum esse qui praesideat et Judseorum et Apostolorum
scriptanos docent." Grotius on St. Matt, xii, 24.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 69
principle invented to terrify the weak and ignorant ;
or at best, to represent, by a forcible metaphor,
the regularity of concert, of purpose, and of tactics,
with which, like an army under a skilful leader,
our various enemies pursue their unholy warfare .''
Of these three hypotheses, the first and the se
cond are, I admit, extremely consistent with each
other. A man may believe, to the ftiUest extent,
in the existence of evil spirits, though he may sup
pose that the principalities and powers here men
tioned are not spirits, but the mortal and persecu
ting governors of the Roman empire, and of the
Jewish synagogue. He may admit the general
doctrine, while he denies that this particular text
inculcates it. But though the first and the second
be thus compatible, yet are the first and the third
hypotheses completely irreconcileable with each
other. It is difficult for a professed Christian to
deny the existence of evil spirits, if he admits that
the present words of St. Paul are to be interpreted
of them ; it is impossible for a reasonable man to
deny the existence of a depil, when he aUows that
there are many ; and it would be mere idleness, the
existence of such creatures being established, to
cavil at the account given us in Scripture, of their
nature and the form of their government.
The text, therefore, which I have chosen, is ex
tremely important in determining a question which
has of late years arisen among Christians, concern
ing the existence of that person, or those persons,
to whose influence is ascribed so large a portion of

70 SERMON IV.
the sin and misery which, in our present state, sur
round us. I say, it is of late years that this con
troversy has arisen ; because it is certain that, du
ring more than 1700 years the Christian world,
(however otherwise divided,) had on this point no
difference of opinion. Even of that sect whose
leaders have, in our own times, embraced with the
greatest warmth the negative side of the contro
versy, the earlier doctors never questioned the ex
istence of evil spirits in general, or of the evil one
peculiarly so called ; and Socinus and Crellius, and
the other commentators of the Racovian school,
have received and maintained the doctrine of the
devil and his angels, not only without qualification,
but apparently without suspecting that any quahfi-
cation of it was possible.*
This is not, indeed, the only nor the most import
ant instance in which the modern English unita
rians have outstripped, in the race of unbelief, their
more learned or more cautious masters ; but it is
an additional proof that, the rule once transgressed
which binds us to adhere to the obvious sense of
* Socinus ad Def. F. PucciiResp. Op. torn. ii. p. 324, et alibi
passim. Crellius, Comm. in 1 Cor. Op. torn. i. p. 359. " Pau
lus, cum de Christianorum hominum pugn^ loquitur, non obscure
carnem et sanguinem opponit spiritibus malis, quibuscum nobis
est luctandum, Eph. vi. 12." Id. torn. i. p. 50. 52, et alibi pas-
sim. Schlichting, ad h. 1. Op. p. 172. Wolzogen, tom. i. p. 400.
Przicpovius, ad h. 1. Op. p. 152, 153. Brennius, Not. in St. Matt.
p. 5. Not. in Ephes. ad h. 1. p. 66. Catechism. Eccl. Polon.
p. 338. " Nee hominibus tantum, verum etiam angelis et bonis
et malis Christus dominatur."

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 71
Scripture, no reasonable limit can be anticipated
to that tide of aUegory which will then enter in ;
no doctrine, no fact be conceived, which the same
process may not resolve into fable.
But however modern the objection, and however
its recent date may be fairly urged as an argument
against its probability, yet is the fact that an objec
tion has been made to the usual doctrine of the
Church on this subject, a sufficient reason for exa
mining with greater care the grounds on which
that doctrine rests. It is, indeed, but vain to conceal
the truth from ourselves, that, partly fi-om the na
tural disposition of men to confine their views
within the limits of the visible world ; partly from
disgust at those monstrous and abominable foUies
with which priestcraft and superstition have, at dif
ferent times, abused the notion of spiritual agency ;
and partly, perhaps, through the arts of Satan him
self, who may expect to ensnare us with the greater
ease when his influence is unsuspected, the notion
of evil spirits has fallen into discredit and disre
gard with many who are far, indeed, from disbeliev
ing or from disobeying the Gospel, but who might
have derived, from the contemplation of this truth,
yet stronger motives to Christian watchfuhiess, and
a yet deeper sense of their dependence on Him
who alone can dehver us from the evil one.
From this cause I have undertaken the discussion
of the text which has been read to you, and will
proceed to consider the interpretation which has
been already slightly noticed, and which regards

72 SERMON l\.
the enemies enumerated by St. Paul as mortal ene*
mies only. And here it will be readily acknow
ledged that many of the words employed by him
to denote their power and dignity, are by no means
inapplicable to the potentates of the visible world.
" Principatus," and " potestates," the correspond
ing Latin terms to 'A^ai and 'Efwo'iai are the weU-»
known and technical names for the supreme
and delegated authorities of the Roman empire.
" The rulers of the world's darkness," is a phrase
which has been thought to apply with much pro
priety either to the rabbins of the corrupt and dark
ened synagogue, or to those heathen priests and
false philosophers, whose dominion was erected on
the ignorance and superstition of mankind. And
the number of sects, and of perverse and wicked
doctrines which, even in the age of the Apostles,
had begun to infest the Church, has been conceived
to taUy with the description of " spiritual wicked
ness in high (or heavenly) places."* But these
presumptions are, I conceive, greatly overbalanced
by what may be urged against them. First, we are
told by the Apostle, that the " wrestling" of which
he speaks, is, " not against flesh and blood," an ex
pression which he could not have used had his de
scription been intended to apply to the fleshly sove-
* Sueton. Cal. 22. "Nee multum abfuit quin statim diadema
sumeret, speciemque principatus in regni formam converteret."
Juv. Sat. X. 99. " Hujus, qui trahitur, praetextam sumere mavis,
An Fidenarum Gabiorumque esse Potestas?" Wolf, ad h. 1.
Cur. Philol. tom. iv.p. 150, 151. Schottgen. Hor. Hebr. p. 790.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 73
reigns of mankind, or to the acts of any mortal ad
versary. It is true that some commentators of no
vulgar name have conceived that " flesh and blood"
may signify " men of mean condition," as opposed
to " men of rank and power ;'" or " the ignorant,"
as opposed to " the learned."* But to pass over
the apparent absurdity of distinguishing degrees of
rank or acquirement by terms which apply equaUy
to the tjrrant and his slave, the doctor and his dis
ciple, no ancient author has been found (I might
say no author of any age ot country,) who has
used the terms in question as these persons would
have us understand them. The Jewish writers (with
whom the phrase is one of frequent occurrence,
and whose authority on such points cannot but be
considerable with all such as consider who St. Paul
was, and to whom the greater part of his Epistles
were addressed) the Jewish writers always, so far
as I have been able to discover, employ them in the
sense of " mortal man," or to express the weak
ness of our common nature.f And, still more, there
* Wolf, ubi. supr. Schottgen, ubi supr.
f Hammond on Si. Matt. xvi. 17. Works, vol. iii. p. 83.
" The phrase tfa^l xri ait>.a flesh and blood, is a Hebrew phrase,
DTI T^]3 signifying no more than a mere man here upon the
earth, one that hath ascended no higher than the common state
of men. Thus it is ordinary in the Jewish writers. Take one
example for all, in Gemara Babyl. ad Cod. Berachoth, where a
parable of a rich man (the first draught as it were and mono
gram of that which is enlarged and filled up with lively colours
by our Saviour,inSt.Lukexvi.is called "17)3'? hti^D 01) TtS'S
<i parable of a king of flesh and Mood ; that is, of a human

74 SERMON IV.
are many passages in the New Testament itself
where these words cannot be explained in any other
sense than that of the universal human family.
Thus, when Christ told St. P'eter that " flesh and
blood" did not reveal to him the fact of his Master's
Divinity, can we suppose that He intended to insi
nuate (what was certainly not the case) that the
Apostle had learned it from the wealthy or the wise
of this world ? When St. Paul assures us, that in
the commencement of his preaching, he " applied
not himself to flesh and blood," does he mean that
it was not from the vulgar or the poor that he
sought a commission to teach the Gospel ? The
time may seem lost which is spent in enlarging on
a fact so plain ; but the fact, I am bold to say, is
decisive in itself against the manhood or mortahty
of those enemies whom the Apostle sends us forth
to combat.
But, secondly, it is indeed very true, that the
words which we translate " principalities and
powers," were titles of human authority ; and it is
also highly probable that they were transferred from
the events of this world to the language which men
employed in speaking of celestial dignities. But it
mortal king here on earth. This example completely over-
throws gchottgen's notion, who brings, indeed, not a single
instance in favour of it. To the instance adduced by Hammond,
may be added Beresch. Rabba, § 4. f. 6. " Rex carnis et san
guinis edificat palatium et laquearia facit lapidibus, lignis, pul-
vere. Deus autem mundi laquearia non nisi ex aqua fecit." —
So also in § 49, and in many other places.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 75
is certain, on the other hand, that they are most
frequently applied in the New Testament to some
particular ranks of spiritual creatures. That they
are applied to good angels, and (if the expression
may be allowed) to the constituted authorities of
Heaven, the following passages wiU shew. In the
first chapter of this same Epistle to the Ephesians,*
our Lord is described as set at God's " right hand
in the heavenly places, far above all principality
and' power, and might, and dominion, and every
name that is named, not only in this world, but also
in that which is to come." Again, in a catalogue
of those beings who were made by God through
His Son, we find "things that are in Heaven, and
that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether
they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or
powers."t But it would have been a grievous
anti-chmax in the former sentence, after describing
our Lord as set at God's right hand in Heaven, to
have added that, thus exalted, he was higher than
the emperor of Rome, or the provincial governor
of Asia ; and it would have been utterly prepos
terous, in recounting the visible and invisible works
of creation, to reckon as distinct species those few
individuals who are only distinguished from the
weakness and misery of their feUows by a purple
garment and a circle of gold. I do not praise, I wiU
not even justify, the vain curiosity of those specu
lative men who have pretended to describe the titles
and precedence of the court of Heaven, no less mi-
* * Ephes. i. 20, 21. f Coloss. i. 16.

76 SERMON IV.
nutely than the formalities of the Byzantine palace.
But that there is some difference of rank among the
sons of God, may be inferred from the different re
wards assigned to the different servants in the para
ble of the talents ; from our Saviour's assurance
that some should be great and others inferior in His
kingdom; and from the manner in which, as we
have seen, St. Paul affixes names expressive of gra
dations in rank to individuals or classes of the an
gelic hierarchy. And as, the fact being true, the
names employed were indifferent, no names could
be more proper than those which were already ap
plied no less familiarly to angels than to men, by
the Jewish and Grecian Christians.*
Nor were they the chieftains of the faithful che
rubim only, who were designated by the ancients
under titles corresponding with those of earth. The
devils, as well as the attendants on the Divine Ma
jesty, were believed to be under regular discipline;
and either to have retained these marks of distinc
tion in memory of their first estate, or to have as
sumed them in fruitless emulation of the honours
which God bestows on the leaders of the angelic
army. The corresponding terms of " princes " and
" prefects " of the devils, are of very frequent occue7
rence in the Rabbinical authors^t The name of
prince" is assigned by the Jews in St. Matthew's"
Gospell to him whom they call Beelzebub, and,

* Schleusner's Lexicon, voc. Aivaii^ig.
t Schbttgen, Hor. Hebr. p. 382. ^ St. Matt. ix. 84.

il

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EyiL SPIRITS. 77
what is stiff more to the purpose, St. Paul himself
complies with, and apparently sanctions, this form
of speaking, by using the very names in question
under circumstances where evil spirits only can be
intended. When, in his Epistle to the Romans,* he boasts
that no created thing can separate us from the love
which is in Christ, he enumerates, among the cir
cumstances by which our continuance in that love
is endangered, the malignant endeavours of " an
gels, principalities, and powers." They are "prin
cipalities" and " powers " which Christ is said tp
have " spoiled and made a show of" in His glorious
triumph over death and helLf But, how cold is
that exposition which would resolve these glowing
descriptions into an allegorical account of the su
perseding of the Mosaic Law, by which our Lord
reduced its rulers and scribes to insignificance and
obscurity.!* Or why should we hesitate to con
clude that, as in these passages, so also in my text,
St. Paul is speaking of those rebeUious angels,
whose chief aspired to tempt the Son of God, and
whose armies, like roaring lions, range about, seek
ing whom they may devour.''
"if No less familiarly apphed to evil spirits are the
terms, "rulers of this world" and "of darkness."
The very name of xotfiioxfow-uj, under this meaning,
is usual and technical with the Rabbins ; and it is
hard to say how, with their known and pre-con-
* Rom. viii. 38, 39. t Coloss. ii. 15.

78 V SERMON IV.
ceived opinions of demons and their residence, the
persons whom St. Paul addressed could understand
Ttt ifviuiiaTixd Tris ifovtjgias iv rorg srfougavius any Otherwise
than of " the spirits of wickedness in the air."*
The text, accordingly, in its literal and obvious
meaning, can only be supposed to reffer to spiritual
enemies. And it is almost needless to bring to your
recollection the conformity of this interpretation
with the general tenor of the New Testament, or
how often those enemies are mentioned or alluded
to in the preaching of Christ and His apostles. T'he
ministry of our Lord Himself was commenced by a
personal contention with the chief of their number ;
and to dislodge them from their human victims was
one of the most frequent of those marveUous works
whereby he asserted His claim to Divine authority.!
* Schir Hoscherim Rabba, fol. 32. 3. "Deus S. B. vocavit
angelum mortis, et dixit ipsi, Quamvis te feci xorfjAoxgwoja super
homines, &c." Ibid. " Angelus mortis — dicitur Teweftrffi." Also
in the book of prayers quoted by Wetstein, ad h. 1 " Satanas
Princeps Tenebrarum." Hammond, ad h. 1. works, vol. iii. p. 631 .
" What Jiroujavia signifies; here will be soon discerned, first, by
remembering that the several regions of the air, and above all the
globe of the earth, is in the Hebrew styled CD 'DCS*? and in the
Greek of these books oigawi. heavens ; and so invgavia will sig
nify those places, the several regions of the air ; secondly, that,
the Syriac reading, for irvsufj^arixa, *«£i5(iiaTa, and the phrase spirits
of wickedness in heavenly places, will be no more than the powers
of the air under their ajx"^' ^^ prince, that is, the devils under
Beelzebub." To the same efl^ect see Grotius, ad h. 1., and Eph.
ii. 2.; Whitby, Eph. ii. 2.; Schleusner, voc. 'E*ovfavia, &c. &c.
t St. Matt. iv. 24. viii. 16. 28. ix. 32. xvii. 18. ' St. Mark i.
23. 32. V. 12. St. Luke iv. 2. 33. 41. viii. 2. ix. 1. xiii. 32, i&c-

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 79
To " destroy the works of the devil," and subvert
his authority among mankind, was the avowed and
leading object of Christ's mission, and He Himself
describes the prince of the wicked spirits as it were
cast down from Heaven in consequence of the tri
umph of His Gospel.* To the envy and influence
of the same malicious being we are taught by St.
John to ascribe the transgression of our first parents,
and aU the misery which their disobedience has en
tailed on their posterity. Cain, who slew his bro
ther, was under the power of " that wicked one."
It is he who soweth tares in the spiritual field of
Christ's Church ; he who taketh out the words of
life from the hearts of men, lest they should believe
and escape destruction. It was the devil who
prompted the treason of Judas, and the hypocrisy
of Ananias and Sapphira ; the wicked who follow
his pleasures are called his children ; it was he who
aspired to tempt the Son of God Himself by offering
to His mortal view the power and pleasures of a
worldly sovereign ; and St. John expressly speaks
of him as the fountain of aU evil, when he teUs us
that " he that committeth sin is of the devil."
Nor is it only as the seducer of mankind from
the paths of hohness that he approves Himself our
dee^dly enemy : in several remarkable passages of
Scripture he is represented as accusing the saints
* 1. St. John iii. 8. St. Luke x. 18.
t Rev. xii. 9. 1 St. John iii. 12. St. Matt xiii. 39. St. Mai-k
' iv. 15. St. John xiii. 2. Acts v. 3. St. John viii. 44. Acts
xiii, 10. St. Matt, iv. 1. 1 St. John iii. 8.

80 SERMON IV.
before God, and (either mediately through those
men whom he has already ensnared, or by the im-
,mediate power of himself and his spiritual agents,)
as impeding the progress of the truth upon earth ;
and persecuting, both in their bodies and in their
outward circumstances, the servants of God and
the Messiah.*
And as he is thus, for a time, permitted by God
to exercise the constancy and patience of His saints,
so we are instructed to look forward to the period
when Satan shall, by the same mighty Conquorer
who hath already cut short his power, be beaten
down beneath the feet of those whom he hath per
secuted, in that day when everlasting fire is pre
pared for him and for his angels, and when, not
only the wicked, but the devil who hath deceived
them, shall be cast into the lake of tormenLf
In aU these places it is difficult to conceive that
either allegory or metaphor can be intended. It is
hard to suppose that, in books meant for general
instruction, and composed, as most of the books of
the New Testamentlare, in a style extremely remote
from every thing like poetry or fable, a fabulous
and poetical mythology should have been so closely
interwoven with their most solemn and literal truths,
their most practical precepts, and their most awful
motives for faith and conduct. And however such
terms as " the evil principle," the " powers of evil,"
* Job i. 6. Zech. iii. 1. Rev. xii. 10. Job ii. 5. 2 Cor. xii. 7,
¦i.-.
Rev. ii. 10. -*»
t St. Matt. xxv. 41. Rom. xvi. 20. Rev. xx. 10.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 81
or " the gates of hell," or "the spirit of disobedi-*
ence," might possibly have been explained away to
mean " mischief" or " temptation" in the abstract,
and from whatever cause arising, yet of " devils," of
" spirits," of " Satan and his angels," we know, as
weU as any thing in the history of language can be
known, the ancient and usual meaning ; and it is
certain that if such creatures be altogether fabu
lous, no words could possibly have been used by
the Son of God and His apostles more likely to
deceive their hearers.
StiU, however, it is insisted that, admitting all
these expressions to apply literally, and to be in
tended thus to apply to those evil and unfriendly
angels of whom the Jews and Platonists stood in
fear, yet the reality of such beings will not neces
sarily follow from the mention made of them in
Scripture. " The doctrine in question," (I give the
words of the modern leader of the Socinians,) " the
doctrine of an evil spirit was unknown to the Jews
previous to their captivity, but was, ptobably, bor
rowed by their learned men, at that time, from the
oriental philosophy." " After their return it be
came, in process of time, the popular creed, and
the popular language, being gradually fashioned to
it, was adopted equally by those who did, and those
who did not believe the theory on which it was
founded." "But neither Jesus nor His apostles
ever exphcitly declare that they themselves admit
ted the philosophy which governed the language of
the country in which they lived, much less do they
VOL. I. >r

82 SERMON IV.
?profess to teach it as of divme authority." " 'I'he
first teachers of Christianity neither positively af
firm, nor authoritatively contradict the existence
and agency of an evil spirit." " The doctrine,
therefore, rests on its own evidence, that is, on no
evidence at all."*
How much credit should be given to the asser
tions, and how much weight allowed to the argu
ments contained in this plausible and ingenious
statement, may be learnt from the foUowing obser-*
vations. That the doctrine of an evil spirit was unknown
to the Jews before the Babylonish captivity (though
it be an opinion which some men of considerable
learning have adopted and maintained), wiU not
be readily granted by those who, without perplex
ing the question with ambiguous names, and ex
traneous and irrelevant superstitions, confine their
attention to the essentials of that doctrine as re
ceived by rational Christians.
It is true, indeed, that the word Satan is em
ployed by Moses in a different sense from that of
an evil spiritf ; and it is also true that this word,
when it occurs in the prophecies anterior to the
captivity, may bear the meaning of any adversary,
either spiritual or irierely human. But, though we
shbuld grant that the name does not occur in the
more ancient writings of the Jews, though we
should even grant that no allusion to the doctrine
* Belsham, Review of Wilberforce, p. 36, .37.
t Num. xxii. 22.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 83
of an evil spirit is found in those writings, it would
be a very hasty inference that, therefore, the an
cient Jews must necessarily have been ignorant
either of the one or the other ; far more that the
latter must, on this account, be abandoned as a
vain and superstitious fable.
The books in question, which are, partly, the
statute law of the Hebrew nation, partly some very
brief and incidental notices of their history, and
partly, religious admonitions addressed on various
occasions to their rulers or the body of their tribes,
are by far too few and too short to be received as
containing the sum total of their opinions and their
prejudices. Still less are we to condemn as abso
lutely untrue, whatever is not expressly revealed
in the earlier parts of the Old Testament. It has
been a question (for instance) with many learned
men, whether the resurrection itself be really dis
closed in the Jewish writings anterior to the cap
tivity; but there are few who conclude from hence
that the Hebrews first learned this doctrine from
the Chaldeans, and still fewer, I trust, who on this
account deny that the dead are raised. If, how
ever (as many of the ancient and the most eminent
of the modern commentators suppose), the book of
Job were written or translated by Moses, it is cer
tain that Moses was well acquainted both with the
term " Satan," and with the notion of that being to
whom the term is now appropriated.*
* See on this question, Dupin. Canon. 1. i. c. 3. Simon. Cri-

84 SERMON IV.
And, be this as it may, since the name of Job is
placed by Ezekiel on the same honourable emi
nence with the prophets Daniel and Noah,* it, re
mains for our antagonists either to show by what
other means, except by the book of Scripture which
relates his virtues, those virtues could have been
known to the Jews, or to admit that this book, and
the name and doctrine in question, were known to
them before they can be well supposed to have
formed their opinions on the mythology of Ba
bylon. But, moreover, though the appropriation of the
name "Satan" to a particular being or class of
beings, should not have taken place tiU a compara
tively recent period, yet wiU this go a very little
way towards proving that the existence of such
beings was unknown before. The name of Jehovah
was first revealed to Moses during his abode in
Arabia ;t but they would be hardy reasoners who
should hence infer that the house of Israel were
previously atheists, or that He of whom JehoVah
is since become the appropriate title, was not re-
tiqu. de Proleg. de Dupin, t. iii. p. 516, Hupt. Demonst. Evang.
p. 377. et seq. Johan. Henrie. Michaelis in Hagiographos, t. i.
p. 2. Patrick, Pref. to Job. Wells, ibid. Gray, Key to Old
Test. p. 246. Joh. Dav. Michaelis, Mosaisches Reeht Art. 298.
et alibi passim, and the very learned and able preface to the book
of Job, translated by John Mason Goode, Esq. M.D.
* Ezek. xiv. 14.
¦j- Exod, vi. 3. " And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac,
and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty ; but by my name
Jehovah was I not known unto them."

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 85
verenced by the ancient patriarchs under the name
of " Elohim" or " El Schaddia." And, whatever
weight we assign to the uniform opinion of the
Jews, that the same beings who were afterwards
called " Satan" were described by Moses as
" Schairim" and " Schedim," or, in whatever de
gree we yield assent to the arguments of Spenser,
that this was the import of the word " Azazel ;"*
yet is it hardly possible to read with due attention
the sixteenth chapter of the first book of Samuel,
without being convinced that the " evU spirit"
there spoken of, is precisely the same, both in the
name and functions, with the evil spirits of the New-
Testament. As, then, it is certain that the doc
trine in question was not first known to the Jews
during their abode in Babylon, so there is not the
smaUest evidence (I might say not the smaUest
probabUity) that they derived it from the Chaldeans,
or (stiU less) from the Persian system of Philosophy
and superstition.
But, further, at whatever time we suppose this
* RochartHierozoic.T. ii. p. 643. DH^J/tJ' Mosi esse Dsemo-
nes qui coluntur in Idolis putant plerique interpretes. Ita enim
Chaldaei reddunt, et Syrus, et Arabs uterque, et Hieronymus, et
Hebreei omnes. Neque res est sine exemplo. Nam ad Dsemones
referunt Grseci, Syrus, et Arabs, quod habetur Esai. xiii. 21. de
BabylonisfuturadesolationeD'Tl^ltJ' etEsai.xxxiv.l4. "l^j^lJjr
Neque aliud voluit Aquila Judseus cum D'Tl^JS' reddidit
TgixMvras. Targum Jonath- ad Deut. xxxii. 17, explains Q Ht*^
" Idolis quae assimilantur Daemonibus." For the word Azazel
StKfK see Spenser de Leg. L. iii. Diss. 8. De Hirco Emiss.
cap. 1. sect. 2. 3.

86 SERMON IV.
doctrine to have been made known to the Jews,
and from whatever source they received it, it is
sufficient to estabhsh its truth with impartial in
quirers, if we find it afterwards confirmed by pro
phets and inspired persons, and more particularly
by the Son of God Himself. A revelation from
Heaven has no less authority to establish what is
doubtful, than to disclose what is unknown ; and
on whatever grounds a doctrine has been at first
beheved, yet, certainly, if recognised by a celestial
Monitor, that doctrine, thenceforth, becomes di
vine. If we suppose, for instance, that a nation to
which Christianity is now first made known, has
already received from i1;s pagan ancestors the dog
ma of the soul's immortality, it will, in such a case,
be probable that the opinion has been hitherto
held on insufficient principles, or principles actu
ally unsound. It may have been deduced from the
unassisted grounds of- reason and natural rehgion ;
it may have been taught as a part of an erroneous
system of theology, and recommended to their faith
on the authority of a Mango Capac or a Zoroaster.
But, when its truth has been once confirmed by a
new and better religion, when the voice of God
shaU have thenceforth sanctioned that verity which
the nation had previously adopted, it will be pre
posterous in succeeding sophists to argue that the
opinion is itself untrue, because their forefathers
received it from a suspected fountain.
The question, accordingly, may be safely aUowed
to rest on the expressions of our Lord and His

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 87
apostles ; nor wiU our antagonists themselves, as
I conceive, deny that there are many expressions
of theirs, which, hke my text, can only be under
stood as referring to the doctrine of evil spirits.
They can, therefore, only answer that " our Lord
and His apostles conformed their language to the
popular opinions of the J;ime," " that they spoke of
fiends and demoniacs, as they spoke of the rising
and setting of the sun ; but that they can by no
means be fairly regarded as vouching for the per
fect accuracy either of the ancient behef in spirits,
or the ancient system of the universe." **?
But before this answer can be admitted as a so
lution of the difficulty, we may require them to
show, first, that the doctrine in question is of such
a nature, as that a Divine Teacher, knowing it to
be untrue, could, with propriety, give it the sanc
tion even of his acquiescence ; and secondly, that
the expressions used on this subject by our Chris
tian teachers, amount, in fact, to no more than
such an acquiescence in the errors of other men,
without adding to them the weight of their own
authority. I will readily admit that an inspired teacher is
not necessarily called on to undeceive his hearers
in such harmless points of speculative opinion, as
do not faU within the hmits of that doctrine which
he has in charge to deliver from Heaven. But, if
an opinion be closely, though incidentally, con
nected with religious faith and conscientious prac
tice ; if it be interwoven with the strongest hopes

88 . ;; SERMON IV.
and fears of the human breast; if it be of a nature
to "disturb the weak and distract the timorous, it
is the duty of a prophet, as it would be the duty
of any other enhghtened person, to undeceive his
brother on a point of such a nature, no less than it
would be his duty to reheve him from a groundless
alarm, or to rouse him from a dream of agony.
Now, that a behef in evil spirits, whether true or
false, is one of a gloomy and disquieting character;
that it is one which may produce the worst results
when indiscreetly and too curiously contemplated;
that it has drawn some into the most loathsome
guUt, and plunged others into the acutest suffering;
that it has been the usual source of religious and
magical imposture; and that its abuses may be
traced through innumerable shades of human mi
sery, from the fears of chUdhood to the ravings of
frenzy, our antagonists are so far from denying that
they ground one principal objection against its
truth on its supposed inconsistency with the wisdom
and mercy of our Creator. The solidity of this
objection, I wiU not pause to consider ; but it mugt
be allowed, on the principles of our opponents
themselves, that when even the incidental conse
quences of an opinion are thus dismal, that opinion
is one which, if untrue, it well becomes a prophet
to expose in its proper weakness.
If the confutation of such an error as is here
described, so widely spread, so practicaUy calami
tous, had been the principal, nay the single object
of our Saviour's mission to mankind, wiU our an-

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVlS^MlIT^V^
tagonists deny that, on their view of
it would have been a worthy and sufl[icient reason
for a display of infinite power, and a revelation of
infinite wisdom .-* But, when instances of a belief
in evU spirits and of its wretched consequences en
countered the prophet in every street, and haunted
him through every province of Israel, can we sup
pose that, if the world were indeed deceived, a
prophet of God would not have undeceived it ; or
that he would not have done so effectually and
for ever, rather than have applied, by humouring
its prejudices, a temporary palliative in the manner
most likely to confirm its fears in future .-* A chUd
flies weeping to his parent to complain that there
is a lion in the wood : wiU the parent content him
self with administering some childish comfort which
wiU quiet his cries for a time, but leave their cause
unabated, and his terrors ready to revive when he
shaU next approach the fatal thicket .'' Or wiU he
not rather remove liis alarm by convincing him of
his folly, and by shewing him the true nature and
security of that wood which his fancy has peopled
with monsters ?
But if a simple acquiescence in a gloomy preju
dice be unworthy of the Messiah's character, what
shaU be said of the fact that the Messiah and His
apostles, by their express words and significant
actions, encouraged and confirmed this prejudice ?
Not only do they, from the credited fact that evil
spirits existed, reason as an argument " ad homi
nes," and an argument taken from the notions of
VOL. I. N

90 SERMON IV.
those with whom they converse ; they appear, in
every instance, to have spoken and acted in the
very manner in which they must have done had
they been themselves persuaded of its truth ; and
there are some remarkable expressions of which, if
they are not positive assertions of the fact, it is
not easy to guess the meaning. When St. Paul
informs us that "we wrestle not with flesh and
blood, hut with the principalities and powers of
evil," can this be any otherwise understood than as
an assurance that such powers exist distinct from
man, and that men are caUed on to contend with
them.'* When our Lord, in describing beforehand
the most awful transaction in which the human
race can be parties, informs us that " everlasting
fire is prepared for the devU and his angels,"*
would He have used such expressions if no such
angels existed.-* When He commanded the unclean
spirits, by that name, to depart from their mortal
victims, can we conceive Him to have been, in such
a case, addressing a nonentity, or that He would
have lent the sanction of His word to a popular
errorj when he might have cured the maniac by a
touch, or have said to the epUeptic person, " be
thou whole of thy plague !" What would have been
our opinion of Zoroaster or Mohammed if they
had, in like manner, administered to the fears of
the vulgar, and taken credit to themselves for the
defeat of imaginary enemies } Or, if we shrink
*St. Matt. xxv. 41.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 9 J
Irom such thoughts as apphed to the Celestial Au
thor of our faith, what other conclusion can we
arrive at, but that the doctrine which His solemn
expressions countenanced, is true }
But, if it be thus difficult to explain away the
words of our Lord, there are some of his actions,
if possible, stiU less equivocal. I do not mean
to enter on the extensive and difficult question
of the manner in which evil spirits are said to
possess human beings, or the degree of power
which they exercise over their victims. But, if in
the history of the supposed demoniac of Gadara,
we apprehend no other person to be concerned but
our Lord and His distracted patient ; if it were no
more than the diseased imagination of the sufferer
which answered in the demon's name ; and if it
were the ravings of phrenzy only which desired
that his tormentor might take shelter in the swine,
can we suppose that our Lord, not content with
simple acquiescence, not content with conforming
his speech to the hallucination of the frantic man,
would, by afflicting the herd with a like disease,
have miraculously confirmed the delusion }* Do
our antagonists believe this history } What manu
script, what authority, what ecclesiastical tradition
can they plead for rejecting it from the place which
it holds in the writings of three out of the four evan-
gehsts } Is the restoration of Lazarus to life less
wonderful in itself, or more credibly attested } Or,
* St. Matt. viii. 28. St. Mark v. 9. St. Luke viii. 30.

92 SERMON IV.
what further reasons have we for believing that our
Lord restored the leper to health, than that He cast
out devUs from the nian who ^' had the legion ?"
I am addressing a congregation of Christians ; they
are Christians against whom I am now disputing;
and I caU, by that holy name, on you and on them,
to beware how you select, according to your un
supported fancy or prejudice, those passages of the
word of truth to which you will or wiU not give
credit. Be our religion true or false, the New Tes
tament is our only record of its facts and its doc
trines. If the religion be false, that time is but
lost which is spent in culling probabUities from a
mass of error; but, if true, woe, woe to them who
refuse the testimony of God and His prophets, how
ever strange to mortal ears the subject of that tes
timony may appear !
But, brethren, is it indeed incredible, is it indeed
contradictory to reason, to the hght of nature, and
to the general analogy of God's works, that, as there
are wicked men, there should be wicked spirits
also .-* If the existence of evU is aUowed at all, at
what point in the scale of created being, can we
decide that it shaU be found no longer ? Imperfec
tion of some kind or other, yea, imperfection of
every kind must cleave more or less to all but the
Infinitely Good, and Wise and Mighty. If there
are invisible beings (and that some such there are
but few have ventured to question) the probability,
regarding it as a subject of philosophical analogy
only, must be that oppression and malice will have

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 93
found their room in the unseen as weU as the visible
world, and that the Judge of all wiU have had oc
casion, how seldom soever, to tax not only men
but angels, with folly. And, since His providence
on earth is accustomed to turn the fierceness of
man to His praise, and by the blind and reluctant
labours of the wicked, to work out His own holy
wiU, and the general happiness of His creation?
what wonder that He should, in like manner, em
ploy the envy and malice of His apostate angels,
and endure, with much long-suffering, those vessels
of wrath fitted for destruction, to the intent that,
by their means, the patience of His saints may be
known, and that they whom He thinks fit to lead
through a state of trial, may, hke their Divine Mas
ter in His human nature, be made perfect through
suffering !
I am not pleading the cause of those revolting ex
crescences with which the doctrine in question has,
from time to time, been defaced and encumbered-
We may dismiss to the abodes of error and super
stition the foolish and wicked fables which have.
alarmed our childhood, and been, to our youth, the
occasion of mockery. We shaU even do well to
distinguish carefully the little which God's word dis
closes as to the invisible world, from the adventur
ous conjectures of the ancient fathers, and the glow
ing dreams of Milton and Klopstock. Of the par
ticular crime or crimes which first deprived these
angels of God's favour ; of their previous rank, and
of the exact degree of power which they are still

94 SERMON IV.
permitted to exercise ; of the mode of their present
existence, whether purely intellectual or united to
some subtile vehicle ; of the means by which they
communicate with, and tempt the soul, and the in
fluence which they exert over the material frame of
nature; whether any portion of God's threatened
wrath has already been poured out on them ; or
whether they have tasted as yet no more than the
expectation of judgment to come, too little is re
vealed in Scripture to enable us to decide, and they
are subjects on which we may well continue igno
rant. It is enough for us to know, and thus much,
it may be thought, is clearly communicated in Scrip
ture, that our dangers are great, and our adversaries
mighty and numerous.
For as we cannot impute to the inspired teachers
of our faith a design to scare us into our duty by
disproportionate descriptions of our perU, we must
conclude that the alarming language which the Holy
Ghost employs on this subject, is more, far more,
than an ornament of rhetoric or poetry. " The
prince of the power of the air," " the great dra
gon," the " god of this world ;" these are no words
of common terror; and that fury which is com
pared to " a roaringhon," that tyranny from which
we daily pray to " be delitered," must needs be one,
to cope with which the best exertions of our natu
ral and celestial strength are no more than suffi
cient.* And since seven of these spirits are, in
* Ephes. ii. 2. Rev. xii. 3. 2 Cor. iv. 4. 1 St. Pet. v. 8.
St. Matt, vi, 13.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 95
Scripture, assigned to the affliction of a single ob
scure individual ; since over another so mighty a
company kept watch as to deserve the name of
" legion," we may well conclude that the entire
army is great when such detachments as these are
allotted to so trifling enterprises*. The parts, in
deed, of tempter and accuser, which are, of all
others, most frequently ascribed to Satan by the
Holy Ghost, inasmuch as they imply, if not the con
tinual, at least the very frequent, presence, and
prompting, and superintendence of such an agent
with every one of us, may convince us (since ubi
quity is the property of God alone) that the name
of Satan is, as I have observed, applied to many in
dividuals, and that these individuals are sufficiently
numerous to lay siege to every heart, and keep a
watch over every action of mankind. -
From these persuasions, however, many impor
tant consequences follow, and many thoughts may
be suggested by them, which cannot but be ex
tremely usefiil in the government of our lives and
tempers^ The assurance that our wrestling is
" not with flesh and blood," may dispose our hearts
to forgive those visible and mortal adversaries, who
are, in fact, nothing more than the tools of that
immortal and malignant being, who reaps his hor
rible harvest of sin and misery alike by their injus
tice, and by our immoderate resentment. Fling a
stone at a dog and he wUl bite the stone ; surely,
no less irrational is our behaviour when, permitting
*St. Luke viii. 2. St. Mark v. 9.

96 SERMON IV.
ourselves to be overcome of evil, we rage against
such of our brethren as the tempter employs to
Jbuffet us ; who are, by so much the more worthy
objects oT our pity, by how much the more unjustly
he has induced them to hate and injure us. Our
warfare is not with flesh and blood, nor can we
better prepare ourselves for the struggle than by a
careful distinction, both in our thoughts and our
prayers, between our apparent and our actual ene
mies. It may, secondly, tend, in no inconsiderable de
gree, to unmask the danger and deformity of sin, if
we steadily bear in mind whose counsels they are
which seel^ to draw off our souls from God, by what
motives those offers of pleasure and power are dic
tated, by which the tempter appears to consult our
present ease or to provide for our future gratifica
tion. The advice and caresses of an enemy are, to
a prudent man, an additional motive for distrust
and circumspection; and when a thought is sug
gested to us which would lead to a compromise or
desertion of our duty, it may often be useful to ask
the question of our hearts, " Who is it that is urging
me thus, and wherefore does he urge me .'' Can I
beheve that he has my comfort or advantage in
view ? that he can really desire to make my task of
duty easier, or to smooth my road to heaven .f"'
t' Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of
any bird,"* and a deep-rooted conviction of Satan's
presence and agency in those gilded and flowery
* Prov. i. 17.

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 9^
toils which he daily spreads before our path, would
in itself be almost sufficient to deliver " our souls
from the snare of the fowler."
When, thirdly, we acknowledge the numbpr and
power of those tempters to whom the name of Satan
is Applied, how strange and awful a prospect of
things is opened to our mental view ! How popu
lous, how vital is the World ! By what a cloud of
witnesses are our most secret actions observed, and
our most lonely hours begirt by how many unseen
companions ! Not a thought passes over our minds
which may not be prompted by some unseen ad
viser ; not a breeze fans our cheek but it may bring
some airy visitant. Many of these, no doubt, are
faithful servants of God, and feUow-servants of those
who bore the testimony of Jesus ; but how many
are there also who hover round to work our ruin,
and who exult, with hideous joy, over every crime
we commit, and every misfortune which befalls us !
And surrounded by so many and so great dangers,
by enemies so numerous and so powerful, is it not
our duty, nay, are we not in common prudence
called on, to betake ourselves to religion and the
protection of Christ, not only as the surest means
of pleasing God, but as a present refuge and sanc
tuary .'' If We desire that the adversary should have
no advantage over us, with how great earnestness
should we seek that God who is a strong tower of
defence to all that trust in Him ; and the shelter of
that name to which aU things in Heaven and on
earth, and under the earth, do bow down ,'*
VOL. T. o

98 SERMON IV.
Let no man mistake my apprehensions! No
slavish fears, no trifling superstition can follow from
such views, when regulated by reason and Scripture.
The sense of His power and presence, in whose
sight both men and angels are as nothing, will at
once extinguish, in a well-regulated mind, all idle
dread of what either men or angels may meditate
against us ; while the notions which His word has
taught us to entertain of evil spirits are, of them
selves, sufficient to discredit the ordinary tales of
witchcraft and apparitions. These warriors of dark
ness, these princes of the power of the air, will they
lend their strength to the caprices of an earthly
enchanter ? WUl they stoop from their whirlwind
to rustle in a hermit's ceU .-* Their schemes of de
struction are, surely, on a subhmer scale ; and, if it
be true, (which I wiU not either assert or deny)
that their agency extends to the material as weU as
the moral world, we may expect, at least, to trace
it in actions widely different from those which can
not be heard without disdain. Nor is there any
circumstance which has contributed more than
these idle legends to a habit, of which the impro
priety is too little feh, even by the devout and vir
tuous ; the habit, I mean, of speaking of the de
stroyer in terms of pleasantry and ridicule; of
mingling his name with our mirth and with our
familiar and idle conversation.
Such language, to say the least of it, betrays a
light and inadequate view of the danger from which
we daUy pray to be delivered ; and by diminishing

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 99
our apprehension of the devil's snares, must dimi
nish our watchfulness and our security. But, in
truth, I am not sure but such expressions are in
themselves, and of their own nature, evU. i Sinners
as we are, it is not for us to treat with scorn even
the worst and most wretched of God's creatures, ,
and that spirit against whom the archangel would
not bring a railing accusation, is by no means a
proper subject for the laughter of fools, or the
songs of the drunkard.*
While, however, the recollection of our own
weakness, and of the former dignity of the fallen
. spirits, should restrain us from regarding them with
any other feehngs than compassion and self-abase
ment, the consideration of their malice and power,
when compared with the protection which we enjoy
in the present world, and the victory which is pro
mised us in the world to come, wiU be, to a well-
regulated mind, the source of abundant thankful
ness to that God, who hath not given us over as a
prey unto their teeth, and to that blessed Son who,
to save us from their mahce, hath humbled Himself
* Michaelis Jubr. vol. iv. p. 392, goes much further than I
have done. " I really think" (are his words) " that they trans-
gress the bounds of propriety who make it their business, either
in the pulpit or in their writings, to represent the devil as an ob
ject of detestation ; since, notwithstanding his fall, he is still a
being of a superior order." How we can do otherwise than
regard the devil as an object of detestation, I do not know ; but
without laying any stress on his present dignity, his fall may well
operate on us as an awful warning, nor have we any right to
insult the fallen.

100 SERMON IV.
to endure its violence. Were human weakness and
folly opposed unaided to the^^power and craft of
angels, the contest were, indeed, without hope,
But, God be praised, it is not in our own strength
that we are to contend with them. We fight under
the banner of Christ our Lord, and the armour
which His grace supplies to us is proof against all
their terrors. WhUe, therefore, the recoUection
that we wrestle with principalities and powers should
make us sober and watchful unto prayer, the means
of defence which we have received from the Most
High should remove from us aU desponding
thoughts, and warmi our inmost souls with a holy
hope of victory.
But let us remember that this hope must needs
be vain, unless our own exertions correspond with
it, and that it is by a faithful perseverance in the
works and warfare of a Christian, that our salvation
must be secured. The helmet, the breastplate, the
sandals of peace, which decorate the soldier of the
Messiah, these are not a clothing adapted for sleep
or revelry. The faith which is our shield is useless,
if we suffer it to hang idle by our sid.^!'; and our
knowledge of the Scripture is but a sheathed sword,
unless we wield it against the destroyer. Nor, let
us forget that, even thus provided, we cannot hope
of ourselves to help ourselves, and that our mortal
courage and our celestial panoply must both alike
be vain, unless we frequently ^support the one and
renew the other by the holy influences of Christ's
guitar and sacrifice, and by that fervent prayer, which

ON THE EXISTENCE OF EVIL SPIRITS. 101
can call down the Captain of our salvation to our
rescue, and interpose the promise of the Most True
God between ourselves and our spiritual enemies.
And to Him, the Seed of the woman, and bruiser
of the serpent's head, to Him, from the inhabitants
of every world, and element, and sun, and star, and
from all who dwell on the earth, above, or under
it, be ascribed, as is most due, with the Father and
the Holy Ghost, all might, aU honour, glory, and
dominion now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON V.

ON THE INSPIRATION OP THE PENTATEUCH..
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, November 10, 1822.]

Exodus iii. 14.
And God said unto Moses, I am that I am ; and He said.
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, 1 am hath
sent me unto you.
In considering these words of God to His servant
Moses, there are three points to which I am chiefly
anxious to caU your attention. They are, first,
what grounds we have for believing that such a
communication was actually made to Moses ; se
condly, the character and rank of the celestial per
son by whose immediate agency it was made; and
thirdly, the meaning of the communication itself,
and its moral and religious consequences. And
though these topics have been so often and so ably
discussed, that little novelty or illustration of argu
ment can be expected on any of them, yet the en
deavour may, by God's blessmg, be not without
its use, to present in a compendious form to my
younger hearers some of the most striking evi
dences of that earlier creed on which our own is

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 103
mainly founded ; to point out in one conspicuous
instance, the connexion which subsists between the
Mosaic and the Christian economy, and to refresh
in our minds that recoUection of God's nature and
attributes in which both Jew and GentUe have, in
all ages, been equally concerned.
It is true, indeed, and it is an observation which
it is wise as well as candid to bear in mind, that
our faith in the Lord Jesus may be satisfactorUy
defended by the internal and external evidence of
the New Testament alone, though we should aban
don as spurious or apocryphal the volume of the
law and the prophets. It was thus that very many
of the ancient heathen were converted who cannot
have been acquainted to any great extent, with the
sacred writings of the Jews ; and it was thus that
some early sects to .whom, notwithstanding their
errors, it would be unjust to deny the name of
Christian, rejected the inspiration of the books of
Moses as at variance with those Platonic preju
dices* which were among the greatest hindrances
which the Gospel had at first to encounter.
But though it be possible to receive the Christian
faith without acknowledging the previous claims
of the Mosaic theology, and though the defence of
* Epiphanius Heir. Ixi. 74. Aiyii o auTos Motv7)f, ou 86vutm Ins
SiSadxaXoM sfvai *aXaia xai xaivi^ Aiafl^xi) — §. 75. AsvSpsdiv S^ i^r]-
ga(A(*svo(g xaj ysyjjjaxoViv &/i(SixliX,Si tfaXiv vo'fiov xai 'ifgofpijTas. Ire-
n»us, 1. i. § 24. [Basilides] prophetias a mundi fabricatoribus
fuisse ait principibus, proprie autem Legem a principe ipsorura.
See also §. 29, &c.

104 SERMON IV.
the one would not be desperate even if the othef
were unknown or abandoned, yet it is certain that
by such an abandonment we should rob Christi
anity of that most powerful and convincing support
which is afforded by the unbroken chain of pro
phecy ; that we should rehnquish the most valuable
commentary which God has furnished on the reli
gion of His Son ; and that, since the first teachers
of Christianity so often appeal to the authority of
the law in order to establish their own Divine com
mission, we must, if the law be abandoned, en
danger, in no smaU degree, their inspiration or their
sincerity. When, therefore, we defend the Divine
titiginal of the Jewish creed, we are defending, in
fact, our own ; — and with this impression I will
now submit to your consideration some few of those
arguments which atise from the internal evidence
of Scripture to establish the fact that Moses was
really so honoured by God as is related in the third
chapter of Exodus.
It may, in the first place, be maintained on
grounds which wiU hardly be disputed or impugned
by a candid unbeliever, that the account contained
in the Jewish Scriptures of the parentage and edu
cation of Moses, of the authority which he acquired
over the Israelitish tribes, and the religious and
political system which they received from him is,
in its essential points at least, and its leading and
general outlines, accurate. I wiU not discuss the
truth or falsehood of that supernatural machinery
by which, if we believe the sacred historian, the

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 105
mission of Moses was announced and ratified.
Those marvels vfhich were, to their immediate wit
nesses, the most appropriate and convincing evi
dence that Moses was sent by God, are to us, in
themselves,'the subjects of faith alone, which can
not be brought forward as proofs of that history on
whose credit we receive them. But if they cannot
be adduced as proofs, neither can they be reason
ably objected to as impeachments of the historic
credibihty of the Pentateuch, since, if we can esta
blish by any other means the Divine commission
of Moses, such wonders, as a consequence and ac
companiment of that commission, become at once
(if I may use the expression) natural, while much,
very much will remain in the Mosaic volume from
which we cannot reasonably withhold our belief,
even though we should regard as exaggerated or
fabulous " the ten wounds which tamed the River-
Dragon,"* and the mighty arm of God which was
made bare in the Red Sea and in the wUderness.
In aU ancient histories there is a frequent recur
rence of prodigies. And it is a question which
unbelievers riiight do weU to weigh attentively, whe
ther this prevalence, in every nation of mankind, of
similar traditions or assumptions, may not be rea
sonably regarded as one proof of a common origin,

-" Thus with ten wounds

The River Dragon tam'd, at length submits
To let his sojourners depart." — Par. Lost, xii. 190.
See Ezek. xxix. 3.
VOL. I. P

106 SERMON y.
and as the recollection of some earher age when
those occurrences were real and frequent, of which
the priestcraft of a letter day was no more than a
spurious copy } Imposture is often the shadow of
truth ; nor is it easy to conceive how the idea first
arose of claiming, however falsely, an intercourse
with the invisible world, unless our species had
been really at one time admitted to converse with
angels and with God, and the fact had thus been
ascertained and generally understood, that such an
intercourse was not incredible. But, be this as it
may, it will be granted that, in whatever histories
such supernatural revelations are found (though we
should regard these particular passages as, in them
selves, uncertain or incredible), we do not, there
fore, reject the facts which the same writers record,
so far as those facts are consistent with general ex
perience, and confirmed by external testimony. We
believe that Cyrus conquered Sardis,andthat Romu
lus founded the city which bears his name, though
we reject as fabulous the miraculous deliverance of
CrcBsus from the flames, and the wolf by which the
Italian chief is said to have been fostered. And (to
select a more modern example, and one which so
far resembles the case of Moses, as it involves, like
his, a claim to celestial inspiration,) we believe the
circumstances contained in what may be called the
civU biography of Mahomet, though we deny that
his nightly solitude was visited by the Angel Ga
briel; that he hid the moon in his sleeve, and was
carried on a winged mule to Paradise. And, in

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 107
like manner, the most suspicious sceptic may ad
mit, (however his belief be, for the present, with
held from the supernatural parts of the Mosaic
narrative) that Moses was born of Hebrew parents ;
that he was brought up by an Egyptian princess
among the priests and sages of her country ; that
he remained during many years an exUe in Arabia,
from whence he returned, at an advanced age, as
the teacher of a new religion; that he conducted a
mighty multitude of oppressed peasants from Egypt
to the borders of Palestine ; and on their way de
livered to them, amid the valleys of Mount Sinai,
those laws which, in after ages, distinguished the
Israelites from the rest of mankind.
To such an assent, indeed, every rational in
quirer will be guided by the consistency of the ac
count here given with the current traditions of the
heathen world, no less than by the demonstrable
antiquity of the Pentateuch, and its candour and
simplicity. All heathen authors with whom I have
met agree that the Jews went forth from Egypt to
Palestine, and that they received from Moses the
ritual of their solitary God. That this Moses was
a priest or learned man of Hehopolis, and that his
departure from Egypt was preceded by circum
stances of great distress to the Egyptian nation,
were recorded or admitted by aU the chroniclers to
whom Josephus and Eusebius refer; while even
the learned and indefatigable hostility of Apion
was able to elicit no other tradition from the native

108 SERMON V.
authorities ^vhich he consulted.* That by these
last some important circumstances were forgotten
or suppressed, and many odious and improbable
particulars engrafted on the simple Mosaic history,
we shaU not think strange if we consider the lapse
of ages which had intervened, and the mutual irri
tation under which the Israelites had parted with
their task-masters. But that Moses really existed,
and was nearly such a person as is described in the
Sacred Volume, is as strongly confirmed by external
and even by hostile evidence, as can be reasonably
expected in transactions of such extreme antiquity.
But the demonstrable antiquity of the work in
which this account is given affords a yet stronger
presumption of its general and historic accuracy.
Even if we should take the latest date which infi
delity has assigned for the composition pf the Pen
tateuch, and grant (which can only be granted for
the purposes of temporary argument) that Ezra
was its compUer, we have stUl a compUation co
eval with the reign of Artaxerxes Longimanus, and
older, by some years at least, than the oldest hea
then historian. And since it is certain that, from
very high antiquity, the art of alphabetical writing
was known to the nations of Phcenicia and Pales
tine ; since experience proves that, wherever men
can write at aU, they begin with writing down the
* Tacitus, Hist. iv. 3. Justin. Hist. 1. xxxvi. Joseph, contra
Apion, 1. i. § 26. ii.§.2. See also Eusebius, Praepar. Evang.ix.8.

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 109
names and exploits of their ancestors; and, since
the successive and gradual transportation of the
nobles, the kings, the priests, and the archives of
Judah to Babylon, before the final ruin of their city
by Nebuchadnezzar, removed the greatest and only
danger to which such documents had, in their in
stance, been exposed, it would be idle to deny the
probable existence, in Ezra's time, of many authen
tic historical documents, or to refuse to the most
celebrated of Jewish scribes that credit as a collec
tor of his nation's antiquities, which we assign to
Livy in the Roman, or to Diodorus in the Grecian
history. But, though a high degree of credit would have
fairly attached itself to whatever even Ezra had
related concerning the origin of the Hebrew repub
lic, there are many circumstances which compel
us to ascribe the Pentateuch to another and a far
earlier author.
We have, first, the acknowledgedwritingsof Ezra
himself and his contemporary and coadjutor Nehe-
miah, detailing with much minuteness the measures
which they jointly and severally pursued for the
restoration of the Jewish"polity. But by neither is
the most distant allusion made to that which, if real,
would have been the most iUustrious of Ezra's
labour^, the coUection and digest of the ancient
national history and jurisprudence. Nor, though
both Ezra and Nehemiah repeatedly mention that
"Book of the Law" which Ezra read and expounded

110 SERMON V.
to the people, do they ever intimate that he had
himself compiled the work in question from the
songs of the ancient bards, or the traditions of the
wise men before the captivity.
WiU it be said that Ezra was the rebuilder of a
decayed superstition ; that it was necessary for him
to support his new made code by the venerable
name of Moses, and to merge the vanity of an au
thor in the darker pride of a successful imposter .''
Yet surely, when a book of great pretended anti
quity was to be obtruded on a nation who had never
heard of it before, it would have been necessary, in
order to secure its reception at aU, to render some
account of its loss and subsequent recovery. We,
surely, should have been told how " Ezra the ser
vant of the Lord was guided to the tomb of MoSes;"
how the precious manuscript of their great prophet
was discovered among the ruins of their former
temple; or how that book which the priests of
elder time had concealed from profane curiosity
was to be exposed at length to the devout exami
nation of the multitude of faithful Israelites !
But of this sort of juggling there remains not the
smaUest vestige. Both Ezra*and Nehemiah speak
of the book of the law as of a composition with
which those to whom they write had already been
long familiar; as one which, sixty years before,
had directed the proceedings of Jeshuah and Ze-
rubbabel in their consecration of the second temple;
and which had been aU handed down from the re-

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. Ill
motestj antiquity, as the genuine work of their
inspired legislator.*
Nor is this aU. The books of Moses are far
from standing alone or unsupported in the canon
of the Old Testament. There are others there
which no sceptic has yet apprehended to be the
works of Ezra, or of any other than the authors to
whom they are usually attributed. The book of
Joshua contains the strongest internal evidence of
having been written while the harlot Rahab
was yet ahve, and by one who had himself passed
over Jordan with the Israelitish army. Those
of the Kings are certainly not Ezra's composi
tion, inasmuch as they are not infrequently at
variance with Ezra's own statements in his Books
of Chronicles. No imposters (I might say no num
ber of imposters) could have counterfeited the local
and temporary aUusions, the vast variety of style, of
sentiment and circumstance, which are found in
the different moral and prophetic writings, from the
polished elegance of Solomon to the homely vigour
of Ezekiel ; from the querulous language of Jere
miah to the fiery majesty of the evangelical pro
phet, and from the calm didactic morality of Asaph
to the songs of David, abounding in every beauty of
which lyric poetry is susceptible. AU these writers,
however, and others whom I have not instanced,
alike refer to the law of Moses as a written volume ;
* Psalm xl. 7. Joshua i. 8. 2 Kings xxiii. 2. Ezra vi. 18.
Dan. ix. 11.

112 SERMON V.
and we have thus a chain of evidence to its anti
quity, ascending from the time of Ezra himself,
to a period when the memory of Moses must have
been yet green, and his actions and character fami
liar, when some must have survived who had shared
his last benediction, or who had witnessed his firm
step and vigorous old age as he climbed the steep of
Pisgah.* And this, it may be observed, wiU shew
the weakness of Volney's hypothesis, which regards
the Pentateuch as a compilation made after the
return of the Jews from Babylon.! That hypothesis
is, indeed, confuted by the total silence of Jere
miah, the son perhaps, but certainly the contem
porary of this same Hilkiah, the whole purport of
whose writings is to enforce, with pathetic denun
ciations of vengeance, the observation of the laws of
Moses. But there is no single passage in aU his
fifty-four chapters ; nor is there a single passage in
any of the prophets who lived during the Babylo
nian captivity, in which this law is spoken of as a
matter of recent discovery ; in which they deplore
the carelessness of their fathers who had suffered so
precious a document to fall into oblivion ; in which
they extol the mercies of God who restored it to
their generation ; or magnify the zeal and diligence
of those good men by whom it had been so recently
snatched from the dust of the sacred archives. On
the contrary, they aU speak of the law as Ezra did
afterwards, Tind as David had done before them, as
* Deut. xxxiv. 1.7. + Voyage de Volney, t. iii. p. 115.

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 113
a work familiar to their nation from its first politi
cal existence, and the transgression of which was
not more the sin of one generation of Israelites .
than of another. It is evident, therefore, that (how
ever the accidental discovery of a very ancient copy
of the law, perhaps the autograph of Moses him
self, may have excited in Josiah's mind a greater
attention to its contents than had been excited by
the usual copies in circulation,) it was no new work,
•vhich in his days the high priest discovered in the
Temple,* nor could Hilkiah have, by any possi
bility, been the forger of a volume which many hun
dred years before his time had been read by Joshua
and by David.
It is true that some sceptics have attempted to
distinguish between the legal and historical parts of
the Pentateuch, and, while they aUowed the former
to be the genuine work of Moses, have ascribed to
Hilkiah, or to Ezra, all those passages which fall
under the second description.! But, first, it was a
legal, not an historical passage, by the recital of
which Hilkiah so strongly excited the alarms of his
sovereign. So far, therefore, as Hilkiah is con
cerned, he had no interest in, no conceivable mo
tive for the historical forgery which is ascribed to
* 2 Chron. xxxiv. 14.
f Vandale, Dissert, de Idololatria, p. 685 — 7. Vides interim.
Celeberrime Vir, me distinguere Codicem Legis:^ Pentateucho.
Quod porro attinet ad Pentateuchum, is, certe, imhi compositus
videtur ab Esdra Scriba. So also Hobbes and Spinosa, referred
to by Kidder ; Dissertation concerning the Author of the Penta
teuch, xxiv.
VOL. I. Q,

114 SERMON V.
him. And, secondly, in the case of Ezta, the dif
ficulty is apparent of separating the laws them
selves from the circumstahces which caUed them
forth, and which can only SatisfactorUy account for
their repetitions, their rediindancieSj their very de
fects, (for to such occasional defects I am not insen
sible,) as a regular system of jurisprudence. Thii*dly,
the same precise name of "the Law," ilTirt/l, Ha
Thorah, which the modern Jews, and the writers
of the New Testament apply to the Pentateuch ili
its present state, is applied to the volume as it ex
isted in the days of Isaiah, of Micah, and &f Joshua.
Fourthly, it has never been pretended that the
poetical and prophetic writings of the Old Testa
ment were composed by Ezra, or by any other than
those persons whose names they bear ; the writings
of Ezra (in the book that is called after hiih, and
the two books of Chronicles, which present every
internal evidence of proceeding from the saihe
author,) though extremely pious, plain, and sensi
ble, do not bear any marks of the pefculiar genius,
the touching simplicity, the powerfbl description,
the mihtary and political intelligence, the animated
eloquence, and impassioned poetry, which distin
guish, in a remarkable degree, the historical chap
ters of the books of Moses. But it is certain that
almost aU the writers from David and Asaph down
to Haggai, the contemporary of Zerubbabel, abound
in references and aUusions not Only to the legal
but the historical parts of the Pentateuch. Thus
the garden of God, and its covering or guardian

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 115
•cherubim, are spoken of by Ezekiel as topics
which those whom he addressed understood with
out explanation. The manner of Abraham's caU is
noticed by Isaiah, and the various passages in
Jacob's hfe by Hosea. The peculiarities of Mel-
chizedech's character and situation were known to
David ; and the covenant which God made with Abra
ham to all the Jewish prophets. All, or nearly ^1,
mention the destruction of the offending cities of
the Pentapolis. To the captivity in Egypt allusions
occur in the Psalms, in the prophecy of Micah, (the
contemporary of king Jotham,) in Isaiah, who pro
phesied in the days of Uzziah, and in Jeremiah,
who lived during the reign of the Jewish monarchy,
The passage of the red sea, and the miracles
wrought in the wilderness, are celebrated by Asaph,
David, Isaiah, Amos, Habakkuk, and Micah. —
Micah ipeaks also of the malice of Balak and Ba
laam.* If it were contended that the Pentateuch
of Ezra was copied from the same traditions to
which, and not to that Pentateuch, these passages
of the prophets allude, it would, at least, establish
the credit of Ezra as a faithful coUector of ancient
* Ezek. xxviii. 14. Isa. xxix. 22. Hosea xii. 2 — 4. 12. Psalm
ex. 4. Ixviii. 7. Ixxvii. passim. Ixxx. 8. Ixxxi. 5.' Micah vi- 4.
vii. 15. 20. Isa. iv. 5. Ixiii. 11. et sequ. Jer. ii. 6. xvi. 14. xxxi.
32. Amos ii. 10. iii. 1. v. 25. Habbak. iii. 3 — 15. Haggai ii. 5.
Micah vi. 5. The number of these citations might be greatly en
larged, but from the Psalms I have oply adduced those which
bear the names of David and Asaph, and I have avoided all those '
references in the other prophets which might admit of hesitation
or ambiguity.

116 SERMON V.
history. But the coincidence not only of facts but
expressions, is, in many^ of these instances, too
clo^to admit of this solution ; and it would even,
I apprehend, be possible to show, by a collection
of the passages to which I refer, on the same plan
with Lardner's " CoUections of Citations of the New
Testament in the Christian Fathers," that the pro
phets before Ezra had both seen and quoted the
Mosaic history, a proof which would in itself be
decisive of the question whether Ezra were the
author of the Pentateuch. Fifthly, it might be
asked, why, if Ezra were really engaged in so great
a work as that of coUecting and arranging the scat
tered and neglected annals of his country, why is
no mention made of this illustrious labour, either
in the acknowledged writings of Ezra himself, or
those of his coadjutor Nehemiah .-* Surely, if he
did it openly, and as a faithful antiquary, iPwas at
least as well worth recording as his exactness in
weighing out the gold of the temple, or his dUi-
gence in the public exposition of the law. Or, if •
he should be suspected of having imposed his col
lection on the world as the original work of Moses,
yet would the previous loss and fortunate discovery
of such an inestimable manuscript have been surely
noticed with some degree of parade by those who
thus sought to deceive, not only their contempo
raries, but posterity.
As, therefore, neither the composition nor the
discovery of the records now caUed Mosaic, is no
ticed either by Ezra or Nehemiah, it is next to

INSPIRATION OF 'ITIE PENTATEUCH. 117
certain that no such composition or pretended dis
covery took place at the time of which we are speak
ing ; and that the Pentateuch, as we now receive it,
must have proceeded from a more ancient author.
Above aU, however, it should be recoUected that
these books, in their present form, are received not
only by the Jews and Christians, but, with some few
and unimportant variations, by the Samaritans also.
Now there are only three points of time at which
there is the remotest likehhood that such a volume
could have obtained a sacred authority among these
inveterate enemies of the Jewish name and nation;
the first when the Cuthoean settlers were converted,
by the orders of Shalmanezer king of Assyria, to a
corrupt and mutilated Judaism ; the second when
Josiah reformed, by a short-lived and violent exer
tion of authority, the religious rites of the scattered
remnant of Israel ; the third when Manasseh the
son of Jehoida apostatized from the worship of his
ancestors, and established his schismatical temple
on the summit of mount Gerizim.* But if, with
Vandale and Simon, we take the last of these dates,
it is evident that Manasseh (degraded as he had
been from his priestly character and his hereditary
rank in the state, by Ezra's influence and authority)
would never have taken with him to the sect and
city of his i?efuge, a Scripture of Ezra's composition,
or which, on Ezra's testimony alone, was received
as the work of Moses. He would rather, it may be
* 2 Kings xvii. 27, 28. xxiii. 2, 3. 2 Chron. xxxiii. 4, &.

118 SERMON V.
thought, have made the novelty of His Scripture a
pretext (and a very plausible pretext it would have
been) for the separation which he was meditating.
Had Laud, for instance, composed a body of eccle
siastical history, it will hardly be said that the
puritans were likely to have adopted it as a text
book. And if Manasseh did really introduce the
Pentateuch to the knowledge and veneration of the
Samaritans, he can only have done so because it
was a work in prescriptive possession of the minds
of men, and one to which both Ezra and his
opponents alike deferred as of ancient and sacred
authority. But, in truth, if we believe with the
universal stream of Hebrew tradition, that the
square or Babylonian letters were invariably em
ployed by the Jewish scribes, from the time of tjie
removal of their nation to Shinar ; it is apparent
that the more ancient and uncouth Phcenician cha
racter, in which the Samaritan Pentateuch stiU
remains, is an evidence as satisfactory as can be
reasonably expected, that this last nation did not
derive their Scripture from Manasseh or any other
Jew of the second temple.
I am aware, indeed, that there are critics, who
have attempted to show, from some remarkable
false readings of the Samaritan Pentateuch, that it
must have been originally copied from some manu-
script in the Babylonian letter,* But, for such a
* Prideaux ubi supra, p. 597-8. In opposition to whom see
the admirable and convincing statement in Walton's Prolego
mena to the Polyglott, ix. 74.

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 119
transfer from a beautiful and convenient to a sin
gularly rude and perplexing alphabet, no reasofi
has been assigned, and it would be, apparently, not
easy to find any; To the priests who apostatized
together with Manasseh, it would have been a
hitiderance instead c£ an advantage. To them a
translation of the Hebrew text might, indeed, have
been useful, and such a translation was, not toany
years after, prepared as an aid to those persons
whose office it was to interpret after the public
readers in the synagogue. But a mere transcrip
tion of the Same Hebrew text into the Samaritati
chafacter, would no more have enabled a Samari
tan to understand the Scripture, than a transcrip
tion of the text of Luther's Bible from Gothic into
Itahc letters, would confer on an Enghshman the
powel- of reading German. Nay, more, as the
Samaritan Pentateuch is without points, the public
reader would have been incompetent, however
famihar he might be with the alphabet, even to
pronounce by rote the words for which such letters
stodd, without a previous knowledge of the Hebrew
tongue. It is surely, therefore, more reasonable
to account, with Mede and with Walton, in ano
ther manner for the circumstances so much insisted
on ; to conclude with these eminent scholars, that
the Samaritans had really received their Pentateuch
before the captivity, and to make our choice be
tween the only two epochs which remain, that of
Josiah and that of Shalmanezer.
But the short reign (short at least for so great a

120 SERMON V.
work as the reformation of a national rehgion) and
the violent measures of Josiah, were little likely to
obtain any permanent veneration for a book inti:o-
duced by his authority. It was still less likely that,
acting on Jewish principles, he would feel any
anxiety for the instruction sum orthodoxy of the
heathen colonists of Assyria, and it is least likely
of all that his authority or his severities can have
extended over the garrisons of that conqueror to ^
whom he was himself a tributary. There is, surely,
then, abundant reason to conclude that the Sama
ritans received their sacred volume from the mis
sionary employed by their own monarch Shalman
ezer, to instruct the worshippers of Nergal and
Ashima, in the service of the God of the land in
which they were planted.
But this missionary was himself a schismatic, a
priest of the high places, a subject of the kingdom
founded by Jeroboam, brought up in hereditary
enmity against the house of David, and the priests
of the Lord at Jerusalem. From them we may
well believe such a person would adopt no novelties,
and we have therefore the best reason to conclude
that the Mosaic volume, as we now possess it, was
known and reverenced by the ten tribes of the
house of Israel, as weU as the two of Judah, and
must therefore have been received before the sepa
ration of the monarchy, and while all the twelve
tribes were under a common form of worship and
government. And, having thus far traced the entire Pentateuch

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 121
towards the age of its reputed author, I will ask
whether any moment can be named^ between the
age of Solomon and that of Moses, in which, (had
such a volume then first appeared, or had the law
received that species of historical interpolation which
the hypothesis that I am now examining supposes)
an occurrence so important to the religious opinions
of the Israehtes would not have been noticed by
some of their religious or historical writers ; I wUl
go farther, and will venture to assert that the mu
tual jealousy of the tribes, so apparent throughout
the whole history of the Judges, of Saul and David,
the scattered residence and alternate duties of the
priesthood, destroying aU unity of purpose, and ob
viously and admirably calculated to operate against
innovation of every kind, I wiU say that these cir
cumstances opposed a barrier, in the commonwealth
of Israeli to forgery or interpolation little less than
that which, in modern Christendom, preserves the
purity of the New Testament inviolate. Nor shall
I do more than barely notice the strong internal evi
dence afforded by the books of Moses of their hav
ing been written in the desert south-east of Pales
tine by one who was intimately acquainted with the
different productions and peculiarities both of Ara
bia and Egypt, and who himself bore a principal part
in the joQrney which he describes ; circumstances
both of character and situation which wiU suit few
other persons than Moses, and which no Israelite of
a later age was likely to have possessed or success
fully conterfeited.
VOL. I. R-

122 SERMON V.
But enough has, I trust, been said to establish the
antiquity of the Pentateuch; what further grounds
there are for belief in its veracity and inspiration,
may be examined in a future sermon. In the mean
time, and long as I have already trespassed on your
patience, I may yet, I trust, be pardoned if I earn
estly recaU your attention to that solemn connexion
which should subsist between the Christian's head
and his heart; between the evidences, the feelings,
and the habitual practice of our religion ! It is not
as a subject of antiquarian curiosity ; it is not as the •
earhest record of that picturesque and characteristic
style of manners for which the east is stiU renown
ed, of which the singularity arrests our attention,
and the simplicity appears to denote the youth and
freshness of society : it is not for their interesting
pathos, or the glowing strains of their poetry, that
the Christian is enjoined to give a portion of his day
to the records of an earlier revelation. It is there
that we should trace the wrath of God made mani
fest against a guiUy world; yet arrested, yet dis
armed, yet absolutely turned into blessing by the
effipacy of the foreseen atonement. It is there that
we should learn to appreciate the strength of hu
man passions, and the weakness of human virtue,
displayed in the melancholy story of the most fa
voured race of mankind, informed though they were
by an unbroken line of prophets, and chastised or
supported by a long succession of wonders and mi
racles. It is there that we should accustom our
selves to prize as they deserve our own advantages

INSPIRATION OF THE PENTATEUCH. 123
in Christ Jesus, when we compare the Israelite's
hope of a contingent with our confidence in a com
plete redemption ; and his erudition, through sym
bols and shadows, with our almost plenary admis
sion into the mysteries of the kingdom of God !
But if our elevation be great, let us recollect that
it may be also dangerous ; that of him to whom
much is given, our Master is accustomed to expect
the more ; and that the more iUustrious our insight
into the great and connected scheme of God's wis
dom, and justice, and mercy, the greater should be
our care that our knowledge may ripen into faith,
and our faith may bring forth fruits of daily and
hourly holiness. It should be ours to excel the
ancient Israehtes in our virtues as well as in our
privileges, and it should be ours (as sensible from
whence our virtues as well as our privileges are de
rived,) having done our all, to refer that all to the
grace, the merits, and the redeeming mercy of Him
whom Abraham was glad to behold from afar, for
whose kingdom the code of Mount Sinai was given
but to prepare the way ; and who was adored, in
His day of fleshly humility, by the glorified spirits
of Elias and of Moses !

SERMON VL

CHARACTER OF MOSES.
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, Nov. 17, 1822.]

Exodus iii. 14.
And God said iinto Moses, 1 Am That I Am, and He said,
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, 1 Am hath
sent me unto you.
In my discourse of last Sunday I endeavoured to
establish the great antiquity of the Pentateuch, and
the cqpsequent credibUity of the statement which it
contains as to the situation, the character, and the
personal history of Moses. I proved that the book
in question was reverenced by the nations both of
Judah and of Israel, from the time of their division
into separate and hostUe monarchies ; that before
this division, it was quoted by Solomon and by
David, and alluded to in the almost contemporary
history of Joshua; insomuch that no reasonable
doubt can exist that the work which is now read in
our churches is, in aU essential points, the same with
that which was a hght to David's path, and which

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 125
regulated the solemn act of confederacy between
Jehovah and his people in GUgal.* And it is pos
sible that, on this evidence alone, our behef in the
Divine mission of Moses might be suffered to repose
in safety. The events which his work records are
such as, if untrue, no contemporary writer could
have published without obtaining the name and
treatment of a madman ; while, if miracles be a
sufiicient test of a message from the Most High, few
greater or less equivocal miracles can be named
than are related in the books of Moses. I know it
has been sometimes attempted to soften down these
awful dispensations into a chain of natural pheno
mena, insisted on and exaggerated beyond their
actual amount or value by the fears of a supersti
tious crowd, and the fervour of oriental description.
But it would be no easy task to persuade a nation,
however superstitious or ignorant, that they or their
fathers had fed on manna for forty years together,
unless that production had reaUy abounded to a
degree which has never since been witnessed. And,
however the sceptic may attempt to rid himself of
the Egyptian plagues, the divided sea, and the
cloudy piUar, yet if it may be granted, which no
man denies, that the tribes of Israel were in the
desert at all, the supply of food in such a situation
(even during a far shorter time, and for a far less
enormous multitude) must, apparently, involve a
miracle. * Psalm cxix. 105. Joshua xxiv.

126 SERMON VL
But waiving, for the present, such discussions,
and assuming the truth of no other facts than those
of which any competent historian may be weU in
formed, and which no historian had any imagina
ble motive for misrepresenting, assuming only that
Moses was really such a person as is described in
his history ; so born of Israelitish parents ; so edu
cated by an Egyptian princess ; so long a resident in
Arabia; and under such circumstances the preacher
of such a theology ; even from these facts alone, as
recorded in the book of Exodus, a very cogent
presumption arises that he was really an inspired
messenger of the Most High. The reasons of this
opinion I will now proceed to lay before you.
In the case of aU pretensions to the prophetic
character, our belief of their truth or falsehood will
be, in a great measure, determined by the character
and situation of the person who brings them for
ward. And if we find in his general conduct no
tokens of weakness or enthusiasm, if we can disco
ver in him no views of personal interest or aggran
disement, and if he be found, even to his own dis
advantage, consistent in his pursuit of that object
which he professes to foUow, we are the more dis
posed to admit a possibility, at least, that his claim
may be not without foundation. But as to the ta
lents and genius of Moses, there can scarcely, with
the readers of his work, be more than one opinion;
an opinion ratified by the consent of aU ages and
aU religious parties, from the sceptics of the pre
sent day, to those ancient heathen writers who ad-

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 127
mitted that the lawgiver of the Jews was a man of
no common character, and who placed his name
and his image amid the most iUustrious of those
Ulustrious men who had restrained the passions
and improved the understandings of their fellow-
creatures. Nor are his apparent fairness and can
dour less remarkable than his talents. On the con
trary, there are few men who can possibly read over
the last four books of the Pentateuch without being
impressed by the little stress which its author lays
on his own achievements ; by the brevity observed '
on every subject not immediately connected with
his mission, and the simplicity which relates, with
out concealment or extenuation, those facts which
an artfiil advocate would have been likely to pass
over in sUence.
Of the first forty years of his life no more is told
us than that he was brought up by Pharaoh's
daughter. Of his situation and conduct during this
period some few circumstances have reaq^pd us
through other channels which, had it been the in
tention of the historian to give dignity to his own
character, would, probably, have found a place in
the narrative which I am now discussing. I wUl
not, indeed, insist on aU those traditionary honours
with which the countrymen of Moses have, in later
times, adorned him. I wiU not say with Josephus
that, whUe yet a child, he trampled on the Egyptian
diadem ; that he led forth in his early youth a vic
torious army against Ethiopia, and engaged by his
valour and personal accomplishments the affections

128 SERMON VL
of a Nubian princess.*, But there is certainly no
improbabihty in the opinion that he may have held
during this time a considerable rank under the
Egyptian monarchy. Even the acute and not over-
credulous Michaelis is disposed to believe that he
served in the armies of SesQstris. Manetho, though
for many reasons inclined to detract from his cha
racter, assigns him the rank of a priest in a country
where the priests were aU but sovereigns. And
that tradition, at least, is confirmed by the inspired
testimony of St. Stephen and St. Paul, which de
scribes him as " learned in aU the wisdom of the
Egyptians," as " mighty in word and deed," and as
re&sing to be adopted by Pharaoh's daughter, out
of regard for the honour of the line of Abraham.f
Of all these things, however, we find no mention
in the book of Exodus. And while so strict a si
lence is maintained concerning the early achieve
ments of Moses, the author speaks without reserve
of his personal defects and failings ; of his private
quarrels with his kindred; of the unwillingness
with which he, at first, undertook the message of
the Most High ; and of the indiscretion and want
of faith which shut him out from the land of Ca-
naan.J Surely this seeming candour and simplicity
may, in itself, go far to conciliate our belief for
many of the extraordinary things which he else
where relates to us.
* Joseph. Ant. II. ix. x. Id. cont. Apion, I. 26.
t Acts vii. 22. Heb. xi. 24.
± Exod. iv. 10. iv. 1. Num. xx. 12. 24. Deut. iv. 21.

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 129
NoP, further, is it easy to discover what motive
Moses can have had for counterfeiting a commis
sion from Jehovah, or leading out, under such pre
tence, the tribes of Israel into the wilderness. We
have no reason to believe that he was under any
disgrace at the courts of Memphis or of Thebes,
when he first, at the age of forty, took notice of his
afflicted brethren;* nor have we any need of such
a motive to account for a step which natural affec
tion must have prompted ; the wonder may rather
seem to be that he had not visited them before.
If, however, he at this time entertained any settled
plans for their emancipation, it is evident that the
first discouragement sufficed to make him abandon
them. He sets them, indeed an example of re
sistance to that oppression which ground them to
the dust ; or, to speak more accurately, a sudden
burst of indignation impels him to a homicide,
which, when committed, instead of glorying in, he
is anxious to conceal. He endeavours, also, to re-
concUe the differences, and, apparently, to arouse
them to a sense of that strength which arises from
union. But their first ingratitude deters him from
the attempt, and awakens him to a sense of his
danger. He flies into a distant region of Arabia,
where, during forty years, he continues entirely
separated from his famUy, till at an age when the
fever of enthusiasm has generally passed away, and
when men are seldom disposed or quahfied for a
* Exod. ii. 11.
VOL. I. S

130 SERMON VI.
difficuh and dangerous enterprise, he returnt to the
land where, if remembered at aU, he was remem
bered as a murderer, to persuade an oppressive
sovereign to permit a race of useful slaves to de
part from serving him.
In all this there is surely no appearance of worldly
eunning. Of worldly prudence there would be no
appearance, unless the individual who thus acted
had rehed on a power beyond his own. In Egypt,
at first, as the adopted son of a princess, an initiated
member of the ruUng caste, he had every motive
to desire the continuance of an order of things so
favourable to his views, whether of ambition or of
indulgence, or (if such were his turn of mind) of
tranqnil and studious retirement. In Midian he
was no needy adventurer.. He was the son-in-law
of ?i Shekh, entrusted with those flocks which are
the Arab's naost valued property ; he had a wife
and children ; nor does there seem any sufficient
reason why, at his advanced age, without such a
caU as he professed to have received, he should
have left tfie romantic vaUeys of Horeb on a dan
gerous and toilsome journey.* And what, let me
again inquire, was the object which he proposed to
himself in that journey.? There have, I know,
been many instances in which the breast of the
exile has been haunted by recoUections of home'
* See Patrick on Exod. ii. 16. for the rank of Jethro. The
beauty and luxiirianceof the valleys of Horeb are forcibly repre-
sented by Niebuhr. Reisebeschreibung, tom. i. p. 294. et seq.
And Miiller. Univers. Hist, book ix. sect. 4.

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 131
and where his longing after the scenes of infancy
and the friends of maturer age has dragged him
back, through every hazard, to the land of his for
mer happiness. But it was not in order to rerhain
in Egypt that Moses sought to return thither. It
was not to court again the favour of those whose
parents had protected his helpless childhood; it
was not to weave over again his ancient plans, if
such he had entertained, of advancement in the
state ; it was not to renew his former studies, and
to pass the short remnant of his days among his
early associates in the sacred shades of Memphis
or Hehopolis. He returned that he might lead
forth a band of stubborn and degraded slaves into
a wilderness, and invade, at their head, a well armed
and warlike nation, " a people great and taU, and
cities fenced up to Heaven."* Nor, even in his
fuUest tide of success, does his conduct intimate
a selfish ambition, or so much as what might be
caUed a natural desire for the interest and aggran
dizement of his family. If he etijoyed, in some re
spects, the power of a king, yet was he a king with
out guards, without pomp, without wealth or lux
ury. In the administration of justice he voluntarily
associated with himself the aristocracy of the tribes,
and a council fortuitously chosen. For his own
sons he obtained neither wealth, nor influence, nor
dignity of any kind ; and in allotting an hereditary
priesthood to his brother's children, he divided its
* Deut. ix. 1, 2,

132 SERMON VL
powers more accurately from those of the civil
governor than was done in any other nation of
antiquity.* But still, it may be said, though we allow that
Moses may have been actuated by patriotism only,
or by a generous thirst of fame, in his labours as a
leader and a lawgiver, stiU he may, like Numa or
Mango Capac, have pretended a divine authority,
in order to conciliate the respect, and compel the
obedience of an ignorant and ferocious people.
This has been the opinion usually professed by
the more candid and philosophical unbelievers;
and to this, even Josephus, in deference to his
heathen readers, has given an undue degree of
countenance.! But, had this been the case, a crafty lawgiver
would certainly have selected that system of theo
logy which was most adapted to the former preju
dices of those whomTie desired to persuade. At aU
events he would not have fixed on a scheme of faith
and worship which increased, by its repugnance
from all their previous habits, the unavoidable and
inherent difficulties of his undertaking. The people
* The judge or civil magistrate was, by the original Mosaic
constitution, supposed to be a layman, and, as such, distinguish
ed from the priest. Deut. xvii. 9 — 12. And though the priest
was his assessor, the authority of this last appears to have been
only circa res sacras.
¦j- Joseph, cont. Apion. Op. tom. ii. p. 482. Toiourog (j.ev Sij ng
auTog iifl.uv 6 vofjio^iT»)S, ou yitiS, oiS' d,*a^iuv,  aXV oiov ifaad ToTg
"EXXnitfiv aujfouo'iv <rov Mi'vw ysyovs'vai, xul jast' aMv rovs aXXouf
vof*ofl£rag, X. T. X.

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 133
to whom Moses came had sojourned for, at least,
two centuries (perhaps for four) in a land of poly-
theists and idolaters. They are expressly said to
have been addicted to those vanities of which the
sod of Egypt was, through aU ancient times, the
foul and fruitful mother. There was no single point
on which they were so much inclined to dispute the
authority of Moses as on the observance of that
pure and perfect theism which he laboured to intro
duce among them. When the prophet had been
absent though but for forty days, he found them
on his return, adoring the Egyptian Apis, and his
latter days wef e embittered by their headlong re
lapse into the worship of the idols of Moab. Nor
do we need any further proof of their deep-rooted
attachment to the superstitions of the land in which
they had so long sojourned, than the fact that three
fourths of the ritual laws enjoined them have refer
ence to the customs of Egypt either as articles of
peace, or as directly preventive and prohibitory.*
Under such circumstances, how gladly would a mere
worldly legislator have suffered their religious blind
ness to remain undisturbed, wMle he concentrated
his efforts to secure their temporal happiness ; and
have compounded for their false gods, so he himself
might hope to be reverenced and obeyed as a
deity !
But further, let us suppose that Moses might pos
sibly have been actuated not merely by patriotism,
but by such a degree of zeal for the doctrine of the
Divine Unity as might induce, without personal in-

134 SERMON VL
terest, or personal ambition, a man of powerful mind
and long experience to support a solemn truth
through the instrumentality of a hfe-long imposture.
Let us suppose all this (which of itself involves
something very like a contradiction, and which is
directly contrary to the practice Of those sages of
the western world who arrived, by whatever acci
dent, at a knowledge of the one Almighty Being,)
still it is plain that his sincerity alone would have
gone no gteat way in commanding success ; and
that he not only taught such a doctrine, but event
ually obtained its reception, may, under such cir
cumstances as I have mentioned, be well supposed
to imply that he had really some extraordinary and
supernatural means of persuading and compelling
the acquiescence of those around him.
But, StiU more, what probability (I will say what
possibility) was there that a man circumstanced like
.Moses, could, without a Divine Revelation, have
invented a religious system which neither acknow
ledged a plurality of gods, nor admitted any visible
symbol of the Deity .''
Moses was educated, from his early childhood, by
an Egyptian princess; he is represented by the
Egyptians themselves as a member of their priest
hood ; learned in aU their wisdom ; exercised in all
their doctrines ; and embued, it must almost neces
sarily foUow, with aU their predilections and their
prejudices. But though it is probable (as Jablonski
has maintained) that, amid their gross superstitions,
the Egyptians stUl preserved a dim alid twihght

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 135
knowledge of the one Supreme Deity, yet is it certain
that the service which belongs to Him alone they
had alienated to whole armies of imaginary or evil
demons ; and that of aU these subaltern immortals,
as AveU as of the great God and Father of aU, they
had adopted the most absurd and degrading symbols.
Now, if the understanding of Moses had not been
reaUy enlightened by a supernatural effiision of
knowledge, we should have expected in him either
a warm defender of those systems in which he had
been educated, or, at most, we should have ex
pected his Views of reformation to terminate with
the correction or abscission of some few of their
more disgusting extravagances. The doctrine of
one supreme and of many inferior deities is, of aU
erroneous opinions, that which unassisted reason is
least likely to refute ; inasmuch as there is nothing
in mere reason which forbids the possibility of a
gradation of beings in the unseen world, to whom ^
the government of God's works may be committed
by Him, and who, therefore, as exercising a discre
tionary power over those beneath them, may be no
improper objects of supplication or thanksgiving to
those who are dependent on their wiU. And though
the impropriety be more glaring which pictures God
in a bodily form, and offers our prayers to the life
less image ; yet so prone is man to assist his fancy
with these dangerous aUies, that neither polytheism
nor idolatry were discouraged or forsaken by those
ancient philosophers who possessed the clearest
views of the Divine Nature and Unity. It is thu.s

136 SERMON VL
that Pythagoras begins his code of morals^jtWith an
injunction to " worship the Gods " (in the plural
number) "according to the Grecian law." It is
thus that Plato, in his visionary repubhc, is actually
intolerant and persecuting towards those, whoever
they might be, who dissented from the popular ido^
latry ;* and it is thus that even the wise and con
scientious Socrates ended his life with an act of
worship to an inferior deity. All these indeed,
if not polytheists, were, in the Platonic sense of the
word, most strictly and conscientiously polydaemon-
ists; and none, however they might be disgusted
with the particular symbols employed by the Egyp
tian mystics, have expressed any horror of visible
representation in the abstract, whether of the lesser
gods, or of the Great and Parent Divinity.
We find, indeed, but too well, from the cor
ruption of many Christian Churches, how closely
both polytheism and idolatry are entwined with the
weakness of our mortal nature. We find, in the
example of our Greek and Roman brethren, how
strangely possible it is for the best hearts and the
strongest heads, assisted by the clearest hght of
revelation, to persist, nevertheless, in practices and
doctrines which generically, at least, if not specifi
cally, resemble those which in the law of Moses are
denounced as most displeasing to Jehovah. How
then shall we account for the fact that the eyes of
an Egyptian priest, four hundred years before the
* Plato : Phsedo.

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 137
Trojan J^ar, were open to those errors of which
neither Pythagoras, nor Socrates, nor Plato, nor
Porphyry, nor BeUarmine, nor Pascal, perceived
the falsehood and vanity; unless we admit the solu
tion which that priest himself has given us, that
God .revealed to him those truths, which, when dis
covered, seem so obvious to the reason of man, but
to discover which the unassisted reason of all man
kind has been ineffectual.
Is it said that the knowledge which Moses thus
imparted to others he might have himself received
from his ancestors of the House of Israel, from
those who had, perhaps, conversed with Levi, or
who had retained some tradition of the fact that
Jacob and Abraham had put away the Mesopota-
mian idols from their famUies .-* Let it be recol
lected that Moses was not brought up by his pa
rents; from his infancy his education had been
Egyptian, and till he was near forty years old, he
seems to have had little, if any, intercourse with
his enslaved and degraded countrymen ; even these
countrymen themselves, as is apparent from the
book of Joshua, were addicted, at the time of their
emigration from Egypt, to all the superstitions of
that country;* and the probabihty is but small that
Moses could have derived from them a system so
pure and perfect as that which he enforced on their
obedience in the wilderness. Nor have we any better
reason than a tradition of the modern rabbins for
* Joshua xxiv. 14. Ezek. xxiii. 3. 8.
VOL. 1. T

138 SERMON VI.
supposing that the tribe of Levi, or the femily of
Amram had escaped this general infatuation.*
In the narrative, indeed, which Moses has given
of his first vision in the valley of Horeb, he repre
sents both his countrymen and himself as, to that
moment, ignorant of the particular Deity who had
been worshipped by their Syrian ancestors : " When
I come unto the children of Israel, and shaU say
unto them, the God of your fathers hath sent me
unto you, and they shaU say to me what is His
name, what shall I say unto them .?"t But if either
the name of " Adonai," as appropriate to the Su
preme Being, or of " El Shaddai," by which God
had made Himself known to Abraham ; or if the
mere fact had been recollected that such a Divine
Person, distinct and differing from the usual deities
of the Egyptians, had been adored by their fathers
it is plain that neither the Israelites would have
required an explanation of this kind, nor would
Moses, in the event of their making the demand,
have been unable to give them satisfaction. And,
as no reason can be assigned why Moses either in a
real conversation with God, or in the narrative of a
pretended conversation with Him, should have as
sumed an ignorance which he did not feel, it follows
that he must, at this time, have been himself a
* Maimonides de Idololatria, I. § x. In mundo natio fuit quae
Deum novit, donee processere Israeli in.^gyptodies. Illic enim
redierunt ad discendos illorum mores et idola exemplo eorum
colenda, excepta tribu Levi.
t Exod. iii. 13,

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 139
polytheist as weU as the Egyptians, and have im
puted to some one of the many subordinate deities,
and not to the one Almighty, the Glory before
whose blaze he was standing.
We must, then, as I conceive, return to our late
alternative ; and if this vision were a fable, and if
the theology which Moses taught were not super-
naturally revealed to him, we must suppose att
Egyptian priest, with aUthe disadvantages and pre
judices of his age, his country, and his profession,
to have invented a purer creed than either Socrates
or Plato could conceive, and of which, with all their
light, the practice of many Christian sects falls
vastly short. And is not this more hard to believe
than that the Most High, in pity to the blindness
of His creatures, may have condescended to make
known to them in person His Divine Nature, and
the nature of that service which He requires from
them ? It may safely, then, be concluded, that the
narrative of Moses is true, that the vision which
he has described did really appear to him in Horeb^
arid that the message which he bore to his people
was truly from the Almighty.
On the second of those points to which I have
professed to caU your attention, the Person, namely-
who, imder such a form and in such words ad
dressed him, I should hardly have thought it neces
sary to bestow any time or argument ; content with
the determination of the most eminent Fathers, and
the great body of the Christian Church, that He
who is caUed by Moses, in one place, " Jehovah,"

140 SERMON VI.
and in another, " Jehovah's angel," is, in fact, no
other than the MeyaXrjs BouX^s "AyytXog of the early
Christians ; the N"|0 'jrj of the Rabbins, and the
" Son of Man " of Daniel; the person who, though
Himself divine and mysteriously connected with
the Deity, is yet the "Messenger," or "Angel,"
(the words have the same meaning,) by whom the
unseen and unapproachable God has chiefly de
clared Himself to His creatures. That, however,
has been asserted by some inconsiderate though
zealous Christians, which, if true, would subvert
the foundation of this faith, so ancient and so ge
neral, that a created angel may be employed by
God to act in His name and represent His Person :
and even that three angels thus deputed may be
caUed God in Scripture, and adored as a fit symbol
of the blessed and glorious Trinity.* I wiU, there
fore, so far notice the subject as to urge on your
consideration, first, that no created being can be
a fit representative of the Infinite Creator; and
that He who under so severe penalties has prohi
bited aU idolatry, would never have encouraged
His servants to regard any inferior being in the
same light, under the same name, and with the
same reverence as Himself Yet this must have
been the case had He been only a created Angel
with whom Abraham pleaded for the pardon of the
offending cities, in whose presence Moses and
.Joshua laid aside their sandals, and to whom are
* Parkhurst, &c.

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 141
assigned, in many passages of scripture, the titles'
and the homage which God elsewhere demands as
His own exclusive due.
But, secondly, the promise even of an earthly
king is, both in the letter and the spirit, sacred.
If he has flattered his subjects with the hopes of
admission to his presence, it is certain that he must
not mock their hopes with an unreal performance.
He cannot, without prevarication, impose on their
ignorance a servant masked in his robes, the
mimic of his state, and the empty phantom of his
majesty. But whom did the elders of Israel go up
into the mount to see ? Who was it whose pre
sence Moses prayed to look upon, and the skirts
and passing train of whose glory were revealed to
him as he lay beneath the rock in Horeb.'** Was
this any other than " the Lord gracious and
mighty," the Eternal, the God of Israel ? Then
was the promise of the Most High of none effect,^
and His word to man made vain ! Was it the God
and Father of all ? Why then is the same Person
repeatedly caUed an angel ? or how has St. Paul
declared by the Holy Ghost that " no man hath
seen God at any time.f Surely there is no way to
solve these difficulties, unless we admit that the
Fountain of Deity Himself has never vouchsafed
His presence to the eyes of men, but that it was
the " God of God," the " Light of Light," the
* Exod. xxiv. 9, 10, 11. xxxiii. 18. xxxiv. 5.6.
t 1 John iv. 12.

142 SERMON VL
" ©Eog 'AXti^ivos h ©sou 'Akvidimv, the Only begotten Son
which is in the bosom of the Father, who has, on
these occasions, declared Him."
Nor need we fear that, by referring these dif
ferent manifestations of God's glory to the Second
Person in the Trinity, we ascribe to the first in
that mysterious union a statte of epicurean repose,
or exclude, either directly or by consequence, " the
supreme God from the government of the world."
The objects of our adoration, though personally
and officially distinct, are in nature and operation
One ; where any of the three is, we acknowledge
the whole Godhead to be in Him and working by
Him ; and we adore the Father and the Spirit in
the visible glory of the Word, no less than in the
miraculous descent of the Holy Ghost, we conceive
the will and power of the Father and the Word to
have been made manifest.
It was, then, the Word of God, the Saviour of
the world, who Himself, in after ages, was made
flesh and dwelt among us, whose voice was heard,
and fiery presence seen by Moses amid the rocks
of Arabia. Nor can we require a stronger proof
than this identity of operation under either cove
nant, of the connexion between every part of God's
plan for the redemption of mankind ; and that it
was not enough for mankind to acknowledge the
divine commission of Moses, unless their veneration
travelled on to His name of whom Moses spake, and
for whose advent and sacrifice the institutions of
Moses prepared the way. And it now only remains

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 143
for me to offer a few observations on the meaning
of that title which the Lord, on this occasion,
assumed. " I Am that I Am," and " I Am hath
sent thee unto them."
It is evident that, in the first and most obvious
application of the words, they were intended to
correct that ignorance 'of the Divine Nature which
possessed both the Israelites and Moses himself,
and which prompted the latter to inquire what God
that was of the many whom the nations worshipped
who had undertaken the patronage and protection of
the oppressed peasantry of Goshen ? Was it Pthe,or
Nuth, or On, the gods of Memphis and Hehopo
lis .'* Was it Chemosh the tutelary idol of Moab ?
Was it that spirit who, under the name of Baal,
was believed to guide the chariot of the sun .'* Or
Astarte the queen of Heaven ? In answer to all
such erroneous opinions, and to forbid all compari
sons of the Divine Nature with any false or subal
tern spirits, the answer of Jehovah is decided and
satisfactory. It lays claim to a divinity sohtary
and unrivalled, to be the One who is, and from
whom aU other living things derive their secondary
being ; who can tolerate no partner in His throne,
nor share His name and power with any inferior
intelhgence. " I Am hath sent thee unto them."
It is, also, evident that by this phrase an everlast
ing being is denoted, a now without begmning or
end ; imperishable and which cannot be changed.
And hence two consequences foUow. First, it
was, as we have seen, the Word of God who took

144 SERMON VI.
to Himself this title, even as in after days, and
durmg the time of His incarnation. He employed
thie same tense of precisely the same verb. " I Am"
in asserting His own existence anterior to the birth
of Abraham.* And, accordinglyf by this text those
Christians are convicted of error who suppose, with
Arius, that Christ has had a beginning, or that in
the trinity which we worship any one is before or
after the other.
The second inference is that awful comparison
between a temporal and eternal existence, which is
so often enforced and enlarged on by the authors
of the Sacred Volume as a motive for deep reverence
toward God on the part of all God's creatures, and
as an inducement to raise our thoughts above the
hmits of a perishable world, to Him in whose pre
sence is deathless life, and at whose right hand
there are pleasures for evermore. " Of Old hast
thou laid the foundation of the earth; and the
Heavens are the work of Thy hands. They shaU
perish, but Thou shalt endure, yea all of them
shaU wax old like a garment, as a vesture shalt
Thou change them and they shaU be changed,
but Thou art the same, and Thy years shaU have
no end."t
If God then be eternal, how dreadful must His
wrath be esteemed, whose power never passeth
away, neither does His purpose change ; who in the
same light in which He views any action or thought
* St. John viii. 58. f Psalm cii. 25, 26, 27.

CHARACTER OF MOSES. 145
of ours to day, must continue to view it through
countless ages; whose laws are without repeal,
and His purposes, though from the first conditional
on our actions, are, so far as He is Himself con
cerned, without repentance or shadow of turning!
If God is for ever, how> ill do we calculate in pre
ferring to His love and protection the span of hap
piness which His visible creation can offer, the
fashion of this world which is so soon to pass away
iiilo silence ! Yea, rather, forasmuch as the things
around us, which are aU one day to be dissolved,
are so goodly and glorious during their stage of
momentary existence, " if God so clothe the grass
of the field which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast
into the oven ;"* if this earth which, ere long,
must melt with fervent heat, is now so richly
adorned with fruits and flowers by the lavish mu
nificence of its Creator ; if the firmament which is
one day to wither like a parched scroll, is now set
thick vvith suns, and all nature, even in this its
ruined state, is teeming with whatever can supply
the wants, whatever can dehght the senses of us,
poor exiles from Paradise ; what may we not anti
cipate from the power and mercy of the Most High
in that new Heaven and new earth, whose founda
tions shaU be laid from everlasting, and where they
whom He loves, and who have lovingly served Him
shall be gathered as the wheat into His garner !
* Matt. vi. 30.
VOL. 1. ''

SERMON VIL

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH.
[Preached before the University of Oxford, 1818.]

Exodus ix. 16.
In very deed for this cause I have raised thee up, for to slww
in thee my power, and that my name may be declared
throughout all the earth.
These words were spoken by Moses, in the name
of God, to that unhappy king of Egypt who, for
the visitations to which he was exposed, and his
obstinate hardness under them, stands alone in the
history of the ancient world, as a dreadful monu
ment of the power of the Most High, and of the foUy
and perverseness of human nature. Ten times were
plagues inflicted on himself and his people, the very
least of which might have sufficed to humble the
proudest heart, and awaken the most careless and
incredulous spirit to attention, and conviction, and
obedience. Ten times, while the hand of the Al
mighty as yet lay heavy on his land, did Pharaoh
humble himself before Jehovah's prophet, and pro
mise, with apparent sincerity, a complete and
immediate compliance ; and ten times did he fly
back from his word so soon as his punishment was
withdrawn, tUl the end was answered for which he
had been endured so long, tiU the span was past

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 147
to which his guilt and his power were limited, and
the chained sea was let loose to quench that frantic
impiety which had seemed but to gather fresh
strength from every former dispensation, whether
of vengeance or of mercy.
All this, indeed, is strange, but this is not, to
human ears, the strangest part of Pharaoh's history.
Other fruitful lands, besides Egypt, have been, for
a time, made barren through " the wickedness of
them that dwelt therein." * Other nations, besides
the children of Misraim, have smarted for their
ruler's foUy; and other kings, besides the one
whose history we are now examining, have by their
sins incurred the anger of Heaven, and by their
blindness courted destruction. When Spain, by
an opposite crime to that of the Egyptians in the
time' of Moses, expelled her Moriseo brethren from
those valleys which were, in their industrious hands,
as another garden of Eden, how surely did she
entail the curse of poverty on her soil, and in how
legible and lasting characters has God's anger
since been written on her rocks, her mountains, and
her deserted fields ! How strangely has the des
potism of the Sultans reduced to an uniform barba
rism and sterility the countries once most favoured
by knowledge and genius, by nature and improve
ment ; and how strangely have we ourselves beheld
a bold, and wise, and wary conqueror entangled in
those snares which his ambition was framing for
mankind, and, in spite of warning to avoid hi)^
* Psalm cvii. 34.

148 SERMON VIL
calamities, in spite of opportunity to retrieve them,
despising security and empire in the pursuit of yet
fiirther power, and, like Pharaoh, incurring a ruin
which lay before him in the broad book of nature,
as calculable as the moon, and as certain as the
return of the seasons !
In the great mass, indeed, of human misery, by
whatever secondary cause produced, by the wick
edness of mankind, or by the phenomena of nature ;
the plagues of Egypt may seem to sink into insig
nificance. Streams broader than the Nile flowed
with a worse crimson to the sea, when AttUa, the
scourge of God, was suffered by His providence to
pass the Danube, and when Timur laid waste the
regions round Euphrates ; and the human beings
who miserably perished during the single expedi
tion of Xerxes, may have exceeded many times the
number of first-born children whom the wrath of
Jehovah cut off on the night of the passover. A
volcano, an earthquake, an inundation, a famine, or
a pestilence, are agents of destruction more sweep
ing by far, though, from their comparative fre
quency, less awful, perhaps, and terrible than those
miraculous inflictions which are recorded in the
early chapters of Exodus. Nor can it be regarded
by the rational deist as in itself impossible, or as
any probable impeachment of the Divine goodness,
that the same Providence which, in the ordinary
course of nature, dispenses, for wise and gracious
purposes, these other and more formidable plagues,
should, in a remarkable instance, and where the

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHAROAH. 149
honour of his name was concerned, have more
lightly, though not more conspicuously, afflicted a
particular sovereign and his subjects. These truths
it is weU and wise to bear in our constant recollec
tion while we are reading of those dispensations
which are emphaticaUy called " the wars of the
Lord" in the Old Testament ;* both as evincing a
close and constant analogy between the usual and
natural operations of the Deity in the world, and
those rarer instances in which His interference has
been immediate and visible, and as proving that the
objections which are often inconsiderately advanc
ed against these last must, if weU founded, extend
further than their authors desire ; must detract
from the general no less than from the particular
Providence of God, and lay the axe to the root of
natural as weU as of revealed religion.
But it is not the amount of the calamities in
flicted on Pharaoh and his subjects ; it is not the
obstinacy of Pharaoh under them ; it is not the fact
that these sufferings were inflicted by God as pu
nishments of long-continued ©ppression, and in
order to the deliverance of three millions of en
slaved and overburthened peasantry, and the esta-
blishijaent of a nation who were to preserve His
name and His prophecies, through a thousand years
of darkness, to the birth of Him in whom aU nations
were to receive light ; they are not these circum
stances which are so much calculated to excite
our astonishment and our unbeheving murmurs,
*Num. xxi. 14.

150 SERMON VIL
as the fact that the obduracy which caUeddown
these chastisements was itself the work of the Most
High. By God Himself it had been declared to Moses
beforehand, " I will harden Pharoah's heart, that
he shall not let the people go."* Of God Himself
it is expressly and repeatedly asserted by His pro
phet, " And the Lord hardened Pharoah's heart
and the hearts of his servants." And in the words
of the text we find the yet more explicit and, if
possible, the yet more perplexing declaration that
Pharaoh was absolutely raised up and placed, or
continued, in his appropriate situation as a proper
subject on whom, and at whose expense, the power
of God might be displayed in the severest inflictions
of His displeasure. " In very deed for this cause
have I raised thee up, that I might show in thee
my power, and that my name might be declared
throughout all the earth."
This is a hard saying, unquestionably, and one
which, as it has been generally understood, appears
impossible to be reconcUed with our natural and
instinctive ideas of the justice and goodness of
the Most High, no less than with many other and
equally forcible passages of Scripture in which His
dealings with mankind are spoken of and vindi
cated. To cause a man to sin, and then to punish
him for sinning ; to send warnings which are not
even designed to produce an effect on him who re
ceives them, and to create any sentient being for
* Exod. iv. 21.

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 151
no other purpose than to be guilty and miserable •
this were a conduct which, as it would be horribly
wicked in a finite inteUigence, so it cannot without
blasphemy be ascribed for a moment to the All-just,
the AU-wise, the All-merciful Father of nature !
Nor wUl the answer suffice which is sometimes
rendered, in the words of St. Paul when speaking
on a very different subject, namely, that we are all
in the power of God as clay in the hands of the
potter ; that He may frame " one vessel unto honour
and another unto dishonour ;"* and that while some
of His creatures may be originally set apart by His
will for honour and happiness, there may be others
destined by the same free pleasure to set forth His
power and terror.
For, in the first place, this argument, understand
it as we please, will not apply to the difficulty under
discussion, since the question is not of possibUity
or abstract right, but of probabUity, of analogy, of
conformity to other declarations of God himself.
We do not ask whether God has the power, but
whether He has the will to pursue the line of con
duct imputed to him ; and if that conduct appears
to us unjust or unmerciful, we are naturally led to
conclude that, though God may do any thing which
pleases Him, He wiU not please to do that which
is repugnant to those attributes of His nature under
which we know Him best, and by which He has
most clearly revealed himself to our adoration and
our affection. *Rom. ix. 21.

152 SERMON VIL
Nor do we gain any thing toward the removal of
our difficulties by an addition of that system which
Augustin brought into the Christian Church, and
which, with some qualifying clauses calculated to
soften its apparent rigour, is, to this day, the dis
tinctive and favourite doctrine of no inconsiderable
multitude of believers. It is no justification, it is
no extenuation of a particular act of apparent in
justice and cruelty, to say that it is one part of a
vast scheme abounding in similar actions ; that the
Father of mercy (Great God ! that man should thus
presume to speak of Thee !) is not cruel to Pharaoh
alone, but to the great majority of His creatures.
Of the supporters of the system of Calvin, God for
bid that I should speak otherwise than with respect
and affection, as of our brethren and fellow-labourers
in the Lord, and as of those who, with one single
error, hold the truth in a sincerity which no man
can impeach, and in a godly dUigence which may
make too many of our party shed tears for our com
parative supineness. Of the system itself I should
desire to express nayself with that caution which is
due to the names of Augustin, of Calvin, and of
Beza, of Jansenius, and of Pascal. But let God be
true, even if every man be accounted a liar !* It
is impossible that a system which, in its apparent
consequences, destroys the principles of moral
agency in man, and arraigns the truth and justice
of Him from whom aU truth and justice flow, it is
impossible that a system of this kind can be from
•^ Romans iii. 4.

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 153
God, or can be weU-pleasing to Him. The meta
physical difiiculties, and they are many and grave,
which perplex the Arminian hypothesis, may be
inscrutable to our present faculties, or may be per
mitted to try our faith through the whole course of
this mortal pilgrimage. But though we should be
unable to reconcile them with the power and wis
dom of God, it is evident that they leave His mercy
and His truth unimpaired; and they are these last
which of aU God's attributes are the most important
to His fallen creatures, inasmuch as they are these
last, and these last alone, which give us hope of
sanctification in this world, and of happiness in the
world which is to succeed it !
But I have said that, in that passage of St. Paul
which is urged as a solution of the history of Pha
raoh, the apostle is treating of a very different sub
ject. A reference indeed to the tenth chapter of
Romans may convince us, as I conceive, that it is
not the election of one individual and the reproba
tion of another to eternal life or to eternal misery.
but the appointment of different nations to different
parts in the general scheme of God's providence,
which is the scope and purport of his argument;
that not Jacob and Esau, but Israel and Edom, not
Cornelius and Caiaphas, but the Gentile and the
Jew, not the final sentence of individuals in the life
to come, but the admission or rejection of large
bodies of men from certain blessings and privUeges
in the world which now is, which only is the topic
under discussion. And it becomes us, therefore, to
VOL. I. X

154 SERMON VIL
seek some different solution of the present problem
than that which is usually drawn from the absolute
sovereignty of Jehovah.
Accordingly, there are others who maintain that
when God is said to have hardened Pharaoh's heart,
nothing more is intended than that He suffered him
to harden his own heart, that He left him to the
natural consequences of his own unbridled pride
and passion, and did not interpose with His gracious
influences to soften and subdue that corruption of
his nature which of itself was sufficient, without
further aid, to overpower not only his better prin
ciples, but his natural prudence and discretion
And this interpretation they support by several re
markable passages in the same chapters of Exodus
to which I have already referred, and which ascribe
to Pharaoh himself and his own agency that indu
ration which, as we have seen, is in others ascribed
to the Lord. Thus, it is said of Pharaoh, in the
seventh chapter and the twenty-third verse, that
" he did not set his heart" to profit by the warnings
which had been given him. It is said in the eighth
chapter, that "when Pharaoh saw that there was re
spite, he hardened his heart and hearkened not unto
them;"* and at the end of the same chapter, that
" Pharaoh hardened his heart " after the plague of
the flies also.f Nay more ; they urge, that in the
only place in the seventh chapter where, according
to our translation, the Lord is said to have " hard
ened Pharaoh's heart,"J the original and aU the best
* Ver. 15. t Ver. .32. ^ Ver. 13.

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 155
versions say merely that the " heart of Pharaoh
was hardened." And they conclude that, even if
God had meditated the ruin of the Egyptian king,
it is apparent that nothing more was necessary than
thus to leave him to himself, inasmuch as the AU-
wise knew beforehand, and had beforehand declared
to Moses, the obstinate and perverse spirit to whom
the prophet was His messenger. " I am sure," said
the Lord in Horeb, " that the king of Egypt wUl
not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand."* Ac
cordingly they urge, that Pharoah himself was the
only agent in his own destruction, and that it was the
foreknowledge,not the predetermination of theMost
High, which induced him thus to express Himself
In all this there is doubtless much which is true
but to the peculiar difficulties of the case it can
scarcely be said to be relevant. The passages
which are alleged to favour this opinion, and where
Pharaoh is said to have hardened his own heart,
and not to have set his heart to understand the wUl
of the Lord, wiU only prove, (what the most un
bending Calvinist does not deny) that the imme
diate cause of Pharaoh's hardness and impenitence
is to be sought for in his own perverse wiU, and
his own ungoverned passions. If we cast a cripple
into a pool, it is vain to pretend that our hand is
not upon him, and that he sinks through the mfir-
mity of his limbs which prevents his swimming.
And, if God placed Pharoah in a situation where,
without repentance, he must needs be undone,
* Exod, iii. 19.

156 SERMON VII.
while He withheld from him that grace without
which no man can repent, it is evident that the
Almighty's pleasure was, if not the immediate, yet
doubtless, the primary and eflScient cause of his
destruction. Nor does there seem any sufficient reason for a
yet minuter distinction which has been made by
some learned and ingenious men, that, during the
earlier plagues, it was still in the power of Pharaoh
through grace, to awaken to his true interests, and
humble himself with an effectual and prevailing
repentance; and that it was not tiU after the plague
of the boils that the decree of God went forth
against him, and his heart was sealed up in impeni
tence. According to these commentators, who are
certainly here, as in the former instance, counte
nanced by the earlier versions, the word which we
render "raising up," will more properly signify
" preserved," and the sense will be that Pharaoh,
having provoked God by his obstinacy under the
seven former inflictionsvwould have been destroyed
in the eighth if he had riot been spared for another
and a more exemplary punishment. But, in the
first place, it is certain that before Moses had seen
Pharaoh at all, the Almighty had aheady assigned
as a reason why even the first plague would not
be effectual, that "He" (Jehovah) would harden the
king of Egypt's heart ; and as there is no appear
ance that any of the plagues but the last, however
troublesome and alarming, were of a mortal nature,
it is not easy to say how Pharaoh had been pecu-

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 157
liarly preserved or spared in calamities which he
shared with the meanest of his subjects.
On the whole, then, we must grant that God does
really represent himself as the cause of Pharaoh's
frantic disobedience, no less than of the ruin to
which that disobedience conducted him ; and we
must also discover some better and more relevant
method of vindicating God's justice and mercy in
such a transaction, than that appeal which the fol
lowers of Calvin have made to His absolute and
unbounded sovereignty. And such a vindication
may, I trust, be obtained by a due attention to the
foHowing particulars.
First, it is not asserted in the present text, or in
any other part of Scripture, that God created Pha
raoh or brought him first into the world as a vessel
of wrath fitted for destruction. God does not say,
" for this cause have I predestined thee to be born
into the world, that thou mightest rebel against me,
and by that rebellion purchase to thyself everlasting
punishment to the praise of my justice." This He
does not say. He only assures him, that " for this
cause He had raised him up," according to our trans
lation; but according to the most approved ancient
versions, " preserved, continued, or spared him."
That is, that either He had first made him king, and
seated him on the throne of Memphis, or had en
dured him there, in spite of his crimes, as a proper
person upon whom, in that elevated situation, might
be displayed the judgments which God is accus
tomed to inflict oh the oppressive and impenitent.

158 SERMON VIL
We are not authorized to suppose that the un
bridled passions and frantic obstinacy which made
Pharaoh a fit subject for this awfiil and exemplary
chastisement, were, from the first and in the early
part of his life, invincible and involuntary. We are
not even to suppose that the peculiar situation of
life into which he was thrown had a necessary
tendency to render him obstinate and furious.
God forbid ! God Himself hath told us that He
tempteth no man, and that He hath no pleasure in
the death of him who perisheth for his sins. The
wickedness of Pharaoh was his own ; but, being
already impious and cruel, having already offended
to a sufficient degree against the light of natural
rehgion, having already, to a sufficient degree, re
sisted and grieved that good Spirit whose gracious
helps and comforts are, for Christ's sake, offered
' to all, he was placed or continued by Divine Provi
dence in a rank of which he was unworthy, both
as a means of punishment to the sinful nation under
his sway, and that he himself, by the greatness of
his faU, might afford to other men a more effectual
warning. In his anger G^d gave a king to Egypt,
in His wrath He took him away, and Pharaoh was
raised up on high,
" ut lapsu graviore ruat !" *
But, secondly, we have no reason to conclude from
Scripture that the consequence of his obstinacy in
* Claudian : in Ruf. iii. 23*

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 159
the present instance was any other than a temporal
punishment, nor that even this punishment was
made heavier, though it was certainly made more
conspicuous, than that which his former sins had
demanded. " There are," says Jeremy Taylor,
" There are many secret and undeserved mercies,"
— " of which men can give no account till they come
to give God thanks at their publication, and of this
sort is that mercy which God reserves for the souls
of many miUions of men and women concerning
whom we have no hopes, if we account concerning
them by the usual proportions of revelations and
Christian commandments, and yet we are taught
to hope some strange good things concerning them
by the analogy and general rules of the Divine
mercy." " He that usuaUy imposes less, and is loth
to inflict any, and very often forgives it aU, is
hugely distant from exacting an eternal punishment
when the most that He threatened and gave notice
of was but a temporal. The effect of this consi
deration I would have to be this, that we may
publicly worship this mercy of God which is kept
in secret, and that we be not too forward in sen
tencing all heathens and prevaricating Jews to
the eternal pains of hell, but to hope that they
have a portion in the secrets of the Divine mercy,
where also, unless many pf ms have some httle por
tions deposited, our condition wiU be very uncer
tain and sometimes most miserable."
But be this as it may, there is no reason to be
lieve that Pharaoh was the more severely punished.

160 SERMON VIL
either in this world or the world to come, for what
he did under judicial hardness. The ruin which
he met with was what his previous crimes had
eailedfor. The sufferings which befell his subjects,
their own sins had justly merited ; and all which
God describes Himself as doing was to suspend
awhile the appointed vengeance ; to endure some
little space the vessel of wrath fitted for destruction,
that the blow when it came might be more exem
plary to others, and might be more certainly ascer
tained as the infliction of Almighty displeasure.
Nor is this aU, for thirdly, the hardening of the
heart, (which is a very common expression in Scrip
ture) to those who recoUect the opinion of the
ancient Hebrews as to the seat of the reasoning
faculties, is famiharly known to signify, not only
an increase of obstinacy and impious resolution to
resist the power of God, and the dictates of religion
and mercy, but a confusion, moreover, of the natu
ral understanding ; a blindness to our visible in
terest, a mad contempt of consequences, and that
perverse and furious folly, which, like the hunted
boar, presses with the greater violence on the spear
that pierces him.
It was not the wickedness of Pharaoh alone
which could have prevented his perceiving, as his
counseUors are expressly said to have perceived,
that " Egypt was destroyed"* by his repeated pre
varication with Moses. His natural reason, had hf
* Exodus x. 7.

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 161
retained the Use of it, must have sufficiently in
structed him in the prudence of yielding in time,
nor can we ascribe his perseverance to any other
cause than that which the heathen themselves have
recognised as a part of the of diilary system of pro
vidence, that " quos vult perdef e prius dementat,"
that God makes those men mad Whom He design^
to bring to ruin.
There is, it should be recollected, and in the
nature of things there must be, a period, how late
soever, when the patience of the Almighty is at an
end, and that grace is withdrawn which, had they
made a timely use of it. Would have opened the
gates of mercy to the Wdrst and most grievous
offenders. Bilt When the day of grace is over, it
is of little consequence to the criminal, though to
those who are to profit by his example it may be a
matter of the greatest importance^ ahd of exceed
ing wisdom and mercy, by what process of judicial
infatuation or of providential circumstances the
criminal is restrained from escaping the determihed
ruin. " The king of Egypt," the righteous God
might say, " hath long and grievously offended
me. Like others, he had once his day of grace, in
which my Spirit was not withheld, and in which he
might have found the gates of repentance and ac
ceptance open* But , my Spirit shaU not always
strive with man; and that I have endured this
wicked man so long is not in tenderness to him,
but as a part of his punishment, and that his pu
nishment might be more public and terrible. To
VOL. I. Y

162 SERMON VIL
this end I have raised him up to a throne of which
he is unworthy; to this end I have deprived him
not only of the grace which he despised, but of
that natural reason which even on worldly grounds,
might have taught him to avoid the destined pu
nishment. Let others learn from him that not only
holiness but wisdom is mine to give or to withhold;
and that he who seeks not after the one, may be
made in the end to mourn the deprivation of the
other. Thus have I hardened his heart by confus
ing his understanding; by withdrawing the only
check which remained on his furious and unruly
passions ; and by leaving him to the consequences
of those counsels which he originally preferred to
the light of natural religion and the whispers of
natural mercy."
From the. case of Pharaoh, however, thus stated
and explained, some very important practical co-
roUaries may be derived for the instruction of be
lievers. We may learn, in the first place, from this me
morable history, of how little positive advantage
are those objects which the world most covets,
such as wealth, and length of days, and elevated
station, when we behold them, in the present in
stance, assigned to a wicked person in no strain of
benediction, in no feehng of indulgence, but as
tokens of anger and a part of his intended punish
ment. It was a knowledge of this truth which
prevented David from murmuring at the prosperity
of the ungodly, seeing, that by lifting them up

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 163
above the sons of men, the Almighty did, in fact,
nothing else than set them in slippery places ; that
their rank and power served only to render them
more conspicuously miserable, and was the scaf
fold on which they mounted that the world might
behold their execution. So certam is it that the
gifts of the Almighty are good or evU according
to the persons on whom they are bestowed ; and
so carefully ought we to govern our lives, lest
" our tables be made a snare to us, and that which
should have been to our welfare, become a trap."*
It is, secondly, a very awful consideration which
arises from the present and many simUar passages
of Scripture, that men, while they yet live, may
have so far exceeded the patience and long-suffer
ing of God, as that His Spirit continues to strive
with them no more, but that they are , abandoned
to their impenitent hearts, and, even in this world,
are already sentenced. Such, as we have seen,
appears to have been the case with Pharaoh ; such,
we certainly know, was the condition of those Jews
over whom our Saviour lamented that "the things
which belonged to their peace were thenceforth
hidden from their eyes," and of whom Isaiah had
formerly testified, that "the Lord would make
their hearts gross, and their ears dull of hearing ;"
such those were for whom, inasmuch as they had
sinned the " sin unto death," St. John forbids us to
pray ; such those of whom St. Paul declares that
* Psalm Ixix. 22.

164 SERMON VII.
it is impossible to quicken them unto repentance ;
and that no more remaineth unto them " but a
certain fearful lookuig for of judgment" to come,
and the expectation of those torments of which the
fears are but the sad beginning.*
This is a dreadful picture. But those, if any
such hear me, who have attended the sick or the
dying; who have endeavoured to quicken to repent
ance men dead in trespasses and sins ; will but too
surely bear me witness that the case which it re
presents is not exaggerated or uncommon. There
are those who, having long neglected prayer, are
at length, even when roused to a sense of their
danger, unable so to compose their thoughts as, in
an orderly and acceptable manner, to ask mercy
from their offended Creator. There are those who
appear to have lost even the perception of right and
wrong ; men so long accustomed to evil that the
very thoughts of Heaven are more painful to them
that those of hell ! How ofjten do we meet with
aged men who, tottering on the bfink of the
grave, pursue the sinful follies of youth, not for
any pleasure they derive from them, but to shut
out, by their means, the more dismal thoughts pf
fiiturity! how often those who tremble at the
wrath to come, without resolution to attempt an
escape from it, and by whom the caUs of religion
are answered in no other hght than as coming to
torment them before the time !
* St. Luke xix. 42. St. Mat, xiii. 15. 1 St. John v. 16. Heb. x. 27

GOD'S DEALINGS WITH PHARAOH. 165
And these had once their day of grace ! these
once experienced thaj)lessed visits of God's Spirit 1
these once heard the voice of their Father most
lovingly calling them to repentance ! Yea, for these
Christ died, and for these, had not themselves re
jected the privilege, the gates of Heaven would
have rolled back on their starry hinges, and there
would have been joy for their reception among the
angels of God Most High !
Oh, my brethren, while yet you feel within you
a wholesome remorse for sin, a desire to escape from
its snares, and those other gracious tokens of God's
presence in the heart by which we are moved and
enabled to amendment, delay not for a moment to
profit by that acceptable time, and to make, whUe
it is called to-day, the day of salvation your own.
They are grievously deceived who fancy that, be
cause they are now able to repent, they may re
pent when they please. The abihty, it should
never be forgotten, the abUity comes from God
alone ; and the same God whose spirit now strives
in our hearts to overcome our evU nature, has so
lemnly threatened that His *^ Spirit shaU not always
strive with men !"*
Lastly, let us admire the wisdom and power of
the Most High, who can make even such men as I
have described the instruments of His exafted plea
sure; the means of declaring His name through
the earth, and His ministers for good to those whom
* Gen. vi. 3.

166' SERMON VIL
He sees fit to favour. ,Not only was the obstinacy
of Pharaoh turned into a mea«s of perfecting more
entirely the deliverance of the oppressed nation of
Israel ; to the Egyptians themselves their suffer
ings were, eventually, most beneficial, inasmuch as
their land was freed thenceforth from a race whose
power, and number, and different origin had long
"made their presence obnoxious and dangerous;
and since, thenceforth, for above six hundred years,
the neighbour nations of Egypt and Israel, as if
mutuaUy awed by the judgments which had sepa
rated them, remained (a solitary instance in the
history of the world) in unbroken peace with each
other. But this is not all ! The exemplary punishment
to the wicked is a blessing to aU those who receive
the solemn warning which it conveys. Where the
history of Pharaoh is known, his name is a lesson
to men how they disobey the wiU and slight the
judgments of their Maker ; and we know not how
many miUions, from the north and south, and east
and west, have been snatched from the wrath to
come by the merited sufferings of this one unhappy
tyrant !

SERMON VIII.

ON THE DECREES OP GOD.
[Preached in the Cathedral of St. Asaph, 1819.]

St. Luke xix. 42.
If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the
things which belong unto thy peace I But now they are hid
from thine eyes !
These are the affecting words of our Saviour on His
last visit to Jerusalem, when, attended by the mighty
multitude of those Galileans who had seen His mi
racles. He entered as the Son of David and the
King foretold by the prophet Zechariah into that
city and temple of His earthly and His Heavenly
Father, which were shortly after destined to flow
with His blood, and to be given up, in consequence,
to the vengeance of God, and to be a curse to all
posterity. As thus attended He came down the
steep descent of the Mount of Ohves, which over
looks Jerusalem, " He beheld the city, and wept
over it, saying, if thou hadst known, even thou, at
least in this thy day, the thmgs which belong unto
thy peace ! but now they are hid from thine eyes !
For the days shaU come upon thee that thine ene
mies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass
thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and

168 SERMON YUl.
shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy chil
dren within thee ; and they shaU not leave in thee
one stone upon another, because thou knewest not
the time of thy visitation."
This was not the only instance in which our
Lord uttered the like complaint of the disobedience
of His people, and the like prophecy of their ap
proaching calamities. Within a few days after, in
the temple. He foretold that of all those goodly
buildings not one stone should be left on another ;
' and He exclaimed, with the same affectionate ear
nestness and compassion, *' 0 Jerusalem, Jerusa
lem, thou that kiUest the prophets, and stonest
them which are sent unto thee, how often wotdd
I have gathered thy children together, even as a
hen gathereth her chickens uhder her wihgS, and
ye would not ! Behold your house is left unto you
desolate." *
How truly these prophecies were fulfiUed the
writings of the heathen and of the Jews themselves
instruct us. Within forty years after the crtici-
flxion of our Lord, the Romans came against the
city at the time of the passover, when the great mul
titude of the nation were gathered from all parts
within its waUs. They literaUy " cast a trench
around it, and kept it in on every side," suffering
no man to go in or out ; ihsomuch that, for thd
famine which arose, the bodies of the slain were cut
up and devoured, and women ate their own chil-
* St. Matth, xxiii. 37, 38.

THE DECREES OF GOD. 169
dren. They " laid the city even with the ground,"
ahd even ploughed up the foundations of the tem
ple ; and destroyed the wretched inhabitants with
so great a slaughter, that three miUions of men,
women, and children in the town and the neigh
bouring country are said, by the Jews themselves,,
to have perished either by famine or the sword.
Now at the time that this prophecy was delivered,
it is hardly too mUch to say that there was no more
appearance or likelihood of the event occurring,
than if the same dismal calamities were now fore
told of London. The whole world was at peace.
Jerusalem was quietly under the government of the
Romans who could, therefore, have no interest in
destroying it; and so little disposition did the JeWs,
at this tinie, shew to rebel against them, that they
absolutely were, in aU appearance, mainly led to
the crucifixion of our Lord by the fear lest the Ro
mans should take offence at His success with the
people. If Christ, then, foreknew and foretold this
destruction. He foreknew and foretold that Which
He could have derived from no human wisdom, and
must, therefore, have been a prophet of God.
Nor can it be pretended that, after the last great
ruin of Jerusalem, had really taken place, this pro
phecy vtras falsely ascribed to our Lord by His apos
tles and evangelists. In the first place, let any of
you consider how difficult it would have been, whilig
many of those Galileans were still alive who had
heard our Saviour's preaching, to make men believe
that, at so solemn and public a time, and in the case
VOL. I. Z

170 SERMON VIIL
of ^a prophecy so remarkable, our Lord had used
words which they who heard Him as weU as the
apostles, did not remember. Suppose that some
great and famous preacher from a distant country
were to perform in the streets of London even a
tenth part of the wonders which our Lord performed
in Jerusalem. Supposing the eyes of aU men to
have been drawn to him on some one solemn oc
casion, on which he entered into the city at the
head of his disciples, and preached to them an
affecting sermon on his own fate and on their, du
ties ; would it be safe for any person, in writing the
life of such a man twenty or thirty years afterwards,
to say that he had, on that particular occasion,
publicly foretold the destruction of the town, when
in truth, he had said nothing like ? Would not all
those who had been present exclaim " we remem
ber that Siscourse as well as you can, and weare
sure that the prophet never used the expressions
which you impute to him." How then could St.
Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, and St. John venture
to do that which no man in his senses would, in
this country, venture on .'*
But, further, it may be asked, " How, if our Lord
did not really deliver this prophecy, how did His
evangelists know that Jerusalem was shortly to be
laid in ashes .-*" That of those evangelists ;the first
three, at least, if not all four, must have written their
gospelsbeforeJerusalem was destroyed,is certainnot
only from abundant internal evidence whicl^ proves
that these works were written while Jerusalem was

THE DECREES OF GOD. 171
yet standing ; but from the fact in which aU ancient
writers agree, that St. Matthew, St. Luke, and St.
Mark were themselves dead before those calamities
came to pass. Either, then, they must have taken
their knowledge of that future destruction from the
preaching of their Master, or they must have had
the gift of prophecy themselves. But if they were,
themselves, the prophets of the Most High, we can
not apprehend that they would have told a false
hood in imputing to their Master words which He
never uttered. It follows then, so certainly as to
leave no cause of doubt with any reflecting mind,
that Jesus of Nazareth really uttered the words
which are here given to him ; that He must, there
fore, have been inspired by God, and (since God
would never inspire a man with miraculous know
ledge in order to establish a lie) that we may be
sure He was, as He professed Himself, the Son of
God, the Saviour of Israel and of the world.
' From the fact, then, of these words having been
uttered by our Lord, and having received after His
death their exact accomplishment, we may draw a
.greater certainty of faith in Him and confirm our
obligation to obey Him and keep His command
ments. But, from the words themselves, as they have
been read to you in my text, some very important
consequences follow, which it shaU be the object
of my present discourse to explain to your under
standings, and apply to your consciences, inasmuch
as they greatly illustrate the manner of God's ordi-

172 SERMON VIIL
nary dealings with sinners, and afford an awful
warning to us all not to shght the opportunities of
repentance. " If thou hadst known," said Christ tp
His guilty city, " if thou hadst known, even thou,
at least in this thy day, the things which belong
unto thy peace ! But now they are., hid from thine
eyes ! For the days shall come upon thee, that
thine enemies shall lay thee even with the ground,
and thy children within thee, because thou knewest
not the time of thy visitation !"
From these affecting words the following facts
may, I think, be pretty clearly learned- First, that
there had been a time in which those citizens of
Jerusalem,whose hearts were now hardened against
Christ, and whose hands were shortly after dipped
in His blood, there had been a time during which
they might, if they pleased, have believed on Him
to their own salvation and the security of their
country. Secondly, that this time was now passed
away, and that it was no longer in their power to per
ceive the truth and to flee from the wrath to come.
And, thirdly, that the blindness of heart isvhich now
possessed them, and which was so soon to hurry
them into the commission of the most dreadful
crime which the world ever witnessed, was, in it
self, a fearful instance of God's anger against them,
and a sure forerunner of the destruction to which
they were already sentenced.
The first of these positions is established by
those words of our Lord. " If thou hadst known,"
or as the original might be rendered. " Oh that

THE DECIJ-EES OF (GfOD. 173
thon jiadst kno^n the things which belong to thy
peace !" He does nolt say " Oh that it had been
at any time possible for thee to have known them !"
But, "Oh that thou hadst but known them, that thou
hadst but set thy heart to learn them, that thou
hadst only paid that reasonable and honest atten
tion to them which they claimed from thee !" This
would not have been said pf those who had beep,
by a decree of God froni all eternity, given over to
in^Bvitable hatred of the light, and to a total want
of power to receive its beams. We should not s^y
to a man blimj from his birth " Oh that ypu had
seen the sun rise this morning !" but, " Oh that ypu
could have seen it !" The turn of the expressipn
is only proper when apphe4 to a person who lay
under no natural want of power to 4o the thing
spoken of; and we, therefore, conclude that the Jews
might, if they had so pleased, have known the
things which belonged unto their peace and have
acted accordingly. And this is yet plainer from a
comparison of the expressions " in this tfiy day,"
and " now they are hid from thine eyes," and
" because thou knewest not the time of thy visi
tation." !*V ^
For if a decree of God had passed from the be
ginning that certain only, a few in cpmparison of
the Jews, should, by irresistible grace, have their
hearts turned to beheve on their promised Savipur,
while all the rest should be passed by, and left in
a total incapacity to accept the salvation which was
offered to them, it is plain that these last could

174 SERMON VIIL
not have been properly said to have any day of
salvation at all, and that it would have been the
greatest injustice imaginable to give as a reason for
the severities which were to be exercised on them
that " they knew not the time of visitation," when
it was never possible for them to know it. Nor
is it easy to discover why our Lord should say of
the Jews that " wow," when He thus spake, " the
things which belonged to their peace were hidden
from their eyes," unless the time had been wherein
those things were not hidden from them. When
I say it is now too late to attempt any thing, I
certainly give my hearers to understand that the
thing might once have been possible, since other
wise, whether now or then, the case would have
been the same, and there would be no propriety in
expressing any distinction. We may conclude, ac
cordingly, that even to those Jews who, when Christ
spake this, were sentenced to destruction, there had
been iafforded a sufficient opportunity wherein they
might, except through their own fault, have entered
into the Kingdom of God, and have become the
heirs of life everlasting.
And since we have no reason to suppose that
God's dealing with that generation of vipers was
at variance or inconsistent with the general course
of His spiritual work on the souls of men, I con
clude that every sinner has some acceptable time,
in which the "mercy of God is, not in name only
nor in mockery, but effectually offered to him, in
which his day of visitation, the things which belong

THE DECREES OF GOD. 175
to his peace are not hidden from his eyes; and in
which he might, unless through his own single and
wilful obstinacy, discern and (oUow the path of sal
vation. Let no man mistake my meaning ! I do not say
that the time can be found in which the sinner, by
his own natural strength and unassisted faculties,
can either obtain or follow after salvation. I know
that we are by nature incapable of any good thing ;
that the old man is, in his very constitution, in con-
tmual enmity against God; and that either to wiU
or to do what God requires altogether surpasses our
g^^rg,, unless both the preventing and assisting
grace of God's Spirit descend on the soul both to
give us, in the first instance, " a good wiU," and to
"work with" and support our endeavours after
salvation when we have that wiU. But this I main
tain, and I maintain it, as on many other passages
of Scripture, so particularly on the grounds of the
present text, first, that some such time or times of
gracious visitation, is accorded by God to all His
creatures, wherein He gives them the power and
opportunity of forsaking the bondage of sin for the
glorious liberty of His children ; and further (which
follows from the universality of the gift, and from
the particular instance of the Jews here mentioned
by our Saviour) that this gift may be resisted and
rendered vain, and has been thus frustrated and re
sisted by the personal fault and wilful hardiness or
neghgence of aU those who, hke these Jews, are
finally suffered to perish. And it foUows that the

176 SERMdN VIII.
Calvinists are niistaken ih niaintaining either the
absoldte election of a few, to the passiiig over of-
reprobation of the greater number of mankind, ot
that the saving grace of God, wherever given, is
always irresistibly exerted to the conversibn and
firial salvation of those whom it once condescends
to visit;
But that the power of repentance and faith thus
given to all is altogether unconnected with our own
strength and faculties ; that it is of God's free-will
to give or to withhold ; and that when this is with
held, no outward opportunities of knowledge or con
viction can profit us atiy thing, is also certain from
the feame example of the citizens of Jerusalem, from
whose eyes, after they had once enjoyed for a suffi
cient time the power of " seeing the things which
belonged unto their peace," those things were for
ever hidden. It Was not that Christ had, at the
time when He thus spoke, withdrawn His visible
presence from them. His miracles were still wrought
in their streets. His preaching was stiU heard in the
courts of their temple. His promises of love and
blessedness were still held out to all that should ^
put their trust in Him ; the fountain of His atoning
blood was shortly after offered, and His body given
for the sins of the world.
But from that presence they derived no blessing;
those miracles, that preaching, those promises, were
for others, not for them ; the atonement of His sa
crifice was to them a savour of death ; iAeirfday of
grace was gone by, and there remained no more for

THE DECREES OF GOD. 177
them than a fearfiil looking for of judgment to
come, and the gleams of that unquenchable fire to
which they, every day, were drawing nearer !
My brethren, there are those even now, and God
grant that their number may hot be greater than
many of us imagine; there are those even now
whom preaching cannot move, whom friendly coun
sel cannot amend, whom example and experience
have no power to alter, who are beyond the reach of
other men's prayers, and whose hearts refuse even,
in their hours of greatest terror, to utter a prayer
for themselves. Some of these have outlived the
pleasures of life, yet perish in its sins simply be
cause they cannot forsake them; they are not
altogether insensible to their danger, but they can
not stop, though hell gapes wide before them ; hke
an ox to the slaughter they pass on, or a beast to
the snare, the heartless, hopeless, joyless slaves of
sin, and the heirs of torment unspeakable ! And
these men had once, like those Jews, their day of
visitation; these men had once the power given
them, if they had seized on and improved it to the
best advantage, of becoming through Christ the
children of God, and witli Him the heirs of everlast
ing glory! What might they then have been.''
What are they now ^ What must they soon be
come? Oh ye who yet feel the comfortable whispers of
God's Spirit in your souls, whose consciences yet
warn you when you fall into sin, and to whom the
power is yet allowed, when you have the inclination,
VOL. I. 2 A^

178 SERMON VIIL
to apply your souls to prayer and the study of the
Scriptures, deal not, I beseech you, with the Holy
Ghost as Felix dealt with Paul, saying, " Go thy
ways now, when I have a more convenient season
I wiU send for thee."* The Spirit of God wiU not
always strive with men ; He will not come exactly
when we call him, when we have often already sent
Him away ; and if ye neglect the opportunities of
effectual salvation which are now presented, the
time may soon come in which " ye shall desire to
see one of these days of the Son of Man, and shall
not see it."t Improve, then, to the utmost of your
ability, the grace already vouchsafed to you ; it is
not your own ; it may be withdrawn at any time ;
and it wiU be taken away from that unprofitable
servant who hides in a napkin the bounty of his
Heavenly Master.
Nor, if an additional motive could be required to
the timely avaUing ourselves of God's spiritual aid,
can a stronger be conceived than that which is the
last conclusion which follows from the words of my
text, namely, that the deadness and blindness to all
spiritual impressions of which I am speaking, is ge
nerally the forerunner of some signal vengeance of
God, and almost always great in proportion to the
degree of spiritual advantages which the sufferer
has formerly enjoyed and neglected. The blind
ness which happened to Israel, the grossness of
their hearts, and the dullness of their ears were
* Acts xxiv. 25. t St. Luke xvii. 22.

THE DECREES OF GOD. n9
such as to us appear almost beyond behef. And
were not their spiritual advantages, the works which
were done among them, the warnings given them,
the revelations communicated to them, at one time
altogether as remarkable .'' And what nation hath
the earth ever seen whose destruction was so signal
and attended with so much misery as theirs .''
Oh may we so shun their obstinacy as that we
may not be given over to their blindness, but that
we may know, in this our day, the things which
belong unto our peace before they are hid from our
eyes, before the evil days come and the years in
which we &haU say we have no pleasure in them,*
and before that dreadful day in which we may cry
to the God of mercy in vain Tor pardon and suc
cour, when the sleep of death and the senseless
doze of unbelief and licentiousness shaU be rent in
pieces, once for aU, by the voice of the archangel
and the trumpet of God's judgment !
* Eccles xii, 1.

SERMON IX.

THE EXTENSION OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM.
[For the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Preached
at Shrewsbury, 1 821 .]

Danusl xii. 3.
And they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firma-
rmwt, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars
for ever and ever.
These words are foimd in one of the most striking
prophecies on record of the time and manner of
the Messiah's coming ; and they should seem to
point out to us very clearly the two-fold duty which
that advent laid on mankind, namely, that of pro
fiting in their own persons by the rehgious know
ledge thus laid within their reach, and thaLof com
municating to others, less favourably circumstanced,
the light in which all are equally interested. " They,"
said the angel to the prophet, " that be wise," that
is, who are in their own persons wise unto salva
tion, " shaU shine " in the last day " as the bright
ness of the firmament," and they who make others
wise in the same manner, who " turn many to right
eousness," and to a saving and purifying know
ledge of the Most High, shaU shine forth as " the
stars for ever and ever."

THE EXTENSION OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 181
The first of these duties, that of labouring in
our own persons to acquire the true wisdom of
which the prophet is speaking, is a duty of such
obvious necessity in itself, and so strongly enforced
in many passages of Scripture, that, with a Chris
tian audience, few arguments are required to de
monstrate its absolute necessity. We cannot come
to Christ without believing in His name. We can
not believe on Him without knowing Him. We
cannot know Him as He is, and as He should be
known, without appreciating highly the dignity of
His nature, the wisdom of His laws, and aU which
He has done and suffered for us. And, though an
outward confession of these Ulustrious truths is by
no means inconsistent with much general inatten
tion to the doctrines and duties of religion, yet they
are greatly mistaken who expect to be able either
to know God satisfactorily, or to believe in Him
sincerely, or, truly and heartily and practically, to
love Him with that degree of affection which He
demands, from us, without a dUigent and frequent
study of His works and His attributes as described
in the sacred volume ; without a frequent approach
to Him and converse with Him through the chan
nels of prayer and meditation ; and without a dUi
gent use of those appointed means of grace which
chiefly have power to kindle in the heart those
affections to which, and to which only, the God of
love and wisdom is accustomed to reveal Himself
as a Creator, a Redeemer, and a Sanctifier. " He
that hath my commandments and keepeth them,

182 SERMON IX.
he it is that loveth me ; and he that loveth me shall
be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and
wiU manifest myself unto him."*
It is apparent, then, that for the adequate dis
charge of the first-mentioned duty, some greater
pains are necessary than are comprised in an ac
quisition of the first rudiments of Christian know
ledge, and that both dihgence and devotion are
required if we would really be found among that
number to whom the praise of true knowledge be
longs, or whose wisdom, in the great day of the
Messiah, is to Shine forth in the brightness of the
firmament. Nor is the caution superfluous even
to the wisest and best informed of those who have
assembled on the present occasion with the bene
volent design of enlightening the darkness of their
feUow-creatures, that it behoves them, while they
care for others, to bestow some thought on them
selves ; to recollect that, if they neglect the care
of their own souls, the attention which they pay to
the souls of others can do nothing else than make
their folly or hypocrisy the more conspicuous, and
that it is in vain to unfold the Bible to their bre
thren whUe it remains in their own closets a sealed
and neglected volyme.
But enough has been said (and as much as the
immediate occasion of my addressing you will ad
mit of) on this evident and primary duty. It re
mains that I should examine into the extent and
*St. John xiv. 21.

THE EXTENSION OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 183
obhgations of that second and less obvious branch
of the Christian character, for the display of which
so briUiant a reward is promised in the latter part
of the verse which has been read to you. If of
them who are, themselves, wise unto salvation it
is foretold, that they shaU " shine as the brightness
of the firmament," to them who apply that wisdom
to the advantage of their fellow-creatures a more
iUustrious blessedness is assigned, their glory is to
be that of those heavenly bodies to which the fir
mament owes its lustre, " and they that turn many
to righteousness" are to be " as the stars for ever
and ever."
The duty of assisting to the best of our power,
and in conformity to the station where God has
placed us, in the dispersion of ignorance, in the
propagation of truth, and the extension of the
knowledge and power of that glorious Gospel,
which was the latest legacy of the Messiah to all the
nations of the world ; this duty I have caUed a less
obvious branch of the Christian character, because
it has been too customary among Christians to re
gard it as the appropriate duty of a particular body
of men, the inheritors of a distinct office and com
mission, and on whose labours no uniauthorized per
son could intrude without usurpation, whUe the
burden was laid on them alone to " go into all the
world, and pireach the Gospel to every creature.*"
And, so far as the pubhc ministry of the Gospel ex-
* St. Mark, xvi, 15.

184 SERMON IX.
tends this distinction is undoubtedly founded in rea
son and Scripture. To preach, in ordinary cases, the
private Christian can pretend no Wre authority
than for administering the Sacraments ; and both
the one and the other are the appropriate functions
of those men only and their successors, on whom
this burden was laid and to whom this authority
was given when the Lord, after His resurrection,
led forth His Apostles as far as Bethany, and when,
breathing on them, " He said unto them, " receive
ye the Holy Ghost ;" " as my Father hath sent me,
even so send I you."
But that would be a very confined and inade
quate notion indeed of the duty to which I refer,
which should apprehend it to be exclusively and
sufficiently fulfiUed by the mere work (however di
ligently performed) of oral preaching and adminis
tration of Baptism and the Eucharist, or which
should keep out of sight the innumerable and most
efficacious instruments of prayer, of example, of
authority, of private remonstrance, of public edu
cation, of succours afforded to the temporal wants
of the preachers, and their poorer disciples, and of
the many other ways of helping in the Lord's great
battle, which are strictly within the province of
those who themselves may not preach the Gospel,
and without which the labours of the most indefa
tigable preacher would avail but little to the exten
sion and furtherance of God's kingdom. And when
* St. John, XX. 22. 21.

THE EXTENSION OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 185
we consider how distant are those lands which yet
remain to be brought from the wUdness of pagan
error to the pale of the Christian ; how vast is
that multitude which, even while nominally within
that pale, is stiU in the shadow of death, and
in need of being enlightened and evangehzed;
when we consider how narrow, in comparison with
the numbers which seek admission, are the buUd-
ings appropriated to our labours, and- how seldom
it is in the course of the year that, amid the cares
and concerns of the world, those labours can pro
cure an audience ; we are compelled, by every mo
tive of duty to ourselves as weU as of charity to
our brethren, to charge those who have already
attained to that good light, to give diligence lest
others be deprived of the means of access to it, and
to invite them, by a wise and bountiful exertion of
the talents allotted them, to help us in bringing
home to the tents of the Indian and the cottages of
the poor, that knowledge of Christ which is the
great power of God unto salvation ; and to hold
up, like Aaron and Hur, the overwearied hands of
Moses, lest through their neglect the people of the
Lord be discomfited before their spiritual enemies.
This, then, is the task to which we call you ;
this the task in which we pray you to be feUow-
labourers with ourselves ; a task no less plamly en
joined inScripture,than it is obviously deducible from
the dictates of our strongest natural wants and our
most amiable natural feelings. If we are forbidden
to see our neighbour suffer hunger, disease, or
VOL. I. 2 B

186 SERMON IX. C
nakedness, without, to the best of our power, en-
deavouring to relieve his sufferings ; if it be a crime
to suffer our enemy's beast of burthen to fall be
neath its load without rendering it our assistance ;
of what punishment must he be worthy who looks
on with dry eyes and without an effort to abate
the evU, on miUions stretched out in deadly dark
ness of idolatry and superstition ; on millions more
surrounded with light, yet, by some strange fatality,
continuing to work the works of darkness ; on mil
lions as yet incapable of good or evil, whose hap
piness or misery, both in this world and the world
to come, must depend on the sort of education
which is given them ; and on millions who, having
begun weU, are falling back into the snares of Satan,
from which a timely and well-directed warning
might yet have the power of extricating them ?
Of the various benevolent institutions by which,
in different ways and by different applications of the
same Christian and benevolent spirit, this mass of
moral evil has been already assailed and diminished,
whether by the maintenance of missionaries in
foreign lands, or the organization of schools at
home, or by an increased circulation of that blessed
volume which is the fountain and the end of
whatever we have preached or whatever ye have
believed, it is unnecessary for me to speak in terms
of praise, and it would be unchristian and unholy,
even whUe ]f»leading for a different society, to say
any thing in the spirit of rivalry. The Society for
Promoting Christian Knowledge envies none of

THE EXTENSION OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. IST
these, but from her earliest institution it has been
her endeavour to attain the objects of all; and
while she was the first institution which called the
attention of Christian Europe to the spiritual state
of India, on whose soil she only, for more than a
century, with scanty means but with love una
bated, continued and continues to labour ; she
has supphed with a liberal hand the schools
of Great Britain and Ireland with the necessary
elementary books of instruction ; and has circu
lated during the last year, either gratuitously or
at very reduced prices, above ninety thousand
copies of the Bible or the New Testament. These,
however, are not the only nor the distinguishing
circumstances in her constitution to which I am
desirous of caUing your notice. Blessed as these
are, and necessary means of blessedness, yet can
neither the employment of missionaries abroad, nor
the education of youth, nor the dissemination of
the Scriptures at home, be, any of them or alto
gether, considered as sufficient to meet the grow
ing necessities and growing dangers of the Mes
siah's Chui^jph and kingdom. It is not enough to
bear His banner through distant seas, and declare
in the ends of the earth the glory of our God, when
our own streets are clogged with vice, and our
ears assaUed at home with the accents of infidelity
and blasphemy. It is not enough to give our chil-
dreil betimes the necessary, but easily abused power
of reading, and writing, unless we, at the same
time, render their tender minds famUiar with those
'I

188 SERMON IX.
works whence they are afterwards to derive in
struction and salvation. It is not even enough to
train up a chUd to find delight in profitable read
ing, unless, for the appetite thus created, we sup
ply him in after life with wholesome and sufficient
aliment. Nor is it enough, lastly, that the Bible
alone should be offered to his perusal and medita
tion, unless, in an age fruitful of error and false
interpretation, some farther helps are supplied to
enable him to understand and profit by those Sacred
Oracles. It is, then, as a tract society, as furnishing at
easy rates and in sufficient variety the most popu
lar works of our best English divines, and, more
recently, and for the purpose of founding parochial
libraries, many other popular works well calculated
not only for the rational instruction, but the ra
tional amusement of the lower and middhng classes ;
it is as labouring dihgently and successfuUy to
counteract the dark machinations of infidelity and
disaffection, and as rendering mankind safe from
such arts by furnishing them with the means of
appreciating their weakness, that the^^ociety for
Promoting Christian Knowledge stands without
a rival. It is thus that she completes her own sys
tem of instruction and utihty, that she promotes
the success of her mission by reforming her fellow
Christians at home, that she makes her schools
effectual to the end of Christian education by fur
nishing books in which Christian priniciples are
taught, and that she forwards and secures the

THE EXTENSION OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 189
triumphs of her Bil)les, by answering the objections
of infidehty, by Ulustratmg the abstruser doctrines
of the Sacred Volume, and by enforcing and per
suading, in ten thousand different forms, the pro
fession and practice of those principles and duties
on which there is, fortunately, but little contro
versy among believers.
And thus, too, it is that, while she herself needs
help from no other religious institution, she sup
plies the deficiencies and promotes the success of
all. It is thus that every mission, conducted on
the principles of genuine Christianity, every school
where Christianity is not excluded as a part of
education, and every society which has for its ob
ject the dissemination of God's word, derives effi
cacy from her labour^, and has reason to wish her
" good luck in the name of the Lord," as an insti
tution which renders perfect what they have begun,
and extends to a greater degree of knowledge, and
applies to a fuUer detaU of practice, and informs to
a more exceUent faith, and subdues to a more sys
tematic obedience, and ripens, lastly, to a greater
intensity of holiness here, and everlasting happmess
hereafter, those outlines of blessedness to which
only they have attained.
Nor, in the description which I have given of
the manner in which the Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge contributes to forward and
complete the benevolent views of aU other rehgious
institutions, can I consent to confine her claims to

190 SERMON IX.
patronage and favour exclusively to the members
of our national establishment. Her practice has
in no respect been narrow or sectarian. Devoted
as her members conscientiously are to the doctrine
and discipline of the English Church, and to the
apostolical succession of bishops, priests, and dea
cons, she has not hesitsCted to avail herself of the
labours of Lutheran missionaries, and in her
list of publications the names may be found, not
only of foreign presbyterian divines, but of some
among the most eminent English dissenters. And
if any stranger to our Church conceives of us as
exclusively and intolerantly labouring, not for the
extension and triumph of Gospel truth, but for the
advantage of a particular hierarchy, let me implore
him, without prejudice, to examine some of those
volumes which excite his jealousy. Let him try
our doctrines by the test of Scripture; let him
weigh our prayers in the balance of meditation and
charity, and, if he does not join our communion, I
am convinced he wiU think more favourably of our
principles and practice, and discover that we too
are engaged with less clamour, perhaps, and with
more discretion, but with equal earnestness, and a
no less glowing love, in the same great cause,
which, I willingly bear him witness, the conscien
tious dissenter is endeavouring to forward.
But to the sincere members of the Church of
England, to those whom I now behold around me,
and who regard her, with reason, as one of the

THE EXTENSION OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM. 191
purest systems of Christian government now on
earth, and one of the most efficient agents of Chris
tian instruction which the world has yet witnessed,
who rejoice in her permanence, and are sensibly
affected by her dangers ; to them need I say any
thing in recommendation of a society which has,
for more than a century, ,been universaUy recog
nised as her firmest bulwark, and on the continu
ance and activity of wliich, it must, humanly
speaking, depend whether she is to sink, first, into
comparative uselessness, and afterwards, into utter
and unpitied ruin ; or whether she is stiU to flourish
in the candlestick where her God hath placed her,
a light to hghten the GentUes, and the glory of our
spiritual Israel ?
Ye that love these ancient and venerable forms
of devotion which instruct and improve, whUe they
awe and affect us, give your aid, that the poor man
also may read and possess his Common Prayer. Ye
that honour the sacraments of Christ, help us to
make known their meaning and necessity to those
who now shrink back from the Altar in ignorant
alarm. Ye that fear the sin of schism, or are ap
palled by the muttered thunders of infidelity, be
sure that there is balm in Gilead, if the valuable
specifics which our society offers are brought within
the reach of the deluded victim of doubt or im
piety ; and above all, let it be seen by the course
of your own lives, that you are really attached to
the religion which you profess, the forms of devotion

192 S.ERMON IX,
which you recommend to others, and that the sys
tem of faith and practice which you prescribe to
your poorer neighbour, is that which is your own
guide on earth, and your comfort in the hour of
dissolution.

SERMON X.

THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN.
[Preached for the Church Missionary Society, at Whittington,
Salop, April 16, 1820.]

St. Matthew vi. 10.
Thy kingdom come.
In the Divine prayer from which these words are
taken, there is a twofold recurrence of the term
God's kingdom. In the former instance we desire
of our Father that His kingdom may come, and in
the latter we acknowledge and recognise the king
dom of the Almighty as, together with His glory
and His poWer, existing for ever and ever : a cir
cumstance which should seem to point out to us
two distinct and different manifestations of celestial
authority, the one which is now and has been from
the beginning of time, the other which is yet future,
and is advancing to take place among men.
That^the name of kingdom is famUiarly and ap
propriately applied to the relationship which God
bears to aU created things as their Maker j^Preserver,
and Governor, is plain not only from the natural
reason of mankind, but from innumerable passages
of Scripture. Even the heathen had so far a per-
VOL. T. a:

194 SERMON X.
caption of this propriety, that they called their Ju-*
piter the king of gods and men ; and to the Lord
Jehovah the prophet David, in his address to his
son Solomon, ascribes the same distinctive title in
a splendid strain of pathetic eloquence : " Thine,
O Lord," are his words, " is the greatness, and the
power, and the glory, and the victory, and the ma
jesty : for all that is in the heaven and in the earth
is thine. Thine is the kingdom, O Lord, and
Thou art exalted as head above aU !" * The esta^
blishment of this kingdom, however, being the sub
ject of our praises, not of our prayers, has no place
among the petitions which our Lord has taught us
to offer up, but is reserved with more propriety to
the glorification or doxology by which those peti
tions are concluded.
But out of this universal empire over nature
there was to arise, in process of time, an especial
kingdom over the moral world, to which all the pro
phets of elder times bore witness, and which is de
scribed by the evangelists, as it was already fami
harly spoken of by the Jews, as the kingdom of
Heaven or of God. The good old Simeon waited
for this consolation of his people when it was fore
told to him that he should not depart before he
had seen the Christ, or anointed Prince of Israel.
It was the argument by which the Baptist moved
his hearers to repentance that the kingdom of Hea
ven was mst approaching, and our blessed Lord
¦-fe
'" 1 Chroii. xxix. 11.

THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN. 195
Himself, on His first appearance in Galilee, came
preaching, as we are told, the good tidings of His
Father's kingdom.
We cannot, therefore, be at a loss to determine
that by this kingdom is meant the world under the
Gospel dispensation. The person who rules over
it is our Saviour, the Son and the Anointed of the
Most High. Its laws and statutes are the Gospel
which He has given, and its subjects are those who
believe in and are called by His name. The begin
ning of this empire is to be dated from the time at
which Jesus ascended into Heaven, and sate on the
right hand of God, aU power and rule over the
Church being then committed to Him. The exer
cise of that power shall remain in the hands of the
Messiah tUl all His enemies shall be put under His
feet, and death itself shaU be destroyed by Him.
" Then cometh the end,"* when the Son shall deli
ver up again His mediatorial kingdom to Him from
whom He received it, when, having put aU things
under His feet. He shaU Himself be subject unto
the Father; and God, in His threefold Unity, shaU
be thenceforward all in all.
The plain and natural meaning, then, of entreat
ing our Heavenly Father that His kingdom may
come, is that, by His grace, the religion of His Son
may be extended, supported, and established. It
is the endeavouring to aid by our prayers that great
and good work in which the Apostles laboured, and
* 1 Cor. xv. 24.

196 SERMON X.
in which the best and wisest of mankind have, in
imitation of the Apostles, esteemed it a glory and
happiness to endure hardship, contempt, and mar
tyrdom; that work which was the subject of the
latest charge given by the Lord Jesus to His fol
lowers, " Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
baptising them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and pf the Holy Ghost, teaching them to
observe aU things whatsoever I have commanded
you."* It is true that, in its fullest sense, the prayer
which we offer thus to God embraces far more than
the outward estabhshment and profession of His
faith among the sons of men. It comprises a de
vout aspiration for the establishment, or renewal,
or preservation of Christ's kingdom in our hearts,
as an internal, a ruling, and overmastering princi
ple of faith, of feeling, and deportment. It com
prises a desire to be admitted, in God's good time,
to the society of that blessed portion of His Church
which, having been faithful unto death, is aheady
rejoicing in Paradise. It implies, above aU, a long
ing after that triumphant return of our glorified
Saviour, when, having completed the number of
His elect. He shall hasten His more perfect king
dom, when God shaU visibly take unto Himself His
great power and shaU reign, and when we, with all
those that ^^re departed in the true faith of His
holy name, may have our perfect consummation
* St. Matt, xxviii. 19. 20

THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN. 197
and bliss, both in body and soul, in His eternal and
everlasting glory !
But in its plainest and most immediate sense, in
that sense in which it must be first fulfiUed in our
selves before we can hope for a share in these fur
ther and greater blessings, in that sense in which it
must be first made known to all nations before, and
in order to its fuU and final accomplishment ; in
this sense, I say, it can only be understood as a
desire that the knowledge of Divine truth should
be extended and confirmed among men, that the
Gentiles should come to His light and their kings
to the brightness of His rising, that the everlast
ing Gospel should be preached to every nation until
the kingdoms of this world become the kingdoms
of our God and his Christ, and " the earth be fiUed
with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the
waters cover the sea !"*
This, then, is the import of the second petition
in that prayer which we derive from the example
and authority of our Saviour, and which, with the
great majority of Christians in every sect and coun
try, is a constituent and necessary part of their
daily and nightly devotions. And, since to petition
Heaven for any grace which we are not really de
sirous of obtaining is, manifestly, either a mockery
of God in using a form of words without meaning,
or an hypocritical attempt to deceive Him by coun
terfeiting desires which we do not feel ; and since
? Hab. ii. 14.

198 SERMON X.
God, we may be sure, would never have enjoined
the expression of wants and desires which it was
not fitting and necessary that we should continu
ally feel and act upon, it foUows, from the mere
fact that our Lord has taught us thus to pray, that
the instruction of the ignorant and the conversion
of the heathen should be the earnest and daily wish
of all those by whom His name is named.
Let me ask you, then, my brethren, and ask you
as in His presence to whom aU hearts are open
and all desires known, who knoweth our necessi
ties before we ask, and our ignorance in asking,
have you seriously laid to heart the great blessed
ness of knowing and believing His Gospel, of being
admitted to the name and privUeges of His children,
of having your nature washed in His baptism from
the infection of death and of sin, and your souls
maintained and nourished by His most precious
body and blood } Are you duly sensible of the
advantage which you possess over the heathen in
knowing God as He is ; in being instructed as to
the service which He requires of you;' in being
encouraged under the miseries of mortality by a
sure and certain hope of everlasting happiness after
death; in being comforted under the burthen of
your natural weakness and surrounding tempta
tions by the sacrifice for sin through Christ's blood,
the assurance of glory through His merits, and the
help to be obtained through His name from the
Holy Ghost to enhghten, guide, and comfort you .''
Suppose that these things, which we have known

ii:

THE CONVERSION OF TliE HEATHEN. 199
fi*om our childhood, and have, therefore, ceased to
regard as they ought to be regarded, were at this
time first made known to us ; suppose we were now
first told that there is a good, and just, and holy,
and merciful God over all, to whom aU His works
are known, who requires from us no bloody sacri
fice, no shocking, or difficult, or costly service, but
whose eyes and ears are ever open to the prayer
of the humble and the penitent ! Suppose we now
first heard that the sins by which we are each of
us conscious that we have offended God are par
doned, on our true repentance, through the medi
ation and sufferings of God's beloved Son, who so
loved the inhabitants of the world that He came
down from Heaven to take on Himself their pu
nishment ! Suppose we had now first opened to us
the prospect of another and a better world in which
we may hope, together with those dear and virtuous
friends of whom death has robbed us, to dweU in
the presence of the Lord, the objects of His mercy
and His favour ! Suppose that when our prospect
of this reward grew dim,, and our heart fainted
through a sense of our inherent weakness and un-
worthiness, we were now first lifted up to hope and
dihgence in weU doing by the promise of a pure
and mighty Comforter to enhghten us when we
were dark, to support us when we were feeble, to
raise us when we feU, and finally to beat down
under our feet our fiercest and mightiest enemy !
Suppose, I say, these things were told you this day
for the first time, and ask your own hearts whether

200 SERMON \.
the natural sympathies of humanity would not pro*
duce an earnest desire that the same glorious truths
might be. made known to others besides yourselves,
and that all your neighbours, yea, that all mankind
should, like you, be enabled to behold this great
salvation .''
My brethren, there are many miUions of men in
the world, hundreds of millions, to whom these
blessed truths are yet "unknown. MUlions who
have lost the knowledge of the one true God amid
a multitude of false or evil deities ; who bow down
to stocks and stones ; who propitiate their sense
less idols with cruel and bloody sacrifices ; who lose
sight of their dying friends with no expectation of
again beholding them, and who go down to the
grave themselves in doubt and trembling ignorance,
without light, without hope, without knowledge of
a Saviour !
Is it your pleasure, is it your desire, that these
your feUow creatures should be brought from dark
ness into light, that they should share with you
your helps, your" hopes, your knowledge, your sal
vation ? Can you pray with sincerity that the
kingdom of God may come to them as it has come
to you ; and wiU you, thus desiring and thus pray
ing, refuse to furnish, according to your ability, the
means of bringing it to them .'' You cannot, you
wUl not, you dare not !
" But StiU," it has been said, " if these men are
ignorant they are at least safe. If much- has not
been given to them, much will not be required from

THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN. 201
them; and if the honest and virtuous heathen fives
up to his imperfect knowledge, he may be admitted
by that God whose mercy is over aU His works, to
that Heaven of which he has not received the pro
mise." It may be so, and in many instances I trust
that it wUl be so. I trust in God that the merits
of Christ may be the fountain of life to many who,
in this world, have had no opportunity of tasting
His living waters. But even this hope will afford
little comfort to those who look impartially on the
general conduct of heathen nations, since, though
a blind and imperfect endeavour after holiness may
be accepted, the sins even of the most ignorant, so
long as those sins are committed in opposition to
the law of nature, and the light of natural reason
and conscience, must be exceedingly hateful to
God, and call down from Him their due measure
of punishment. It is not necessary to suppose
that he who was imperfectly informed of his Mas
ter's wiU, and committed things worthy of stripes,
wiU be chastised so severely as those sinners who
enjoyed and abused the fuU hght of the Gospel ;
but chastised he must be if the word of God is
true, and the mildest of God's chastisements are
described to us in colours dreadful enough to make
¦the flesh creep and the ears tingle.
The heathen, by far the greater part of them,
are any thing but innocent and conscientious fol
lowers of the law of nature. Child-murder, unkind-
ness to parents, dishonesty, lying, and bloody
cruelty abound amonj them to a degree, of which
VOL. I. ^ I*

202 SERMON X.
the wickedness of Christians, great as it is, can
furnish no adequate idea. And if by some rare
advantage of temper and situation, a comparatively
innocent and holy man may here and there be met
with, hke " a firebrand plucked out of the burn
ing," * this is but a fresh encouragement to make
known the ways of peace to the multitudes who
are perishing, and to give to those few, who make
so good use of their imperfect lights, the far greater
help and comfort of the Gospel. Be sm'e, my
friends, it is not a needless task which He, who
knew all things, undertook when He came to give
light to those who sate in darkness. It was no
superfluous revelation to confirm which so many
miracles were wrought, so many prophecies deli
vered, so pure and precious blood poured forth on
the rocks of Calvary. It was no needless labour
which Christ imposed on His apostles, to go and
preach His gospel unto every creature, nor is that
an idle and unmeaning prayer which we are taught
to utter in the words " Thy kingdom come !" It
remains to be seen whether our lips and our hearts
go together.
If, indeed, the spiritual danger of the heathen
were less great, if their spiritual advantages were
greater than we have any reason to suppose them,
yet, from a regard to their temporal wants, it would
be our duty to desire and contend for the extension
of Christianity. Wherever she goes, civifization
" Amosiv. 11.

THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN. 203
follows in her train; wherever she goes, the duties
and the rights of mankind are practised and recog
nised ; the fetters of the slave are hghtened and
removed ; the female sex are restored to their na
tural situation and their kindly influence in society;
and the profession of godliness is shown to be great
riches, as contributing to the wisdom, the wealth,
and the happiness of the nation which receives it.
Let us compare our present condition with that of
our forefathers whUe the Gospel was yet unknown
to them ! Let us recollect that the poorest man
who now hears me is more warmly clad, more com
fortably lodged, enjoys a mind better stored with
ideas, and greater security of liberty, life, and pro
perty, than a king among the wUd Americans or the
ancient Britons; and we shaUfeel and understand
the blessings of a religion, which has been the prin
cipal agent in a change so beneficial, a religion by
which the ignorance of man is enlightened, and his
manners rendered gentle, which, by protecting the
fruits of industry, has encouraged every useful in
vention, and which, even amid the increasing luxury
of the rich, has lessened the distance between them
and the poor, by caUing the attention of both to
that awful moment when aU shaU be equal in
each other's eyes, as they are now in the eyes of
their Maker !
But, if it is the duty of aU Christians every where
to co-operate in the furtherance of these glorious
prospects, so there is no nation in the world on
whom so strong an obligation of this kind is laid as on

204 SERMON X.
the inhabitants of Great Britain. Our colonies, our
commerce, our conquests, our discoveries, the em
pire which the Almighty has subjected to our sword,
the purity of our national creed, the apostolic dig
nity of our national establishments, what are all
these but so many calls to labour in the improve
ment of the heritage which we have received, so
many talentS' entrusted to our charge, of which a
strict account must be one day rendered .'' Shall we
overlook our heavy debt of blood and tears to injured
Africa.-* Shall we forget those innumerable isles
of the southern ocean first visited by our sails, but
which so long derived from us nothing but fresh
wants, fresh diseases, fresh wickedness .'' ShaU we
forget the spiritual destitution of those sixty mil
lions of our fellow men, yea, our feUow subjects,
who in India still bow the head to vanities, and tor
ment themselves, and burn their niothers, and
butcher their infants, at the shrine of a mad and
devilish superstition .'' Shall we forget, while every
sea is traversed by our keels, and every wind brings
home wealth into our harbours, that we have a
treasure at home of which those from whom we
draw our wealth are in the utmost need ; a trea
sure, if used aright, more precious than rubies, but
which, if wUfuUy and wantonly hid, must, like the
Spartan fox, destroy and devour its possessor.? Oh,
¦when you are about to lie down this night, and
begin, in the words which the Lord has taught
you, to commend your bodies and souls to His
protection, will you not blush, wiU you not trem-

THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN. 205
ble to think, whUe you say to God, " Thy kingdom
come !" that you have this day refused your con-
tributiohs towards the extension of that kingdom !
I know you wiU not refuse them ! Or, is it still
necessary to recommend to your support that pe
culiar instrument of doing good in whose behalf I
now stand before you, and to vindicate the Church
Missionary Society from the suspicion of party and
sectarian motives.'' This, also, I wiU attempt,
though in the great cause of the propagation of the
Gospel, it is wearisome to descend to disputes as to
the fittest channel of a benevolence which can
hardly be directed into a wrong one. There are
other bodies in our Church associated for the same
good end ; to them, if you prefer them, carry your
alms, or let them share with us in your bounty.
But see, I charge you before God, see that through
some channel or other that bounty finds it way,
lest , you be found hereafter to have hindered us
without helping them, and to have made your or
thodox zeal a cloak for your backwardness in the
cause of the Gospel! But for our own sake, for
yours, for the sake of common sense and Christian
charity, let me protest against that monstrous doc
trine that, because there are other and elder so
cieties in the Church for the propagation of the
Gospel, it is, therefore, a mark of disaffection to
the Church to establish and support a new one for
the same exceUent purpose. From what page of
Scripture, what period of ecclesiastical history,
what council, what father of the Church do the

206 SERMON X.
supporters of such doctrines derive their argu
ments or authority } When have such restrictions
as they would forge been imposed even in those
Churches which carry to the highest pitch their
admiration Of antiquity and precedent } Was Be
nedict accused or suspected of schism when he in
stituted a new monastic order instead of uniting
himself to the elder fraternities under the rules of
Antony or Pacomius } Was Francis of Assisi, was
Dominic, was Ignatius Loyola, all of them the
founders of new establishments, were these men
told by the zealots of Rome that it became them
to rest contented with those means of piety or ex
ertion which had been bequeathed by the wisdom
of our ancestors.'' Or why should I instance the
wisdom and hberality of the chUdren of worldly
prudence in opposition to the errors of those whom
I acknowledge and reverence as belonging to the
chUdren of hght } Did, in our own Church, and
in the days of our immediate fathers, the Society
for Propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts pre
sume to tell her younger sister for Promoting
Christian Knowledge that, in sending missionaries
to India, she was thrusting an intrusive sickle into
the harvest of another."* There are very many
motives besides a sectarian spirit which may lead
men to institute and encourage new institutions
rather than to throw the whole weight of their
bounty into the old. WhUe some prefer the wary
caution of a self-elected corporation, others may,
with at least a show of reason, and certainly with-

THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN. 207
out just offence to any, conceive that more good is
likely to be produced by the popular and expansive
force of a society where every member has a voice
in the apphcation of his contributions. With many,
a personal knowledge of the directors of one asso
ciation wUl induce them to prefer it to another
equally respectable, and there are many who, from
experience of the superior activity possessed by
most recent institutions, will expect greater and
more beneficial exertions from a new society for no
other reason than because it is new. But, whUe
there is room and employment for all, whUe there
is a unity of faith, a unity of object, a unity of
symbols and Sacraments, a unity of religious and
canonical obedience, and, above all, a unity of
Christian charity, such institutions may aU wish
each other good luck in the name of the Lord,
with no other rivalry than that of which shall best
serve their common Magter.
There is another, however, and a more plausible
objection made to us, that our Society is only os
tensibly anxious for the conversion of the heathen,
or the general interests of Christianity, whUe its
main attention is directed, and its inevitable conse
quences tend to the support of a party among
ourselves, whose rise and prevalence have been for
some years the objects of peculiar jealousy to the
majority of the Church of England. Now it might
be, perhaps, sufiicient in answer, to inquire by
what means, supposing its members to have such
intentions, those intentions could be forwarded by

208 SERMON X.
a society for foreign missions. Is it by a fraudulent
appropriation to other purposes of the funds which
we raise for this specific object .'' Our annual ac
counts are before the world ; nor has, indeed, a
viUany of this nature been, at any time, imputed
to us. Is it by selection of enthusiastic or fana
tical missionaries, or missionaries remarkable for
their adherence to obnoxious opinions .'' Even here
it would be hard to say how the purposes of party
at home would be forwarded by sending our most
active partisans abroad ; nor would the advantage
to the Church be less evident of a conduct which
removed from her bosom those persons whose pre
sence is supposed to disturb her peace, to scenes
where their peculiarities could do little harm,
while the warmth of their zeal might carry them
through obstacles under which a calmer spirit
would sink.
I wiU not, however, dissemble my sentiments,
nor can any advantage arise from a pretended ig
norance of the nature of those accusations which
are brought against us. If it had been the object,
if it had been the practice of this Society, to dis
seminate among the Heathen, or elsewhere, those
peculiar views of Christianity which are known by
the name of Calvin, believing, as I do, though with
sincere respect and esteem for the virtue and
talents by which those doctrines have been adorned
and supported, but believing, as I do, those doc
trines to be most injurious to the Divine Majesty,
and most pernicious in their ordinary and natural

THE CONVERSION OF THE HEATHEN. 209
effects on the human mind, I, for one, would have
sought some other means of contributing to the
propagation of the Gospel.
But, I speak from personal knowledge when I say
that, in no one case has any preference been given
in the choice of missionaries to the foUowers of
Calvin over those of Arminius; and that while en
thusiasm of aU kinds has been discouraged by the
managers of our institution, with a jealousy httle
less than that which has been exerted against
positive immorality, they have been contented to
exhort their agents to a more zealous attention to
those points in which aU Churchmen are agreed,
and to moderation as to those on which they them
selves were divided.
It is by our fruits, however, that we desire to be
judged, and if the exclusive employment of mis
sionaries, either episcopaUy ordained at home, or
furnished by those Lutheran Churches of Ger
many whence the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge has derived some of its most distin
guished labourers : if the translation of the English
liturgy into three new languages, and its introduc
tion into weekly use among the negroes of Africa,
and the ancient Syrian churches in India ; if the
consignment of a very considerable sum of money to
the entire disposal of the exceUent and apostolical
Bishop of Calcutta,* and a desire, repeatedly expres
sed and consistently acted on, to submit our ihis-
* The Right Rev.T. F. Middleton, D.D., first Bishop of Calcutta.
VOL. I. 2 E

210 SERMON X.
sionaries in the east to his spiritual guidance and
prudent counsels ; if these are marks of aUegiance
to the Church, we may at least disclaim the charge
of having departed from her, and we may hope
that our attention to her sound form of words and
doctrine may be blessed by the Almighty as a means
of grace to miUions who now sit in darkness.
On these grounds it is that, as Englishmen, as
Churchmen, as Christians, as lovers of the virtues
and happiness of mankind, I now appeal to your
bounty. And that our alms may go up before the
sight of God, and be blessed both to the givers, the
objects, and the dispensers, let me entreat your
prayers through the merits of Him in whose name
only is strength or righteousness.

SERMON XL

THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES.
[Preached for the British and Foreign Bible Society, at
Shrewsbury, Sth Sept. 1813.]

Rev. xiv. 6.
I saw another angel fly in the midst of Heaven, having the ever
lasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell in the earth
and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.
Being called upon, with the permission of your
ordinary pastors, to plead in this place the cause
of the British and Foreign Bible Society, I conceive
it to be incumbent on a minister of the Church of
England addressing an assembly of the same per
suasion, to examine with patient impartiality the
objections which have been levelled against this
institution, as unfavourable or unfriendly to the
rehgious establishments of our country. A more
grateful task it would indeed have been to consider
the broad and general duties of diffusing religious
knowledge, and the glorious facilities which our
present combination affords for sowing the seeds of
eternal life in soUs the most distant and unkindly !
For, whether we seek to. turn the nominal Chris
tian from the error of his ways, or whether it be

212 SERMON XI.
the Winded heathen whose eyes we strive to open,^
no means of improvement can be employed more
effectual, none, assuredly, less obvious to objection,
than the dispersion of the oracles of God. Other
preachers may be intemperate or careless ; they
may shock by hasty zeal, or disgust by unsuitable
demeanor; but these holy volumes are every where
pure, and consistent, and peaceable. The indo
lence of the times, the difficulty of access, the
drawn sword of persecution may impede, perhaps,
the missionaries' progress ; but though the feet of
those that bear good tidings may linger on the
mountains, the word of God runneth very swiftly ;
and wherever education has gone before, the
natural curiosity of mankind wUl secure to these
wonderful testimonies a favourable and attentive
reception. If, indeed, the one great object which
is pursued by the society in whose behalf I now
address you, be regarded ; if the effects which it has
already produced be estimated, and those which
its augmented means of action may enable it here
after to accomplish, it might be hoped that no
scanty blessing, no unhallowed destiny Avould fol
low an association like ours. It might be hoped,
without the guUt of enthusiastic vanity, that the
prophecy of my text were even now to receive its
fulfilment, that like that angel whom John beheld
bearing on his mighty wings the confession of
Christ's rehgion, our society should advance in the
strength of faith conquering and to conquer, tUl all
that now oppose or distrust shafl have unlearnt

PHE DISPER^ON OF THE SCRIPTURES. 213
their fe^rs and reputed them of their unjust impu
tations, till hostile sects and hostUe nations shall
have united heart and hand in the dispersion of
their common Gospel, tiU the acts of civilization
and the graces of Christianity shall have sprung up
beneath our fostering care in the forests of the
savage, and the hills of the robber, and tiU the
universal earth shaU be fiUed with " the knowledge
of the Lord as the waters cover the sea !"*
With such an object in our view, it is hard indeed.
and discouraging, that our labours should be regard
ed with distrust and coldness by many of those
whose approbation we would most desire; that,
like the founder of the Roman walls, our own bre
thren insult our progress, and that we are com-
peUed to encounter the charge of hostility or indif
ference to those rituals, which, next to God's own
oracles, are the objects of our greatest reverence ;
unless, yielding to this clamour, we desert the prin
ciples of our union, and reject, as Nehemiah re
jected the Samaritans, the proffered and powerful
aid of our Christian and Protestent brethren. True
it is, that, if we consider the former history of our
English Church, or those general principles of hu
man nature which, under simUar circumstanced,
conduct to results unavoidably similar, we shall
find but little reason for surprise in the objections
which, from certain quarters, are so strongly urged
against our institution. The Church of England
* Isaiah xi. 9.

214 SERMON XL
was, we know, baptized in blood, and while the ||
scars of her early sufferings stiU remain to warn her
children against inconsiderate innovation, she may
weU be pardoned, if to others the spirit of her
establishment should sometimes appear too jealous
and exclusive.
Those who are in possession of what many covet,
are apt, from that very circumstance, to become
distrustful; those who have an extensive fortress
to defend, are wisely and piously vigilant, lest by
their remissness even the slightest outwork be be
trayed. Far from imputing unworthy motives to
such as have thus warmly opposed us, I view with
respect even errors which are founded on a zeal for
God's house; I venerate their feelings, I lament
their apprehensions ; and if I myself have acted dif
ferently, it is because I am convinced that those
apprehensions are the phantoms only of prejudice
or misinformation; it is from an experience that
such grisly shadows need but be approached to lose
their terrors ; to drop like the monsters of a twi
light journey, their formidable crests and giant
arms, and sink before the light of reason into that
harmless insignificance from which the magic of
fear has raised them.
Of the two peculiarities which, while we regard
them as the main piUars of our institution, have
been the innocent cause of so much serious offence
and alarm, it may be said, without fear of contra
diction, that while the dangers ascribed to them
are at most obscure and contingent, the regu-

iriE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 215
lations themselves' are of obvious and immediate
utility. By the admixture of sects in our governing
committee, we obtain a greater and more concen
trated power of inculcating religious knowledge
than can be possessed by any separate exertions of
those religious parties which compose our union,
and we remove aU possibihty of difference as to the
sort of knowledge to be diffused, by confining our
exertions, as a body, to the dispensing that one
work whose authority we all profess to venerate,
and to which, as to the very throne and oracle of
truth, we severally make our appeal.
The first of these assertions it may seem almost
a waste of time to prove. Its principle is acknow
ledged in every alliance of human beings for the
purposes of peace or war ; nature and experience
cry aloud with ten thousand voices that united
strength is stronger by that union, that efforts un-
combined are weak both singly and in the aggre
gate, and that in anarchies of every kind, dum sin-
guli pugnant universi vincuntur. It may be said,
indeed, that the same advantages which the social
possesses over the sPlitary state, are possessed by
one large over many smaUer combinations. The
result of union is more than a simple addition of
those items which each could separately furnish ;
not only each individual does more, and does it
with greater ease when aided by the stimulus of
example and fellowship, but works may be under-

216 SERMON XL
taken, which, except by the force of numbers, it
would be physically impossible to effect.
Nor is this aU ; great bodies have the power and
the tendency to multiply thepiselves faster than
smaU. They attract more of the world's attention ;
they offer themselves to the eyes of men in a mag
nitude which cannot be overlooked, and attract
aUies and proselytes with a force continually in
creasing, and a zeal whose contagious example is
the stronger by being concentrated. The exertions
and successes of the Jesuits in the seventeenth
century, of the propaganda college, and those
other gigantic institutions which owe their birth to
the refined policy of the papal government, are all
sp many iUustrations of this principle. In later
times, and with a purer faith, the Moravian brethren
afford us a similar example, and many of those
who, while they approve of our, grand object, are
offended by our spirit of union are themselves by
no means blinded to the mischief and danger of a
house divided against itself, and lament as loudly
as any men those unhappy differences among the
people of God, whereby our Saviour's seamless
coat is rent, and the progress of His faith impeded.
It is urged, however, on the other hand, that the
Bible Society has itself a tendency to increase and
perpetuate those divisions of which our land is sick
unto death. It is said thaTwe (for I am speaking
as a churchman, and it it an assembly of Church
men whom I address,) admit the dissenters to an

THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 217
equahty with ourselves : that we throw our weight
into their scale, and that by enabling them to dis*
tribute Bibles^ we give them additional influence
over the minds of the poor. It is further prophe
sied that a latitudinarian feeling, an indifference
on our parts to all the peculiarities of our estab
lishment, will be the consequence of this our pious
intercourse ; while by some unexplained and un-
explainable difference in our own temperament and
that of our allies, their prejudices are to be all con
firmed by the same process which eradicates our
ancient attachments.
The first of these objections I would answer
shortly, that as we have never claimed precedence,
so we abandon none. I know not any superiority
except that of truth which one religious sect has a
right, as such, to demand over another ; and I am
confident that truth, wherever that is found, cannot
be more effectually forwarded than by the friendly
intercourse in good works of those who conscien
tiously differ. It wiU not, it cannot be esteemed a
weakening of our faith to learn the characters of
our opponents ; nor injurious to those feelings with
out which faith is vain, if we separate a becoming
horror of their heresy from an uncharitable scorn
of their persons.
But is it meant that when we admit their teach
ers to vote with us, even in those spiritual concerns
respecting which We are aU agreed, we proclaim to
the world, by so doing, that we apprehend no dif
ference between their opinions and those which we
VOL. I. 2F

218 SERMON XL
have professed so solemnly.'' — none between theiy
commission to preach the Gospel and that which
is, in our own case, derived from the apostles ? —
none between the Gospel taught by them and that
which we have ourselves received.'' I answer,, ra
ther, by proving to these our brethren and to the
world that, where our conscience wiU allow; us,, we
are ready to co-operate with them in every good
work ; we stamp our disapprobation of their pecu
liar tenets with tenfold force and value ; we divest
our orthodoxy of all reasonable suspicion of worldly
pride or interest, and evince that when, in proper
time and place, we declare what we conceive to be
the errors of these our friends, we declare the genu
ine, and painful, and brotherly feelings of our heart
and conscience.
By those, in the second place, who object to the
increasing influence of dissenters among the poor
by the Bibles which they are thus enabled to dis
tribute, it should be remembered that, if there be
any force at all in their reasoning, it will apparently
prove too much. Influence is unquestionably ob
tained by the donor of food, or clothing, or medi
cine, as weU as by the gratuitous distributer of the
Sacred Volume, and we must, therefore, refuse our
co-operation not only to this society but to aU
others, whether they be patriotic or charitable in
stitutions, from which dissenters are not excluded.
But further, if the numbers of Churchmen predo
minate in the Bible Society (and if they do not
predominate to whose fault is that attributable ''

'ITIE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES, 219
certainly not to theirs who are revUed and slan
dered for supporting it,) if our numbers predomi
nate, it is plain that more comparative influence
wiU be obtained by our party than by theirs ; so
that to remove this objection at least the means
are in our own possession. Or granting, what is not
now the case, and by God's help never shaU be,
that the number of dissenters were greater than
that of Churchmen in the Bible Society, yet, even
thus, it is plain that the more Bibles the former
bestow, the fewer of their peculiar tracts they will
have the means of bestowing, and that a part of
their strength, so far as that strength is hostile to
our cause, wiU thus be manifestly neutralized. But,
in truth, I do not envy the applause or patronage
of that Churchman who can murmur at a good
work because it is done by a Samaritan ; or forbid
his brother to cast out devils in the name of the
Lord " because he foUoweth not with us."* The
Gospel, by whatever hands distributed, is the Gos
pel notwithstanding ; nor is such distribution to be
regarded with iU will by the successors of that great
apostle to whom we trace our British hierarchy,
who rejoiced in his bonds that Christ was preached,
though He were preached " even of envy and
strife."! To the third objection, as I am at a loss to dis
cover on what principle it is founded, I am cer
tainly not a little perplexed to reply. Does it pro-
4-
* St. Luke ix. 49. f Phil. i. 15,

220 SERMON XI.
c^ed on the results of former experience } Is it
from analogy that our opponents reason } or from
that, which their alarm should tacitly appear to
confess, the activity of the separatists and the su
pineness of our established clergy .'' But of an as
sociation on the principles of the Bible Society no
precise example (unfortunately for the Christian
world,) no precise example can be found ; and in
those smaUer republics of Switzerland or Germany
whose chequered sects have been brought into a
state of contact not altogether dissimilar, it wUl be
mostly seen that the Romanists, as the major num
ber, have triumphed over the others ; that the less
has not attracted the greater body, but the greater,
as might be expected, has absorbed the less. Where,
indeed, indifference to the distinctive features of
two or more religious parties prevails, the very imi
tative nature of mankind wUl give the preference
to the religion of the majority ; and where so many
circumstances unite in favour of an establishment
like ours, it is, surely, not too much to expect that
the establishment will be a gainer.
To the activity, however, of the dissenters in
disseminating their peculiar tenets, our common
experience bears testimony. It is an activity which
might reasonably be expected in the smaller body
of the assaUants, who have by so much a stronger
stimulus than the defenders of an estabhshment, as
the hope of obtaining is keener than the sense of
possession. But that this active hostility wUl be
increased by ;tolerance, that their religious animo-

THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 221
sity will receive strength as their personal suspi
cions die away, is hardly a consequence to be ap
prehended. And that the supineness imputed to
our own pastors is exaggerated, grossly exagge
rated, both by the vaunts of our adversaries and
the slanderous fears of our friends, that the activity
of separatists has produced a corresponding re-ac
tion on our part, and that we are ourselves improved
both in dUigence and union, in proportion as such
qualities are needed, is a truth which the experi
ence of the last twenty years may appear suffi
ciently to prove. Nor wiU it, nor can it be said
that those Churchmen and prelates who have sup
ported and do support the Bible Society, are the
least active, the least zealous, the least popular of
their order in the discharge of their professional
duties, or the most deficient in that conciliatory
spirit which, from the time of the apostles to the
present hour, has been found the best means of
conversion, and which is made all things to all men,
that it may " by all means save some."*
To those, in fact, who with so loud alarm vocife
rate that the Church is faUing into the hands of
schismatics, I would answer with the Theban Pe-
lopidas on a very different occasion, " and why not
they into ours .'"' Why, if any prepossessions are re
moved by such a union as that of the Bible Society,
should not those of the dissenting members be ex
pected to give ground } Is our rehgion so impure,
*lCor. ix. 22.

222 SERMON XI.
our worship so superstitious, our preachmg so un
learned or so unchristian that we may fear a compa
rison with any church in the world.-* Is it not rather
to be hoped that those, who, from honest though
mistaken motives, have been estoanged from our
cominunion, when that distance is overpast which
now gives room for misapprehension or calumny
when they behold us in our natural features, and,
hear us in our natural tones of peace and charity ;
when they find our prelates and. pastors, our lay
men and divines engaged in the same good cause
as themselves, courting them to union, and ready
to unite with them so far as we can unite without
partaking of their schism ; is it not to be hoped
that, instead of perverting us, they may themselves
be changed, that they may be led to reflect on the
apparent needlessness of their separation, and re
turn to those arms which are with brotherly love
extended to receive them .''
But, alas my friends, in days like these, of unex
ampled licentiousness and danger, when not the
private interests of particular Churches, but the
universal faith of Christianity is assaUed; whUe
irrehgion and immorality hold the larger and un-
enhghtened portion of the world in chains ; while
among the half-thinking and the half-learned, infi
delity has so widely scattered her venom; while
the exploded dreams of ancient atheism are revived
by men in high stations ; and while the editors of
low blasphemy are applauded by the rabble in their
place of punishment, these are no times when the

THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 223
»
mutual transgressions of brethren are to be remem
bered, or when the defenders of the faith are to
quarrel among themselves as to the nature of their
commission, or the fashion of their arms ! If we
cannot worship together, let us at least do good in
company ; and if the inferences which we draw
from the Word of God, on certain points, unfortu
nately vary, let us the more anxiously unite to dis
pense that pure Word itself, which, by the confes
sion of all sides, is able to make men " wise unto
salvation." *
Here, however, have other and very different
objections been started ; and as these are leveUed
at the second fundamental rule of our institution,
I, must again remind you that the sole object of
our union is the circulation of the Scriptures
without note or comment. To this two objections
have been made ; the first, that the design is in
itself inexpedient ; the second, that it is imperfect
and insufficient. Of the two learned authors by
whom these positions are advanced, the first main
tains tfiat the indiscriminate circulation of aU parts
of the Bible is neither commanded in Scripture,
nor advantageous to the souls of men. The second
assures us that to distribute the Scriptures alone is
to stop short in that dissemination of sound reli
gious knowledge, which it is incumbent on us all
to forward, and that in the. particular case of
Churchmen, a society which distributes the Sacred
" 2 Tim, iii. ]¦'>.

224 SERMON XL
Volume only, has a tendency to induce a neglect
of the Common Prayer. .,^
I have stated these objections vyithout any wilful
exaggeration, and I have stated them calmly and
gravely ; yet, indeed, it i^ with some certain diffi
culty that any man imbued with that common vene
ration for the Scriptures, which protestants as yet
retain, or with that common knowledge of logic
which was once a necessary part of education, can
refrain from astonishment at the apparent heresy
contained in the first assertion^ or a something more
than astonishment at the lamentable inconsequence
of the latter.
That there are some things in the Sacred Vo
lume hard to be understood, and that profane and
self-willed readers may wrest them to their own
destruction is a truth, indeed, of which the Scrip
ture itself instructs us. But from this acknow
ledged principle it can by no means foUow as an
inference that we are at liberty to retrench, or alter,
or intercept from the perusal of Christ's little ones,
any portion of those books which the Spirit of God
has prompted, and which are all alike intended for
the rehgious nourishment of all.
I know not any blessing of the Almighty which
may not be abused ; but I am sure that the casual
abuse of food, or raiment, or instruction, wiU justify
no man in withholding such blessings from any who
need his assistance. (I ask not by what authority,
short of that infallible pontiff to whom such specu
lations not obscurely tend, we can decide what

THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 225
portions of Scripture are unnecessary or unprofita
ble; but it Hfrny be demanded without offence, whe
ther most errors both in doctrine and practice have
not arisen from a partial and imperfect acquaint
ance with the Word of God, and whether it' be not
from the general and ungarbled testimony of the
Sacred' Volume, from its arrangement as a syst^em
arid the mutual fight afforded by its several trea
tises arid histories, that our religious faith is to be
formed ; a faith not founded on some detached and
dPUbtful passages, but on the united testimony of
the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ "Himself
being the chief corner-stone."*
To multiply authorities in a case of this sort were
to w-eary out myself and you; for neither has
Hooker taught in vain that "the reading of Scrip
ture is effectual, as weU to lay the first foundation.
as to add degrees^ of further perfection in the fear
of God;" hor was Chillingworth' deceived when hfe
urged that,' in necessary points, all Scripture is
intelligible; nor has our Church unprofitably or
dained that the whole Sacred Volume be read
through in order in the course of every year.f
* Ephes. ii. 20.
f Ce livre sacr^— est, a la vferit^, intelligible a tout le inonde
pai'rappo'rt d ce qu'ilTaut croire et faire pour obtenir de la mi-
sericbrde de Dieir-le salut fternel qui y est annoncd et promis
sous la condition de la foiet de la saintet^. Ainsi le peuple fidele
a qui ses occupacions en son genre de vie ne permettent pas tou-
jours de se munir des secours dent on vient de parler, a pourtant
cette consolation d'y trouver les Veritas salutaireSi^ous beaucoup
d'efude et de meditation ; comiriej d'autre cot^, il est inexcusable
VOL. I. 2 G

226 SERMON XL
To the learned author of the second objection, no
doctrine can be imputed so irreverent to Scripture,
or so repugnant to the practice ' of our Church.
His assertion, as he has himself explained it, and
when Stripped of that cloud which the dust of con
troversy can spread around the most harmless tenet,
is merely that the zealous partizan of certain doc
trines wiU not be contented with the distribution of
the Bible alone, but wUl subjoin such tracts or com
mentaries as explain the Bible according to his own
opinions. This is a doctrine which I am not dis
posed to controvert, any more than I shall deny the
second proposition of his syUogism, that the Bible
Society do not, in their corporate capacity, distri
bute any such tracts or commentaries. If then his
conclusion had been that the whole duty of a mem
ber of our Church is not comprised in uniting him
self to the Bible Society, I should acknowledge his
argument to be legitimate, though I should wonder,
perhaps at the labour bestowed on a proposition so
selftevident. But is it really possible to infer from
premises hke these, that the Bible Society induces
in Churchmen a disregard to the fitnrgy and doc
trinal tracts of the Church .'' If an oath were im
posed on our members that we should belong to no
other institution; that in our private bounty we
should circulate no religious books except the Bible
without note or comment, his reasoning would in
deed possess both consistence and plausibility. '
s'il ne les y cherche pas sous pretexte de son ignorance. — Beau-
sobre, Pref. Gen; sur le N. T. p. 11.

THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 227
While, however, we remaui at fuU liberty to take
what steps we please for disseminating the liturgy
from other funds, and in other associations, while
many, nay most of us do, in fact, belong to associ
ations for that definite purpose, his argument is
almost as accurate as if he had insisted that they
who distribute food to the poor, wiU therefore neg
lect to give them medicine; or that he whom we
behold to-day officiating at the altar or the read
ing-desk, renounces by that overt act aU future in
tention of serving God as a preacher.
By advice, nevertheless, from whatever motive it
proceed, we may weU and wisely profit ; and if the
insinuations which I have noticed, effect, even in a
single district, an increased distribution of the Com
mon Prayer ; if our members, such of them as pro
fess our established religion, are by these means
awakened to a livelier zeal for its distinguishing and
peculiar doctrines ; if performing the one part of
their duty they leave not " the other undone,"* and
by associations elsewhere supply, accordmg to their
abUity, that species of knowledge to the poor, which
our society cannot with consistency offer, the^cause
of not the Church alone, but of Christianity itself,
wiU no doubt be greatly forwarded ; and this dis
gusting controversy, hke the carcass of Samson's
lion, will be the means of enriching the world with
added industry, and sweetness, and nourishment.
To those, however, whose means of doing good
* St, Matth. xxiii. 23,

228 SERMON XI.
are limited, and to those zealous perspns who mur
mur in no doubtful terms at the increased circula-
tfen of the Sacred Volume, abounding, as it does
abou^', beyond aU contemporanepus dissemination
of human forms ; who accpnnt the Scriptures an
aliment. pf so dpubtful virtue as to become poison
unless accompanied by the proper antidote, and
had rather men should sit in darkness than that they
should attempt to find out light for themselves ; to
such I would earnestly suggest, that of two advan
tages, where both cannot be attained, it is an ob
vious wisdom to pursue the greater ; that till our
neighbours be supphed with the Scripture, the com
positions of human wisdom may for a time, give
place ; that a rule of faith would cease to be a rule,
if it needed something whereby itself should be
measured ; and that if the Scripture be in itself
sufficient to salvation, the dispersion of no other
tracts or rituals can be of the same necessity. .
Of human forms of prayer, and human exposi-
tipns of the Bible, it may be said in general tha
they are means of grace warranted by God's
word, and profitable tp the souls of men. Of our
own liturgy and homUies we with thankfulness
acknowledge that they breathe the real spirit
oif Christianity, and unite apostolic wisdom with
apostolic purity. But of all such it is confessed
that, as the-y boast no lustre save that which
is reflected from Scripture, so they may vanish
without obscuring the face of nature, if that
great luminary be itself in the midst of Heaven.

THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 239
The ChjBirch pf Christ has done without them, and
may again dispense with their fainter glimmerings;
but if the day spring from on higl^ be intercepted,
how shaU not the light which is in us be dark«ned ;
Be this our glory and our crowu, that we have la
boured and do labour in the dispersion of these
wonderful testimonies ; that to this one authority
we refer our several claims, convinced that where
the word of God is, God Himself is not far distant ;
that in His presence is light, and by this light shaU
every man's buUding be proved, whether it be gold
or silver, stubble or hay.
On these grounds, and supported by these rea
sons, I now entreat your assistance for the Bible
Society. Of what we have done already, and what
we purpose by your bounty to perform, of the glo
rious distribution of God's word which has by our
means been effected in the Christian world, and of
those StiU wider prospects which the land of" them
that sit in darkness" offers, the time forbids me, and I
hold it unnecessary, to enlarge. I might teU you of
the ignorant enlightened, of the poor made rich,of the
prisoner by our means released from a worse capti
vity ; I might point out to you that Germany, from
whence our own reformation was derived,now taught
and comforted by our fihal piety. I might show uni
versal ( hristendom rejoicing in our light ; and hos
tile nations offering up their prayers for England?
the friend of souls ; I might boast of the bounds pf
knowledge extended, and .paint genius and learn
ing braving in our cause the toUs of barbarous dia-

230 SERMON XL
lects and the terrors of pestilential climates. Your
attention might, lastly, be directed to those mighty
fields whose harvest has not yet sounded under the
Christian reaping-hook, to benighted Africa wait
ing for our iUumination, and to those vast regions
of Indian ignorance which Providence has planted
under our country's care. But I need not urge you
farther; these things have not been done in a
corner ; our sound has gone forth into aU lands,
and our words unto the ends of the earth ; and as
you wish these blessings to continue, and these
hopes to be realized, the world itself, for whose
spiritual instruction I plead, in God's name de
mands your assistance. I entreat you then, my
brethren, as you would not be found wanting in the
work of Christ, to join our holy fellowship ; as you
would escape the curse pronounced against those
who come not forth to the help of the Lord, I
conjure you that you stand not idle in this His vic
tory! But remember, above all things, if you desire
these labours to be avaUable to your own salvation,
as weU as to the salvation of other men, if you hope
to partake in those spiritual blessings which your
bounty may distribute, remember that we vainly
make others wise while our own hearts are blinded
and ignorant ; that it is not enough to give the
Bible to the poor unless we also study it ourselves,
and unless our daily prayers and daily actions
j^erish and display that faith and hope of which
this blessed volume is the treasury !
And, oh merciful God, who hast caused all holy

THE DISPERSION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 231
Scriptures to be written for our learning, grant
that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark,
learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience
and comfort of Thy holy word, we may embrace
and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting
life, which thou hast given us through Jesus Christ
our Lord !

SERMON XII.

THE MTfES OP THE MINISTRY.
[Preached at Chester, 1819.*]

Matt. ix. 38.

Pray ye, therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send
forth labourers into his harvest.
What is meant by this harvest of the Almighty
Father, and what manner of labourers they were
for whom the disciples of our Lord are instructed
thus to pray, are points which require no explana
tion. There are two questions, however, which
naturally arise from these words of Christ : First.
Whether the injunction here given to pray for a
supply of ministers in His Church were confined to
the apostles alone, or whether it extend to every
Christian and every age of Christianity ? Secondly.
In what manner they who offered such a prayer
* This Sermon was published with the following Dedication :
" TO THE EIGHT REV. GEORGE HENRY LAW, D.D. LORD BISHOP
OF CHESTER, [bATH AND WELLS,] WHOSE TALENTS AND VtK-
TUES HAVE ENDEARED HIM TO THE CLERGY OF HIS OWN
AND EVERY NEIGHBOURING DIOCESE, THE FOLLOWING SEB-
IPMON, PUBLISHED IN DEFERENCE TO HIS OPINION, IS MOST
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED."

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 233
Were to look for its fulfilment from God, and by
what actions of their own they were to concur with
and forward the accomplishment of their devout
desires .'' In other words, we are led to examine
the necessity of a continued succession of Chris
tian teachers, and the means whereby this succes
sion is to be preserved and rendered effectual.
I. That a due supply and succession of preachers
and ministers of the Gospel is a circumstance of
the greatest importance and necessity to the ex
tension and perpetuation of truth, to the know
ledge and happiness of mankind, and to the glory
of our common Master, is a truth which a moderate
acquaintance with the history of the world, and
even a careless survey of its present state, wUl
easily enable us to determine. There have, indeed,
at different periods of Christianity, been found
some enthusiastic believers who, by a too literal
application to the militant Church, of expressions
by which the prophets have described her trium
phant condition, have been induced to renounce
and deprecate all human means of instruction as
derogating from that abundant and universal iUu
mination of the Spirit, which was to be the distin
guishing glory of the Messiah's sovereignty.
But to a fancy of this kind the facts which we
behold are a sufficient answer, inasmuch as, under
stand the passages in question as literally as we
please, it is certain that they cannot apply in such
a literal sense to the actual condition of human
beings. In no sense can it be said that the time
VOL. T. 2 H

234 SERMON XIL
is arrived, when "the knowledge of the Lord
should cover the world as the waters cover the
sea." And, in a literal sense, it certainly cannot be
pretended that the majority of Christians enjoy
such a communion with their Maker, as that none
should need to teach his neighbour, seeing that all
were taught of God. Not yet the harvest of the
Son of Man is reaped, nor has the number of His
labourers been, as yet, at any time, adequate to
the accomplishment of the awful work before them.
Besides the boundless extent of heathen nations,
which even now are ready for the sickle, and who
chide, even now, the delays which detain the mis
sionary from their neglected furrows, in those lands
which Heaven has most favoured, and which have
been most abundantly traversed by Heaven's ap
pointed labourers, how vast a gleaning yet remains
of the souls who have escaped our dihgence, how
abundant a crop is daily rising round us, on which
the diligence of our successors must be exerted !
They are not the heathen only, they are not
those whom the grosser darkness covers, and who
have abided, thus far, in the land of the shadows of
death ; they are not these alone who wait for our
aid, and in whose behalf we need new helpers. —
There are those who, already regenerate, require
renewal and confirmation; who, having once en
joyed the light of truth, have shrunk back into the
shades of ungodliness; who panting after the
¦iwaters of comfort, have sought for them in strange
and broken cisterns, and whom it behoves us to

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 235
conduct to that true and living well, of which
whoso drinketh, shaU thirst no more.
So long as these iniquities abound, so long as
these errors prevail, so long is it our part, our in
terest, and our privilege, to ask light for them that
sit in darkness, and support for them that are weak ;
refreshment for them that travail and are heavy
laden ; and, in order to these ends, to pray the
Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth to
His field, the needfiil supply of spiritual husband
men. Accordingly, so far was the Author of our reli
gion from countenancing any such hope of univer
sal and equal illumination, that, when, on his own
departure from the world, he gave commission to
His apostles to preach the Gospel, He assured them,
at the same time, that His spiritual presence and
aid should remain with them tUl His second and
visible advent in glory. " The end of the world"
was first to come, before His assistance was to be
withdrawn, and, since this assistance was promised
them not generally as Christians, but in their ap
propriate character of ministers of the Gospel, it
foUows, that their ministry, or the ministry of others
like themselves, was not to find an end till the great
and final sabbath of nature.
It is not, indeed, the prevalent error of the pre
sent times, either to deny the necessity or underrate
the importance of the evangehcal oflice. Or of that
constant supply of labourers which the wants of
Christ's harvest continue every day to caU for With

236 SERMON XIL
increasing earnestness. On the other hand it is
rather to be lamented that, while many causes
operate to deter men from seeking an admission
into the ministry by the regular and legitimate
channel, the fences of the sheep-fold are scaled on
every side by a crowd of well-meaning but ill-in
formed volunteers in the cause, who intrude them
selves with unfortunate rashness into an office, the
labour and anxiety of which are only to be learned
by experience ; and incumber by their disorderly
efforts, the work which, I wiUingly bear them wit
ness, it is their earnest desire to forward.
This error (for such I hope to prove it) is in a
great degree, of modern origin. The ancient op
ponents of our Church, in the days of James and
Charles, were, for the most part, as fully convinced
as ourselves, of the necessity of Church imion, and
the advantages of a legitimate ministry; though
they denied to the Church of England the charac
ter of a true Church of Christ, and though their
ordination wanted, in our opinion, the sanction of
apostolic authority. But the question then agitated
between us was not whether a schism, or unneces
sary separation from the body of the Church was
not sinful (since both parties allowed that it was a
sin of no ordinary dye), but whether the Church of
England was so corrupt and idolatrous as to have
forfeited the aUegiance of her members; not whe»
ther an external authoritative call from the rulers
of the Church was nfeedful to designate a Christian
minister, (for both sides were by far too weU read

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 237
in the Scriptures and ecclesiastical antiquity to
make a doubt about the matter), but whether this
power of admission and ordination resided with
the presbytery or with the bishop, and whether the
authority of this last was an usurpation of the
darker ages, or really founded on inspired and
apostolic precedent.
At present, by far the greater number of those
who have separated from our Church appear, so
far as I have conversed with them, to find httle, if
any, fault with her doctrines, and to regard her
discipline with perfect indifference. Ask any mem
ber of an ordinary dissenting congregation the
grounds of his secession from the worship of his
forefathers, and he wiU most probably answer that
he has some personal objection to his parochial
minister, that he prefers the style of singing, or the
extemporaneous eloquence of the place which he
frequents, and that he has had no more thought of
asking his new teacher by what authority he dis
pensed the word of God and His Sacraments, than
of demanding similar credentials from a performer
on the stage. Even among the preachers them
selves, and the best informed of their number, it is
not unusual to find individuals who are singularly
blind to the guilt of schism, and the existence of
the Church as a Visible and regular society. Far
from thinking communion with us unlawful, they
are often ready to do ample and liberal justice to
the purity of our creed, and the majestic forms of
our ritual. If asked the reason of their separation

238 SERMON XIL
from us, it is not unusual to hear them reply, that,
having a sincere desire to serve God in the work
of His ministry, they applied to that religious so
ciety where admittance was most easy, or where
they anticipated the most advantageous field for
their abUities. That they regard the form of ordi
nation, and the persons by whom it may be confer
red, as a questionof decency and human expedience
only ; that every thing essential is, in fact, bestowed
when God has given the talents and the wiU to
preach the Gospel ; and that the teacher who
faithfully proclaims the good tidings of salvation,
and whose ministry is owned by God in the effects
which it produces on his hearers, by whomsoever
he may have been ordained, and whether he be or
dained or not, is a sound member of the Catholic
Church of Christ, and a legitimate labourer in His
harvest. Nor can we wonder, when such opinions are so
openly avowed and so widely disseminated, that
the consequence should be a multiplicity of mas
ters beyond aU which Babel itself could show ; that
abuses take place which the well-meaning men
whom I have mentioned are themselves among the
first to deplore ; that a bold tongue and fluent utte
rance are the only requisites needful to attract
disciples ; and that, whUe our hearers fluctuate as
choice or chance shall guide them amid these va
rious rival establishments, the preacher, of what
ever sect, too late begins to discover that, instead
of being able to give an account with joy of the-

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 239
souls committed to his care, he has been weaving
a rope of sand, which the first adverse accident is
sufficient to dissipate. Surely, when so many of
our brethren round us are thus habitually regard
less of what we esteem most sacred; when so many
of our own Church are sliding by degrees into the
same latitudinarian indifference, it is weU worth
our while to examine impartially the reasons al
leged for their neglect and our confidence ; to as
certain whether these solemn invocations of the
Spirit of God be indeed no more than an empty
show, or whether it may not be possible to con
vince our antagonists of the weakness of their
grounds of defence, and the danger of their spiri
tual condition.
The arguments which are generally advanced in
defence of that conduct which I have been deplor
ing may be fairly reduced to the following : —
It is ,contended that the right of preaching the
Gospel and explaining the word of God is a right
which belongs to every person to whom God has
given the talents and the wUl to exercise it. " If,"
say they, " it is not our privilege only but our duty
to give of our superabundance in worldly goods to
the relief of our perishing brother ; if we need no
further warrant to clothe the naked, visit the sick,
or feed the hungry, than the perception of their
distress, of our own ability, and of the grace of God
which fans in our hearts the flame of charity, why
should we seek any more definite commission than
this to impart to others those spiritual gifts which

240 SERMON XIL
^. we ourselves have received most freely.'' Who shall
forbid his brother to cast out devUs in the name of
their common Master .'' or, having himself experi
enced the power of religion, to declare to his fel
low sinners what Christ hath done for his soul, and
exhort them to taste and see how gracious is the
Lord who calleth them .'' What, if he follow not
with us ? Did Moses forbid Eldad and Medad to
prophesy.'' or did he not rather express his desire
that all the people of the Lord were gifted in like
manner ? " St. Paul," they teU us, " rejoiced in the
diffusion of the Gospel, though by preachers at va
riance with himself, and actuated by the most un
worthy motives. And, therefore," they maintain,
" not only are the hearers of such ministers as these
abundantly justified in exercising such an option,
(which, indeed, is a necessary consequence if the
ministers themselves be engaged in a work which
God sanctions and approves,) but other preachers
of the Gospel are bound, so long as the doctrine
thus delivered is unexceptionable, to regard them
as labourers in the same good cause with them
selves, to rejoice in their success, and to extend to
them the right hand of fellowship."
Now in this chain of argument there are some
very considerable faUacies : —
It is, in the first place, by no means accurate
reasoning to say that, because it is our duty gene
rally to forward the progress of Christ's kingdom
among men, and generaUy to relieve to the utmost
of our power the spiritual as well as temporal wants

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 241
of our brethren, it is, therefore, our duty or even
our privUegC; to pursue these objects in whatever
way seems to ourselves most likely to attain them,
without regard to the authority of those whose ex
perience exceeds our own, or to the restrictions, if
such are to be found, which the Holy Ghost, has
given us in Scripture. The privilege or even the
obligation to do a thing in some manner may be
allowed, but the propriety of attempting it in what
ever manner we please, wiU not be contended for by
any who recollect that aU laws, whether human or
divine, are far less occupied in the discussion of
general principles than in the moderation and di
rection of such principles to proper objects, and in
an advantageous channel.
Thus it is, beyond all doubt, the duty and privi
lege of aU God's children to honour and worship
Him to the utmost of their ability. But if any maA
should think fit to honour God by a human sacri
fice, or worship Him under the form of a golden
image, we should certainly remind him that God
had forbidden such injudicious tokens of respects
and that his perseverance in offering them would
draw down a curse instead of a blessing. Again,
it was unquestionably the duty of every Israelite to
be zealous^for the safeguard and preservation of the
ark of the covenant and those holy relics which
were the symbols of God's sovereignty over His
people, and the pledges of His peculiar presence
among themmfBut we find, nevertheless, the in
trusion of the men of Bethshemesh and the indis-
VOL. I. 21

242 , /, SERMON XIL
creet forwardness of Uzzah chastised by God Him-
/ self with no less a penalty than deaths though both
the one and the other appear to have arisen from
an anxiety laudable in itself, and of which the ap
plication only was blameable. In like manner the
person who, in his indiscriminate zeal to give alms,
should coUect a rabble daily round his door, to the
disturbance and terror of his industrious townsmen,
or who, in his anxious love of justice, should usurp,
without legal authority, the office of judge and di
vider of men's possessions, would plead with very
little effect the general commandment to do "right
eousness and to love mercy." And till it can be
shown that every man is a competent judge of his
own pretensions to the ministry of Christ's Gospel,
or that the indiscriminate assumption of the minis
terial character has not a natural tendency to lower
the estimation and influence of that character, and
to distract men's minds with the grossest doctrinal
errors, so long it must appear that, on the grounds
of general expediency, the person, however quali
fied, who takes this office on himself, is establishing
a precedent hurtful to mankind, and displeasing,
therefore, to Him who has declared Himself the
God of order.
For if these arguments apply to the indiscreet
practice of all duties whatever, much more do they
apply to an assumption of the office in question;
inasmuch as (apparently from the very proneness
of our nature to its abuse) there i||p duty the ex
ercise of which is laid under so many restraints by

THE DUTIES OF THE MI
the Author of the Sacred Volume.^
in Scripture read a caution againsS
wardness in alms-giving, an over
prayer, or an over anxious attendance on
and the prisoner ; but it is, " My brethren, be not
many masters, knowing that we shaU receive the
greater condemnation !" * They are described as
perUous times when men, " having itching ears,
shaU heap to themselves teachers ;"t and as the
honour of the ancient priesthood no man took unto
himself unless he was called of God, as was Aaron,
and as the Lord complained of the Jewish prophets,
",I have not sent them, and yet they ran ;" | so,
under the new covenant, no man can undertake to
preach " unless he be sent ;" and it is for God
alone to send into His harvest a succession of ac
ceptable labourers.
Nor let it be said that in the notion of this send
ing, nothing more is implied than is answered by
those abilities and that desire to serv,e God in the
ministry of His Gospel, which, when real, I am ready
to admit, are as much the gifts of God, and do as
truly, though not so perceptibly, proceed from the
providential government and ordinary influence of
His Spirit, as if the rushing mighty wind of the
same Spirit had visited our solitude, or the lambent
flame of God's unction had designated us to His
future service. I admit, that without such a con
sciousness of the talents and dispositions necessary,
we must commit a grievous sin when we intrude
* St. James iii. 1. f 3 Tim. iv. 3. $ Jer. xxiii. 21.

244 SERMON XIL
into the sacred office ; and I admit that, with this
consciousness, where the other requisites are also
found, we are justified, in humble hope, to believe
ourselves called by the Holy Ghost. But besides
this general fitness, which may be given to many,
an outward seal and ratification is, from the neces
sity of the case, required, both as a mark to other
men that our services are accepted by God, and as
an .evidence to ourselves (the only sufiicient evi
dence which can be ordinarily expected) that our
calling is indeed from the Most High, and that we
are not deceiving ourselves, nor deceived by our
spiritual enemies, when we conceive ourselves
qualified to preach the Gospel with our mouths,
and to adorn its profession by our practice.
For it is well worth our while to observe that, so
far from the wiU and the talent to preach conferring
on any person a natural right to preach the Gospel,
there were many persons possessed of both these,
whom, nevertheless, the apostles expressly excluded
from the public ministry. There are, doubtless,
very many women whom God has endued with as
eminent abilities to preach the Gospel, and we
know there have been some who fancied as strong
an internal call to this work as most of those men
can profess, who, on these grounds, aspire to the
ministry. Yet whei-e can we find a more positive
prohibition than that which forbids every woman,
whatever her pretensions, to teach in the assemblies
of the faithful .'' Nor even in the case of men, and
of men who had received an extraordinary commu
nication from the Deity, was the delivery of their

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 245
message to depend on their own choice alone, or
on the internal impulse which actuated them. The
spirits of the prophets themselves were commanded
to be subject to the rules laid down by their inspired
brethren ; they were to speak or to be sUent ac
cording to the discretion of those who bore rule in
the Church, and with due regard to the decencies
of a pubhc meeting. What wonder, then, that
some further sanction should be necessary to entitle
men to exercise in one particular way, those natu
ral gifts which God may have bestowed on them for
a different end, that zeal for His service, for which,
if they possess their souls in patience. His Provi
dence may eventually discover another and a more
advantageous channel.
But if a further proof is required of the necessity
of some outward and authoritative seal of God's
appointment, in addition to those faculties and feel
ings which are suited to the ministerial office, such
a proof may be found in the conduct of Him, who
is to the Christian Church, in every age, its Guide,
its Pattern, and its God ; when He consecrated, by
the most solemn ordination which the world has
seen, a few out of many disciples. We know not
whether there were many others equally weU qua
lified with the twelve, for the labour and authority
of the apostleship, (one we know there was, who
was afterwards added by the Holy Ghost Himself,
Matthias the successor of Judas;) but we are sure
that if ever men were internally adapted by God's
grace for that work, it must have been those whom

246 , SERMON XH.
God Himself chose, and whom He chose from a
perfect knowledge of their hearts and tempers. Yet
even of these men the internal fitness was not by
itself sufficient to authorise them to go forth as
God's ambassadors; and it was by laying on of
hands, with fasting and earnest prayer, that the Di
vine Son of God thought 3t to designate them as
His servants ! Beloved, we are followers of Christ ;
let us in this also conform to His example.
I am noways concerned to deny that, as in cases
of extreme pubhc danger, every citizen is a soldier,
so situations may be conceived, (though I am not
aware that any such have occurred since the first
preaching of the Gospel) in which any Christian
may be authorised and called upon to act as a mi
nister of religion. Far less would I refuse to ac
knowledge that many of these self-constituted minis
ters, whose number I deplore, have shown a zeal in
the service of our Lord and theirs, which may well
call forth our admiration and our godly jealousy.
Nor, as any religion is better than no religion at
aU, can it be doubted that much good has occasion
ally arisen from their ardent though unauthorised
exertions, among those whom the labours of more
regular ministers have been unable to reach, or to
make impression on. But extreme and imaginary
cases are no argument against a general rule : nor,
though God may bring forth good out of evil, far
more out of error and mistaken piety, is the evil or
the error therefore justified and rendered blameless.
St. Paul rejoiced that Christ was preached even

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 247
through envy and strife; and we may find sufficient
reason for thankfulness to God in the diffusion of
Christianity by those whom he has not commis
sioned. But no man would choose to be himself
found in the hst of St. Paul's envious preachers ;
and we are warranted, on every principle of bro
therly love and regard for our common religion, to
caU on our brethren to desist from labours from
which more evil than good must arise, and for
which, as we conceive, they have no sufficient au
thority. It has hitherto been my object to show the neces
sity which there is that the labourers in my text
should receive their mission from God in some con
spicuous and authoritative manner. It now re
mains that I should consider the manners in which
this may take place; and I am not afraid to say that,
neither in reason nor in Scripture, can I discover
more than two. The first an immediate iUapse of
God's anointing Spirit, confirmed by some acknow
ledged and public miracle ; the other an authorita
tive recognition of our claims, and acceptance of
our services, by those persons, whoever they are,
to whom God has entrusted this authority.
In the former of these cases, and, where a man
comes before us with the proofs of his mission in
the broad seal and sign manual of omnipotence, it
is certainly our part to stand still and receive, with
that reverence which becomes us, the message of
our Almighty Sovereign. It is our part to wish such
a one " good luck in the name of the Lord," and

248 SERMON XIL
(the reality of his powers being ascertained) to ac
quiesce in aU such of his mandates as agree with
the analogy of faith, and the Gospel which we have
once received. And this may seem to show how
strangely inapphcable to the cause to which they
have been perverted, are the passages already
cited in Numbers xi. and Mark ix. inasmuch as
both Eldad and Medad, and the person who cast
out devils, were actuaUy possessed of powers which
were sufficient evidence of God's favour.
It was plain that no man whom Christ had not
chosen could work a miracle in Christ's name; and
when Eldad and Medad were prophets,and acknow
ledged as such by Moses himself, it would have been
a strange presumption in either Moses or his friends
to have silenced them. But for private persons,
who can neither prophecy nor cast out devils, to
assume a prerogative and claim a deference which
belong to the prophet and the worker of miracles
only, is a conduct which, though not very unusual
in practice, is hardly a proper subject for argument
on the present solemn occasion.
We must return then, after aU,(in ordinary cases,
and where an immediate and supernatural commis
sion from the Holy Ghost is neither proved nor
pretended), to the appointment and ordination of
those among our fellow-creatures who exercise a
legitimate authority in the Church of Christ, and
who, as being appointed by God, are placed in
God's stead, and commissioned by Him to dispense
those graces which are necessary for the feeding of

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 249
His flock, and to designate those labourers who
are thenceforth to work in His harvest.
And having arrived at this point of the discussion,
even if that discussion were to proceed no farther,
and if the Scriptures had given us no information
as to the persons by whom this authority was to be
exercised, the validity of our ordinations would still
be sufficiently plain, and the danger of separation
from, or rebellion against our Church would be
Sufficiently great and alarming; inasmuch as, where
no distinct religious officer was instituted by God,
the appointment of such officers must necessarily
have devolved on the collective Christian Church,
and on those supreme magistrates who, in every
Christian country, are the recognised organs of the
public wUl and wisdom. In every case alike, where
no prior duty is opposed, " to resist the power is
to resist the ordinance of God:"* and if Christ had
really (as our opponents sometimes maintain He
has done) left the form of Church government as
undetermined as He has left the forms of civil po
lity, the commission of our ecclesiastical governors
would stand on the same basis with that of our
civil government, and disobedience to the lawful
rule and lawful commands of either (and what is
schism if it be not disobedience ?) would on every
principle of common sense and Christian ethics,
be alike a contempt not of man but of God His
Maker* It happens, however, to be in our power to show
* Rom. xiii. 2.
VOL. 1 2 K

250 SERMON XIL
(if not an exphcit direction of Christ for the form
of our Church government and the manner of ap
pointing our spiritual guides,) yet a precedent so
clear, and a pattern so definite as can leave little
doubt of the intentions of our Divine Master, or of
the manner in which those intentions were fulfiUed
by His immediate and inspired disciples. Nor wiU
the force of such precedent and example on the
practice of succeeding Christians be regarded as
trifling by those who consider that it is on such
grounds as these that the obligation rests of many
observances which are allowed by aU parties to be
essential ; among which may be classed the bap
tism of infants, the observance of the Lord's day,
and our participation in the Lord's supper.*
But, without entering into the question of the
absolute necessity of this rule, and without judging
those other national Churches which have departed
from it, it is evident that those Churches are most
wise and most fortunate who have continued in the
path which Christ and His Apostles have trodden
before ; and that religious insubordination is then
most unreasonable and most dangerous, when ex
erted against a form of polity which the majority of
our fellow-christians, the wisdom of our civil
governors, and the fuU stream of precedent, from
the time of the apostles themselves, combine to re
commend to our reverence.
We find, accordingly, that our Lord, on His own
departure from the world, committed,-in most so-
* See Jer. Taylor, Episcopacy asserted, sect. xix.

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 251
lemn terms, the government of His Church to His
apostles. We find these apostles, in the exercise
of the authority thus received, appointing elders
in every city, as dispensers of the word and the
sacraments of religion ; and we find them also ap
pointing other ecclesiastical officers, who were to
have the oversight of these elders themselves, and
^who, in addition to the powers which they enjoyed
in common with them, had the privilege, which
the others had not, of admitting, by the imposition
of hands, those whom they thought fit, to the mi
nisterial office.
We find the distinction between bishops and
presbyters which is here implied, confirmed in the
strongest terms by the ecclesiastical writers who
come nearest to the apostolic age ; by some who
were themselves contemporaries with the apostles ;
by others, of undoubted learning and diligence, who
made it their business to collect and Ulustrate the
history of the primitive times; and we find it,
above all, confirmed by the fact (which rests on as
good foundation as the succession of the Roman
emperors, or the earlier English kings,) that cata
logues of such bishops, as distinct from and superior
to the general body of presbyters, were preserved
in aU the principal Churches of the east, from the
time of the apostles down to that of Eusebius and
Socrates. And it is not too much to say, that we may <ihal-
lenge those who differ from us to point out any
single period at which the Church has been desti*

252 SERMON XIL
tute of such a body of officers, laying claim to an
authority derived by the imposition of hands from
the apostles themselves ; or any single instance of
a Church without this form of government, till the
Church of Geneva, at first from necessity, and
afterwards from a mistaken exposition of Scripture,
supplied the place of a single bishop by the rules
of an oligarchical presbytery.
Nor is more required to prove to a candid mind,
that, in retaining the rule of episcopal ordination,
our Church has retained an institution sanctioned
on the three grand rules, " quod ubique, quod sem
per, quod ab omnibus ;" and that, where our rulers
thus send forth their annual supply of labourers
into the harvest of the Lord, they send them forth
in the same manner, by the same derivative autho
rity, and under the promised sanction of the same
Eternal Spirit who sent forth Barnabas and Paul to
the work of converting the Gentiles, and in whose
name the latter apostle appointed Titus in Crete,
and Timothy in Asia.
Nor, let it be supposed that, in thus magnifying
the grace whereby we are called, we are disposed
to magnify our personal consequence, or to usurp
a vain and fantastic sovereignty over that congre
gation of the Lord, of which, by the washing of
regeneration, the humblest member is holy. We
know, and God forbid that we should forget it, that
He who sent forth His only Son not to be minis
tered unto but to minister, has sent us forth not as
lords, but as servants of the faithful. We know,

THE DUTIES OF THE MINISTRY. 253
and God forbid that we should cease to bear in
mind, that the more awful the source from which
our commission is derived, the greater necessity is
laid on us to labour dihgently in our calling, the
heavier woe if we neglect to preach the Gospel.
It is God Himself who sends us forth into His har
vest ; it is God Himself who bids us feed His fiock,
over which the Holy Ghost hath made us overseers;
it is God Himself who sets us as watchmen in Israel,
and who wUl exact one day a strict account of the
souls who perish through our negligence ! And is
this an elevating prospect .'' Is this a view of things
which can raise our opinion of ourselves ? Or shaU
we not rather, when comparing our own weakness
with the dreadful responsibUity hanging over us,
shaU we not rather cry out, as Moses cried out in
the wilderness, " I am not able to bear aU this peo
ple alone, because it is too heavy for me ; wherefore
hast thou thus afflicted thy servant that thou layest
the burthen of all this people upon him .'"' * And,
believe me, there are moments in the ministerial
life of almost every man, when no escape could be
found from the intolerable weight of sensations like
these, if it were not in the recollection that, as God
hath sent us, so is God our strength and sufficien
cy ; that, however vast the harvest, and the labour
ers however few, no single dihgent labourer shaU
be disappointed of his final reward, and that " he
who goeth on his way weeping and bearing pre
cious seed, shall doubtless return with joy bringing
his sheaves with him !"
* Niunb. xi. 14. IJ.

254 SERMON XII.
And that we who are already gone forth in the
armies of the Son of God, and that they who have
even now, in spirit, devoted themselves to His ser
vice, may be strong in the day of trouble, and hum
ble in the hour of success ; that we may be enabled
hereafter to give a joyful account of our ministry ;
that the Lord of the harvest may send forth a per
petual succession of faithful and dihgent labourers;
And that our Church, which, like the house of
Recab, cleaves firmly to the institution of our fa
thers, may, like that house, never want a man to
stand before the Lord for ever, let me entreat your
humble and earnest prayers on our behalf, on theirs,
and on your own, to Him who is the Governor, the
Guide, and Guardian of Christ's famUy ; who is to
be sought for by faith, and whose presence, even
unto the end of the world, is promised to His faith
ful ministers, the Holy Ghost, the Comforter.
To Him, with the Father and the Eternal Son,
be, now and ever, aU praise and glory !

SERMON XIIL

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR.
[Preached before the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge,
at St. Paul's Cathedral, in June, 1823.]

Luke vii. 22.
To the poor the Gospel is preached.
It was observed by the prophet Isaiah as one of
the principal marks by which the Messiah, when He
came, should be known; and it was urged by our
Lord to the disciples of St. John, as an argument
that He was in truth that Divine Person whom the
ancient prophets had foretold ; that the Gospel of
Salvation, in the widest meaning of the term, with
aU its component mysteries, its accompanying les
sons, and its gracious consequences, was preached
by Him (as He afterwards provided that it should
be preached in His name) to the humbler orders of
society. The desire of knowledge is natural to man; and
as it is mercifully so contrived by our Maker, that
the communication of knowledge is also, under
ordinary circumstances, attended with pleasure, —
it might have been, perhaps, anticipated that no
single religion could have laid claim to such a cir-

256 * SERMON XIII.
cumstance as a peculiar and distinctive character ;
but that all sects ahke would have been anxious to
communicate to aU those arguments, by which they
were themselves convinced; those doctrines, which
they themselves received as sacred; and that a more
than common care would have been expressed by
the mighty and the wise, to impart a knowledge of
their duty, and of those principles by which its prac
tice was enforced, to those on whose virtue was
buUt the tranquiUity of the world, while, by the dif
ficulties and privations to which they were exposed,
their virtue (even more than the rest of mankind)
might seem in danger.
The truth however is, (and it is one, which nO
Christian can recollect without abundant gratitude
for the far different spirit, by which his own Divine
Teacher was animated,) that, before the coming of
our Lord, and, at this day with very few excep
tions, in those countries where the light of the Gos
pel is as yet unknown, this duty of enlightening
and improving the bulk of mankind was a duty of
which the obligation was not perceived at all^ or
which, if perceived, was very imperfectly practised
even by those, who professed themselves most con
cerned for the honour and welfare of the human
race, and who had themselves obtained the least
imperfect view of the hopes, the duties, and desti
nies of humanity.
I do not only mean that the possessors of a per
secuted and dangerous truth were, among the
heathen nations of antiquity, disposed to confine

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 257
its knowledge to a few confidential disciples; I do
not only mean that the purer deists of Greece and
Rome had avowedly an outer and an inner school,
of which the latter was by far the least numerous.
The ancient phUosopher, however bright his views
might seem amid the surrounding darkness of his
countrymen, had not that clearness of hope, nor
that fulness of conviction, nor that assurance of the
approbation and protection of an all-bounteous
Master, which alone can be ordinarily sufficient to
induce men to struggle against the madness of na
tions, and which, in the case of the early Christians,
converted martyrdom into a crown. But I would
more particularly urge on your notice, that the few
thus selected were ^uch, generally, as paid the high
est for admission ; that gratuitous instruction was,
in few instances indeed, accorded by the moralists
of Paganism ; that Socrates himself, (the most dis
interested of philosophers,) was, in point of fact
chiefly attended by the richest and noblest of the
youth of Athens ; and that even the religious sys
tems, such as they were, which were patronised by
the state, and, on the behef of which by the multi
tude, the public tranquillity, the public honesty, the
sanction of oaths, and the security of every man's
prosperity and life depended, were never, or in no
effectual manner, communicated and enforced to the
great bulk of those who, it was expected, were to
be swayed by them.
Of the stupendous fabrics, which, in the youth
and vigour of superstition, the genius of abomina-
VOL. I. 2 L

258 SERMON XIII.
tion and idolatry, erected on the shores of the
Euphrates, the Tigris, or the Nile, enough may yet
be traced amid their ruins to inform us that the
systems, which they were intended to uphold,
Avere made up of exclusion and mystery. A long
and painful initiation, which the man of leisure
could alone command ; a succession of expiatory
sacrifices, which the poor man could not supply;
a peculiar and inconvenient habit, which the labo
rious man could not adopt, determined, without
any further or more express limitation, the num
bers and situation in life of the Chaldean and
Assyrian aspirants in theology. In Egypt the pro
fession and attainment of divine knowledge was,
for many ages, restricted to a single tribe; and
with how much care that priesthood concealed
their institutes from the general eye, their conti
nued and almost exclusive employment of a cha
racter known to themselves alone is, in itself, a
sufficient evidence. The Greeks and Romans
(however communicative of other science,) in
these respects foUowed the example of their Cop
tic and Chaldaic masters : and it is no less true
than strange, that for the diffusion of the most ac
credited doctrines, for the elucidation of the most
popular and honoured superstitions^, for the persua
sion to the most sacred and acknowledged duties,
it does not appear that, so far as the poor and the
populace were concerned, any provision was made
in the wisest republics of antiquity; or that such
provision was supplied, in any single instance, by

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 259
the religious zeal or the enlightened benevolence
of individuals or voluntary associations.
The populace had their priests indeed, and sa
crifices, and hymns, and symbols. But the priests
were sacrificers, not preachers ; their business was
but to scatter incense on the flames, to bind the
sacred garland round the victim's horns, to lead
him to the block and to slaughter him in the me
thod prescribed by their ancestors. The sacrifices,
by themselves, could afford as little of instruction
as of real expiation ; the hymns were often stu
diously muttered in an under tone, and reverentiaUy
couched under obscure and obsolete expressions;
while the symbols had need to be themselves ex
plained, and were professedly thus explained in
mysteries, from which the slaves and the populace
were excluded. To these last no source of know
ledge remained but a few ancient poems, a few
unauthorized and discordant traditions ; legends
of which the wealthier and more educated classes
hardly affected to conceal their scorn, any more
than they did of that vulgar, whose appeUation
was synonymous with profane, and whom they
excluded, under that name, from aU participation
in the most sacred ceremonies of their common
religion. Accordingly, it was not for the poor that the
tree of knowledge grew. The rulers and law
givers of the world had fenced areund its stem
with far other guard than the sword of the an
cient cherubim, and repeUed, with more than

260 SERMON XIIL
neglect their subjects and their briethren from all
famUiarity with the topics, in which all mankind
are the most deeply interested. Enough, it was
apprehended, for the cause of truth, enough for
the welfare of mankind, and that obedience in
which their welfare consisted, that the wealthy and
the learned should understand the nature and the
wiU of the Deity ; that they alone should take their
seats behind the scenes of the political engine,
and, by the great pageant which they guided of
religious mummery, of incense and idols, should
keep in awe those multitudes, whom they cared
not to improve, and whom they secretly dreaded to
enlighten. With the Jews, indeed, the case was somewhat
different. Concealment and mystery were altoge
ther abhorrent from the genius of their law, and
from the circumstances under which that Divine
law was originally given to their nation. Those sta
tutes which had reference to the conduct of every
Israelite, and which every Israehte, as he valued
his life, was bound to keep inviolate, every indivi
dual of whatever rank, (in truth the distinction of
ranks in the ancient Israelitish republic was so
shght as scarcely to influence any circumstance of
their customs or manners,) every individual of
whatever rank was alike enjoined to study ; while
the few and simple principles of theology on
which those laws depended, were proclaimed in
thunder to the assembled multitude, and no sub
ject, therefore, of concealment or erudition. And,

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 261
in the law of Moses itself, and stiU more in many
passages of the Psalms and the prophecies, there
is abundant reason to believe, that those public
readings and public expositions of the law (which
Ezra revived and adapted to the circumstances of
his people after their captivity) were coeval, or
nearly so, with the law itself, and the sources of
light and knowledge to the many thousands of
Jehovah's people.
Yet, even here, at the time of our Saviour's
advent, had the pernicious ingenuity of man been
busily and successfuUy occupied in obscuring and
perverting that light, which they could not whoUy
intercept from their humbler brethren, in creating
difficulties in that which was really plain, and in
establishing a monopoly of interpretation for these
difficulties thus fantastically brought forward. By
their vain and unauthorized glosses, by their doc
trine of a double and secret sense in the most
simple expressions of Scripture, and by their pre
tences to the possession of a yet more holy tradi
tionary code, the knowledge of which was confined
to the scribes and the rabbins alone, these last had
deluded their countrymen into a mysterious reve
rence for those arcana, into which ^hey were not
aUowed to enter, and which in their secret school*,
and to their select disciples only, the successors of
Moses were accustomed, as they said, to commu
nicate. And, whUe a wUd and preposterous value
was attached to such researches; whUe opprobri
ous names were lavished on " the men of the
earth," the " vulgar," the " unlearned," and the

262 SERMON XIIL
" people that have not the law," these same doc
tors were so far from any readiness in imparting
their hidden treasures, that they absolutely dis
couraged aU study of the law itself in the majority
of their countrymen, by declaring that a " female
pharisee was enough to destroy the world," and
that, (I am almost ashamed to repeat a sentiment
so ridiculous, and so utterly detestable,) " the
Spirit of the Lord was never known to rest on a
poor man."
Far different, however, from this exclusive and
monopolizing reserve, is the spirit of the Christian
Rehgion. As Christ came not into the world for
the political interest of the wealthy, or the vain
curiosity of the wise ; as the object of His birth,
His life. His death, and resurrection was the salva
tion of those many miUions of rich and poor, who
all equally required His teaching. His help, and His
mercy ; His coming, as the day-star, shone alike
on all. To the hope which He brought the uni
versal world was heir ; and while His revelation
may afford a never-ceasing subject of wonder and
inquiry for the best and most cultivated under
standing ; while angels have desired to look into
the mysteries of our faith, its plain and peaceful
doctrines speak the genuine language of nature,
who, as the common parent of aU, is understood
by the meanest of her offspring.
Accordingly, in no single circumstance of con
duct did our Lord more completely differ from the
phUosophers and morahsts of the heathen world, or
from those Jewish doctors who, in His day, and since

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 263
His return to His Father, have occupied the chair of
Moses, than in the general pubhcity of His doctrine,
(for " in secret he taught nothing ;" and those
things, which His disciples privately inquired from
Him, were not doctrinal but prophetic,) and in the
especial apphcation of His words of comfort and in
struction to the necessities of the ignorant and the
poor. It was to them He chiefly preached ; it was
among them that his life was chiefly spent ; His con
stant attendants and familiar friends were, with few
exceptions, chosen from among their number ; and
He thanks His Father, in words most solemn and
^ remarkable, that not so much the wise and learned
as the babes, the ignorant of the earth, had received
His person and appreciated His miracles.
The diffusion, accordingly, of religious knowledge
among the poor, as it was one main distinction of
the mission and doctrine of our Lord, so it has con
tinued, from the continued necessity of the case, in
every age of the Church, the duty of every Chris
tian community, and one of the most convincing
proofs, which such a community can supply, of the
purity of their faith, and the warmth and wisdom
of their charity. Where this is neglected, one main
end and object of Christ's coming into the world is
disregarded ; the eternal interests of a great majo
rity of the human race are wantonly and impiously
trifled with ; and they, whom the meek and merci
ful Saviour of all distinguished by a peculiar mea
sure of regard and tenderness, are excluded (so far
as it is in our power to exclude them,) from the

264 SERMON XIII.
hopes and the graces of Christianity; Whatever,
then, may be the outward profession of any reli
gious society, its doctrine, however pure, and its
liberality, in other instances, however splendid ; it
is unworthy the title of a Church of Christ, or is,
at best, a candlestick deprived of, its Uluminating
flame, if the religious interests of the poor are con
signed to chance or darkness.
Nor is it to be supposed, as the world too often
appears, (in its practice at least,) to take for grant
ed, that for such neglect, where it exists, the clergy
are alone responsible ; or that our exertions only
are needed in order to bring to the knowledge of
the ignorant and the poor, the good tidings of par
don and grace, and the wholesome and necessary
doctrines of repentance, and faith, and holiness. —
God forbid, that I should detract from the tremend
ous obligation which, indisputably, rests on our
order, to labour beyond all other men, and in a
manner in which no other men are obliged and au
thorised, in the dissemination of religious know
ledge, in expounding and persuading the things of
the kingdom of God, and^ both " in season and out
of season," in preaching this Gospel, which we have
received, to every creature. As little am I inclined
to deny or undervalue the efficacy of those oral in
structions, (that foolishness of preaching, as the
wise men of antiquity contemptuously called it, but
which, ere they had <ieased to despise it, they were
by its effects compeUed to fear,) by which the Gos
pel of Christ was, in the first instance, triumphantly

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 265

M

disseminated ; by which alone, (of human means,)
the impressions of a religious education may be re
traced or preserved indelible ; and an attendance
on which, (when mixed with knowledge in the guide,
and faith in the hearer,) is now, as at first it was,
the great power of God unto salvation. But, that
a sermon should profit, it is necessary that it should
be heard ; it is necessary that it should be heard
with understanding. And, when that strange re
luctance is considered, with which men unimbued
with early rehgious impressions resort to our pubhc
ministry; when we take into account the awful
and mysterious nature of many of those topics which
we are enforced to treat upon ; when we recollect
the shortness and paucity of those opportunities of
attracting attention which are ordinarily in our
power, or which the indifference and indolence of
the world will permit us to render effectual ; can
we wonder that something more than sermons is
, required for that mighty work which is set before
us .-* A hundred half hours in the year, (and this
is the average amount of attention which the most
zealous preacher can obtain in Church, and when
the additional and weekly labours of a zealous
minister are taken into account, even more than
the average amount of labour which the constitu
tion of many preachers can support,) are surely aU
too little for the restoration of a corrupt and fallen
race, for the institution of men into angels ! And
the ministers of Christ have a right ; a right do I
say ? it is our solemn and bounden duty, in the
VOL. I. 2 M

266 SERMON XIIL
name of God and his Son, to call on every assist
ance of rank, and wealth, and knowledge, and ex
ample, to aid us in the gigantic task of turning the
inhfbitants of the earth to righteousness !
It is not, indeed, required ; it is not even to be
desired or admitted, on the principles of Christian
order, or of that wisest and safest form of polity,
which the infant Church received from the inspired
and confidential followers of her Divine Founder ;
it is not required that the hand should usurp the
office of the tongue ; that the laity should under
take the function of public preachers ; that, having
itching ears, they should heap to themselves many
masters, and impede and entangle, by irregular and
unauthorised exertions, the good cause which they
desire to forward. But, as it is the appropriate
duty of the clergy to preach, so are the laity, on
their part, required to furnish every requisite means
for rendering that preaching effectual. It is their
duty, by the maintenance of an adequate ministry,
by the supply of sufficient and accessible places of
worship, by private example, by public countenance,
and above aU, by the Christian education of the
ignorant and the young, to provide that the Gospel
be really brought to the ears of aU who are inte
rested in its message, that for the neglect of its
sacred lessons the sinner only may be.responsible,
and that if any are stUl ignorant, it at least may not
be imputed as a national crime that they perish
through the lack of knowledge !
If to see our brother hunger, and not to relieve

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 267
his bodily wants be a violation of every principle
which is lovely before men, and in the eyes of God
acceptable ; if at our everlasting peril we are bound,
(so far as power is given us) to furnish them that
need with the meat which perisheth, and the water,
whereof if a man drinketh, he shall thirst again ;
of how much sorer punishment must they be worthy
who can behold the souls of their fellow-creatures
perishing for lack of instruction without some little
care to provide for them the bread of immortality,
and, happy themselves in their knowledge of the
truth, are indifferent to the destiny of those with
whom they dweU, whose hard and daily labour mi
nisters to their wants and luxuries; on whose
honesty and forbearance their own security de
pends, and who would repay tenfold by their love,
their services, and their prayers, whatever lessons
of content and holiness they receive through our
munificence .-* " Cursed be he," said God under the
Old Testament, " cursed be he that maketh the bhnd
to wander out of the way."* And shaU he escape with
out a StiU heavier malediction — shall that nation,
shaU that individual go free from the dreadful dis
pleasure of the Almighty, who gives over without
compunction to the perUous wanderings of spiritual
blindness those unhappy persons, whose ignorance a
little care, a httle cost, the renunciation of a single
expensive indulgence might have guided to light and
everlasting happiness ? It is not, I repeat, the duty,
it is not the interest of the clergy alone, or more
* Deut. xxvii. 18.

266 SERMON XIIL
than others, to desire the advancement of Christ's
kingdom. For that kingdom, its coming, and final
triumph, all believers ahke are commanded by their
Lord to pray- But to that kingdom it is an essential
prehminary that " the earth shall be fiUed with the
knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters
cover the sea :"* nor let any of us hereafter address
the Searcher of hearts with the petition, that His
" wiU maybe done on earth as it is in heaven," with
out recoUecting, that on each of us it in part de
pends to forward that desire by our own exertions :
and that it is a mockery of God to ask of Him, that
sinners may be brought to repentance, while we
contribute aU the while, neither attentiQU nor influ
ence, nor pecuniary aid, to the object for which we
thus solemnly profess ourselves solicitous !
I know that it has been urged, (though, thank
God ! the time is gone by, when the education of
the poor was opposed on grounds of political eco
nomy, and when the coarse and profligate, though
acute and fluent, MandeviUe resisted those noble
institutions, of which the fruits are now before us,
as endangering the productive labour of the hum
bler ranks by educating them above their circum
stances) I know it has been urged that, in educating
the poor, we give them a power of uncertain and
even of dangerous application; that, through the
same entrance which we throw open for the admis
sion of truth and holiness, the hostile forms ot
error and of vice may enter in ; and that there is
* Hab. ii. 14.

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 269
reason to apprehend from' the corruption of our
nature, the seduction' of novelty, and the various
arts resorted to by those, who make the press their
instrument for subverting the faith, unsettling the
principles, and destroying the happiness of their
fellow-creatures, that we shall only increase the
temptations of the poor by giving them new oppor
tunities of mental dissipation ; and that, while we
shall not make any of them much wiser, we shall
in all probability render several among them far
more wicked. •
To aU this it might be easy to answer, that it is
vain, and worse than vain, to argue against a great
benefit because that benefit may be abused ; and
that there is no single blessing of the Almighty
which may not be rendered a source of mischief
by the folly and perverseness of His creatures. But,
as nothing can be good, of which the probable evil
exceeds the probable advantage, it may be more
satisfactory to reply (and the reply is happily within
our power) that,
1st. The incidental dangers of education are less
on the whole, in themselves, and of far less proba
ble occurrence than those which arise from a mind
entirely unimproved, and from that lack of occu
pation, which, in every rank of hfe, must often be
the effect of ignorance.
2dly. That those dangers, such as they are, are
not peculiar to the educated man alone, but may
exist even wliere education is most neglected.
And 3dly. That the education for which We con-
* tend is not confined to the gift of reading and

270 SERMON XIII.
writing alone; but is precisely of that nature, which
is best adapted to fortify the mind against the pol
lution of impure suggestion and the assaults of
impious sophistry. Even if the worst should hap
pen, I am not sure that the person, whom an un
happy course of reading seduces into infidelity, is
m a more hopeless condition, so far as his soul is
concerned, than the man who has scarcely learned
the name of God at all, and certainly has never
been taught tp think of God with reverence and
devotion ; but I am sure that' for one half-educated
deist, there are many hundreds of uneducated
persons who, practically, and in the general habit
of their lives are altogether without God in the
world ; and it is a question which the common sense
of every man wiU find little difficulty in deciding,
whether the possible danger of a few is to counter
balance the certain misery of a multitude.
But are we really so little informed of what is
passing around us in this vast metropolis, and in aU
the other principal seats of a condensed population
throughout the land, as to be ignorant, that for a
man to receive lessons in profaneness, corruption,
and disloyalty, it is by no means necessary that he
should first have learned to read .'' Can we doubt
that the ear is as apt a scholar as the eye for for
bidden things, and for false and pestilential doc
trines .'' Do we not perceive that the least informed,
and most neglected districts of the empire have
been those, in truth, where the evils. of which we
complain have sprung up in the most abundant
harvest .'' Or can we hesitate to determine, that

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 271
the best and only prevention or remedy of educa
tion misapplied, and of gross and brutal ignorance,
is such an education as inclines men to love what
is good, and " trains up a chUd in the way in which
we desire him to go," in the weU-grounded confi
dence that, "when he is old, he wUl not depart
from it."*
Such an education it was, as I have described, (of
which Christianity is the basis, salvation the object,
and the words of Scripture and the rituals of our
excellent Church the text-books and the manuals)
which was alone contemplated by the wise and
excellent men, whose zeal and munificence first
adorned this city with those schools for which
your continued patronage is now sohcited. Such
an education, (improved in its instrumental part
by the application of that admirable system, the
knowledge of which is, perhaps, the most iUustrious
tribute which the east has yet yielded to her
conquerors) is that, in my opinion, which is at once
best adapted to the nature and the wants of man
kind, to the religious interests of a great majority
of the English nation, to the stability of our civil
and religious institutions, to the salvation of many
souls, and to the extension and acceleration of that
kingdom and triumph of our Lord, our Saviour and
our God, in the expectation of which " the whole
- creation groaneth and travaileth together."t
There have been those — there stiU, perhaps, are
some (may the Almighty turn their hearts and
* Prov. xxii. 6. f Romans viii. 22,

272 SERMON XIIL
help their understandings !) who have held up the
English Church as hostile to general education, as
anxious to impede the march of a power which she
viewed with jealousy, and as secretly grudging to
the poor that light, which it was her peculiar duty
to dispense to them. To such calumnies — un
founded at all times, but never more untrue than
at the time when it was urged with greatest confi
dence and bitterness, — the noble spectacle now
before you is in itself a sufficient answer. The
effect of that spectacle I will not weaken by any
observations on it, but I will content myself with
reminding you that, how often and to what extent
it shall be renewed, how many generations more
may receive from these institutions the seeds of
light, the habits of virtue, and the hope of immor
tality, must depend on you and on your bounty.
Over the destinies of these innocent creatures now
before you ; over the destinies of those many thou
sands more whom even this vast fabric could not
contain, but who, like these, are receiving their
education in our schools, and of whom these are
but the representatives; over the destinies of the
generations yet unborn, who may hereafter share in
the blessings which these schools supply ; over the
destinies of that Church, in whose principles they
have been thus far carefully instructed ; over the
destinies of the nation itself, which can only be*
powerful or happy through the means of an indus
trious and inteUigent, a holy and a happy popula
tion; over all these, this day, a strange and ample
power is given you.

THE GOSPEL PREACHED TO THE POOR. 273
Is it your pleasure that these things should flou
rish, or that they should fall.'' I cannot doubt
which way your desires tend : let but your con
duct be answerable, 'and, by the blessing of God,
those desires shall receive their sure accomplish
ment. One observation more, and I have done. If we
behold with interest and emotion the spectacle of
so many immortal spirits assembled in the temple
of the Lord, and receiving, as heirs of immortality,
the blessings of religious instruction through His
word and by His ministers ; let us remember that
they are not the young and ignorant alone who
have souls to be saved, and opportunities of grace
to answer for : that, if it be desirable for the poor
to receive the knowledge of Christ, for the rich to
neglect that knowledge can be neither wise, nor
safe, nor holy ; and that if it be charity to build an
ark for our neighbour, it is madness not to enter
into it ourselves.
Let, then, your own practice be such as may
show you to be in earnest in that anxiety, which
you express for the improvement of your feUow
creatures ; and, that your religion may be genuine
and consistent, let not your prayers be confined to
this place alone, but in the solitude of your closets,
and in the circles of your famihes, no less than in
the sanctuary and before the altar of the Most
High, caU down the blessing of the Holy Ghost on
the instructions here afforded, and the benefactions
here bestowed, in His name and through his me-
VOL. X. 2 N

274 SERMON XIIL
diation, who once in great humility came down to
preach His Gospel to the poor, and who once again,
on His return in might and majesty to judge both
quick and dead amid the flames of an expiring
world, and amid the glories of an open Heaven^
wUl not disdain, at His Father's right hand, to call
the poor His " brethren !"

SERMON XIV-

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY.
[Preached at the Assizes at Shrewsbury, 1821.]

Jeremiah xxxv. 18, 19.
Because ye have obeyed the commandment of Jonadab your
father, and kept all his precepts, and done according unto
all that he hath commanded you, therefore thus saith the
Lord of Hosts, the God of Israel; Jonadab the son of Re
chab shall not want a man to stand before me for ever.
On the persons to whom this memorable promise
was made, and on the circumstances under which
they received it, a very few observations wiU be
sufficient. It was made to a small Arab tribe,
whose ancient name of Kenite had, in the days of
Jeremiah, given place to that of Rechabites ; who
were connected by long friendship and the memory
of ancient services with the nations of Judah and
Israel ; and who, though sojourners in a land of
vineyards and corn-fields, and surrounded by a
people of agricultural and commercial habits, re
tained, through many centuries, the simple man
ners of their Cushite ancestry, their abstemious
diet, their pastoral life, and their aversion to settled
habitations. They drank, we are told, no wine

276 SERMON XIV.
neither buUt houses, nor sowed seed, nor planted
vineyards, but alFtheir lives they dwelt in tents in
the land in which they were strangers.
On account of this adherence to their ancient
institutions, the Rechabites were held up by the
Almighty, as may be seen in this same chapter of
Jeremiah, as a contrast to the fickle caprice and
restless spirit of innovation by which His own peo
ple, the Jews, were so often© l^d astray from the
ordinances which He Himself had given to them.
And, as if to add more weight to the example thus
offered, and as a contrast to that menace of political
ruin which he had denounced against the monar
chy of Judah, the assurance which I have taken in
my text was given to the house of Rechab, that
their family should be preserved amid the common
ruin of Syria; and that the ancestor whose precepts
they had so well observed, should not want a de
scendant to " stand before the Lord for ever."
That this promise, thus solemnly and explicitly
made, has received its exact fulfilment, we have
very reasonable grounds to believe, not only from
the respect due to the inspired authority of Jere-r
miah, but from every thing which is known con
cerning the manners and policy of those tribes which
yet wander over the open country of Syria. In our
present limited knowledge of those regions, we are
unable, indeed, to fix with precision on any one
particular clan as the descendants of the ancient
Kenites. But many clans there are, and always
have been, who, from policy and preference at least

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 277
as much as necessity, retain in, those wild regions
the habits described by the prophet. The use of
tents would be no distinguishing mark among the
wandering hordes of the desert; and the imposter
Mahomet, in forbidding the use of fermented
liquors, did no more than comply with a prejudice
already universal not only among the Rechabites ,
but among all the children of Nebaioth, Kedar, and
Midian. And it is but reasonable to believe that,
though the distinction may have been lost by the
feature becoming general, and though the ancient
name of the tribe and the memory of their descent
may, perhaps, have perished amid the lapse of
years and the political revolutions of Asia, yet the
word thus spoken by God has not been suffered to
fall to the ground, and that the wanderers of the
house of Rechab may still continue to prosper un
der the blessing of the Most High, and to cherish
amid their wilderness the institutions of their an
cestor Jonadab.*
*At the distance of 2500 years from the date of the prediction
a tribe bearing the name, and answering to the description of the
Rechabites, has been discovered in Arabia. Several notices of
them occur in the missionary journals of the Rev. Joseph
Wolff, published some years after the date of this sermon.
Writing at Mousoul, he thus speaks of them: "March 19,
1824: all the Jews in this country believe that the Beni Khaibr,
near Mecca and Medina, are the descendants of the ancient
Rechabites. The mufti from Merdeen gave me a long de-
scription of the Beni Khaibr ; but as I have not yet seen them, I
will not at present give you his description of them. They are,
however, worthy of notice. Those Jews of Khaibr gave infinite

278- SERMON Xn.
But obscure as their present fate may be, and
little as the indefinite prolongation of an obscure
trouble to Mohammed ; and he never was able to compel them to
embrace his religion. See Sale's note to chap, xlviii. in the Ko
ran, and Herbelot Bibliotheque Orientale." Journal [Lond.
1828,] vol. ii. p. 276. In another passage of the same work,
(p. 3.31,) he says, "The Jews of Sanaa are firmly convinced that
the BeniKhaibr are the descendants of the ancient Rechabites."
Again, at a later date, and in a different place, he says : " Nov.
27, 1824. Abraham ben Yahya confirmed the account I had
before received of the Rechabites. When I asked him. Do you
know the Jews Khaibr? He replied, ' You mean the children of
Rechab. These are mighty men, and have not felt the yoke of
the captivity.' And then Abraham ben Yahya joyfully lifted up
his fingers, and moved them about, and said, ' They are the de
scendants of Jonadab the son of Rechab, who said, Ye shall drink
no wine, neither ye, nor your sons for ever ; neither shall ye build
houses, nor sow seed, &c.; and thus they do. The children of
Ishmael curse them, and we bless them. The sword of Moham
med has not brought them under his yoke, &c.'" (Journal of
the Rev. Jos. Wolff, in Jewish Expos. 1826, p. 315.) The full
est and most striking passage is the following : " All the Jews,
not only of Jerusalem, but likewise those of Yemen, told me, that
the Rechabites mentioned in Jeremiah xxxv. were still existing
around Mecca; the Mussulmans who performed their pilgrimages
to Mecca, confirmed that account: the latter knew them by the
name of Khaibaree. On my arrival at Jalooka in Mesopotamia,
I saw Jews wandering about among the Yezidi. I asked them,
Has never any one of you turned Yezidi, or Mussulman 1 They
replied, 'Oppression cannot bow us, and tyranny cannot shake.
Hear, Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord.' I added, ' And
Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God !' And believing them to be
Rechabites, on account of their wandering about in the desert, I
asked them the question : they replied. No, but here is one who
came from Hajaz, i. e. the deserts of Mecca !' I saw one before

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 279
and humble pedigree (though a promise admirably
adapted to Arab prejudices) would affect or interest
a modern European, the few circumstances which,
in the present chapter, we are told concerning
them, are of a nature by no means unworthy of
our serious attention, and conduct to consequences
not only curious and important in themselves, but
such as are peculiarly appropriate to the present
times, and to the occasion which has called us to
gether. -
It is, in the first place, as I conceive, apparent
that, in the promise here made to the Rechabites
by God's prophet and in God's name, and under
me standing, dressed, and wild like an Arab, the bridle of his
horse holding in his hand : I showed to him the Bible in Hebrew
and Arabic ; be read both languages, and was rejoiced to see the
Bible. He was not acquainted with the New Testament. After
having proclaimed to him the tidings of salvation, and made to
him a present of the Hebrew and Arabic Bibles and Testaments,
I asked him, Whose descendant are you 1 Mousa (this was his
name, — with a loud voice) come, I show to you, and then he be
gan to read Jeremiah xxxv. from ver. 5 to 11. Wolf. Where do
you reside ? Mousa, (recurring to Gen. x. 27) at Hadoram, now
called Samar by the Arabs, at Usal, now called Sanaa by the
Arabs, and (Gen. x. 30) at Mesha, now called Mecca, in the de
serts around those places. We drink no wine, and plant no vine
yard, and sow no seed, and live in tents, as Jonadab our father
commanded us. Hobab was our father too ; come to us, you will
still find 60,000 in number, and you see thus the prophecy has
been fulfilled, ' Therefore thus saith the Lord of Hosts, the God
of Israel, Jonadab the son of Rechab shall not want a man to
stand before me for ever.' And saying this, Mousa, the Recha-
bite mounted his horse and fled away, and left behind a host of
evidence of sacred writ." Journal, vol. ii. p. 333 — 5. Ed.

280 SERM0N)X1V.
His immediate direction, an approbation of theii"
conduct is imphed, of which that promise was, in
fact, the appropriate reward and sanction, and such
a sanction and such a reward as were in the power
of God only to bestow, and as He unquestionably
would not bestow but on those whom he was, for
good reasons, disposed to favour.
True it is that the common experience of ages,
(and what is this experience but the ascertained
and usual manner in which the Almighty directs
the fortune of His creatures .'') the experience of
ages teaches us that, where the institutions of any
society are not easily changed, that society is most
likely to be of permanent use and prosperous con
tinuance. And if the prophet had said no more
than that the modesty of the Rechabites and their
reverence for their ancient laws would be found
their best security for the independence and pros
perity of their little republic, he would have said
no more than was warranted by the usual maxims
of human wisdom ; though the assurance might,
beyond a doubt, have acquired additional strength
and importance as proceeding, in this instance,
from an inspired monitor.
But the assurance which Jeremiah gave them
was of a nature far more definite than if it had ex
tended only to that general and ordinary protection,
which aU communities, whose affairs are conducted
with wisdom and integrity, have reason to expect
from God's providence. It was the promise of a
blessing which cannot be ranked among the natu-

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 281
ral effects of any human institution, however wisely
ordained and however pertinaciously observed ; a
promise of continued fruitfulness to a numerous
tribe, of continued endurance to a particular nation,
not for a few generations only, but so long as the
¦World itself should exist; "Jonadab the son of
Rechab shall not want a man to stand before me
for ever."
And when we consMer that this privilege, than
, , which, to Arabian ears, a greater could hardly be
given, was conferred as a reward for the faithful
and persevering observance of institutions, such as
I have described to you, is it possible that we
should fail to notice the reverence which this ex
ample teaches for the laws of man's appointment,
not only for such as are visibly and immediately
conducive to God's glory and the happiness of
mankind, but for such as, in themselves indifferent,
derive their whole sanction and obligation from the
authority of the person from whom they are derived,
or from the sacredness of ancient and universal
custom .'' The promise, it wiU be observed,, though
of the same general character, is in its application
widelj^ different frona that which, in the fifth com
mandment, is held out to those who honour the
-^ .A direct and intimate ties of blood, and the injunc
tions of a living parent. The person from whom
the Rechabites derived the institution or revival of
their peculiar laws, though, according to the forms
of eastern language, he is caUed their father, was
in truth an ancestor, and a remote one, of a small
VOL. I. 2 o

282 SERMON XIV-
part only among their number. Upwards of two
hundred years had passed away since their chief
or patriarch Jonadab had been courted and con-
cUiated by Jehu : and it must have been as sove
reign, not as parent, that he could have possessed
so extensive an influence over a tribe which, six
hundred years before, and in the days of Moses,
was already numerous and important. The obser
vances, too, which he had enjoined were, in them
selves, of no moral or religious obligation- They
had reference to the usual economy and separate
polity of his tribe, and possessed no more of posi
tive importance than the fashion in which a man
should wear his hair, or the colour and form of his
garment. Yet the Rechabites kept them ; and, for
thus keeping them, they are praised and rewarded '>
and it follows, therefore, that an obedience to the
laws, as laws, and abstracted from any other con
sideration, is a duty incumbent on men, and a con
duct well pleasing to him from' whom aU civil
government derives its beginning and authority.
A distinction has, indeed been made, and made
by moralists of no common renown, between the
obligation to laws in their own nature useful and
necessary, and to those positive institutions which
derive their sanction from the will of a human super
rior only. The first is admitted to rest on the im
mutable principles of justice and duty, and to bind
the subject not only for wrath but for conscience
sake ; while the second is supposed to imply no more
than the necessity of submitting, if detected, peace-

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY . 283
ably and without evasion, to whatever penalty the
state has thought fit to impose. Thus a perpe
tration of the graver offences against society is ac
knowledged, on all hands, to be not only illegal
but wicked, is not only to be punished by temporal
inflictions, but is liable to the censures of con
science, and the burning wrath of the Most High ;
whUe, to give a familiar example, the old statute of
burying in wooUen would have been held by
these moralists to have been optional to follow or
to transgress by any man who chose to run the
risk of the penalty.
Between the cases which I have compared, and
in all other comparisons of the same kind, there is
certainly a great and awful interval: and I am
ready to admit that, wherever a moral law and a
positive institution are at variance ; wherever the
observance of this last is inconsistent with the per
formance of a higher duty ; wherever its transgres
sion is necessary to produce a preponderant good
to the community, to our neighbor and, in certain
cases, to ourselves; wherever its observance has
become obsolete, and its breach connived at and
universal ; the conscience of the individual is by no
means bound to keep the law, and may even, ac
cording to the greatness of the exigency, be abso
lutely bound to violate it. It was thus that the
Rechabites themselves appear to have acted, when,
as we read in this same chapter, during the time
of the Assyrian invasion, they sought the general
safety of their community by a temporary aban-

284 SERMON XIV.
donment of their Arabian habits, and by forsaking
their tents for the houses and ramparts of Jeru
salem. It is the same indeed, in a greater or less degree,
with every positive institution, whether human or
Divine. Where a moral duty or a visible necessity
interferes, the Almighty, we learn from Scripture
itself, " wiU have mercy and not sacrifice ;"* but
where a trifling inconvenience only can be pre
tended, or when the real reason of our disobedience
is no other than an impatience of lawful authority,
I can certainly find no ground, either in reason or
in Scripture, for thus limiting the conscientious
obligation of laws to those laws only, of which we
can at once perceive the exceUence and propriety.
Sure I am that no such distinction is made in the
various texts of Holy Writ which enjoin the Chris
tian to " submit himself to every ordinance of man
for the Lord's sake;"t or which remind us, as a
general truth, that whoso resisteth the regular au
thorities of his country shaU receive unto himself
damnation. The truth is that there are very few laws indeed,
(perhaps if I had said none, I should have run
little risk of refutation,) of which the institution or
the' continuance has not been grounded in the
abatement of some evU or the attainment of some
advantage. And if no other advantage is gained
than that of accustoming mankind to restraint, and
^* St. Matt, ix. 13. t St. Peter ii. 13. Rom. xiii. 2,

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 285
educating in their minds the habits of deference for
their rulers in things indifferent, even this advan
tage will be greater than any which can ordinarUy
arise from a breach of the law, even if we waive all
consideration of the evil which may follow from our
setting an example of disobedience in trifles, and
weakening, so far as our influence extends, the po
pular reverence for the institutions of our country.
The conscientious duty, then, incumbent on
every individual, to yield obedience in things indif
ferent, and to the institutions of that society to
which he belongs, is the first of those lessons which
I am desirous of impressing on your notice from
the exarnple of the Rechabites, and the blessing
which they received from the Almighty,
A second consideration arising from the same
history, and a consideration of still wider import
ance, which applies not only to individuals and
subjects, but to the nations of which those indivi
duals are a part, and the governors to whom those
subjects owe obedience, is the veneration which it
seems to inculcate for ancient and established
forms, and the adherence to those national institu
tions, the utUity or harmlessness of which has
stood the test of ages, and the authority of which
is buUt on the associations of early youth, and the
transmitted recollections of those to whom our
childhood looked up with affection. They were
not the individual shepherds alone, with whom Je
remiah held this conversation, but their collective
body, and the authorities of their clan, to whom

286 SERMON XIV.
the blessing of Jehovah was pronounced for their
adherence to the commandments and customs of
their Arabian ancestry.
Is the present time unseasonable ; do the cir
cumstances of the world around us seem to render
the task unnecessary of urging'such a consideration
on the reason and conscience of mankind .'' or are
we not rather caUed upon by aU which we have
hitherto enjoyed, and all which we can apprehend
in fiiture, by our regard for the temporal and eter
nal interests of our brethren, and by our reverence
for that Holy Name in which kings reign, and
princes decree justice, to correct, so far as possible,
that overweening contempt for whatever is ancient
or established which manifests itself in the popular
discourses, the popular writings, the popular actions
of our day ; to exorcise that evil spirit of change
which no longer walks in darkness ; and to entreat
the world to have mercy on itself ere it proceeds to
destroy or damage some of the noblest fabrics
which the wisdom of former ages has left behind.''
While I lament, however, the increase of this
feeling in the minds of my countrymen, I am by no
means inclined to attribute its prevalence to any
national fickleness of character, or to any causes
but those external circumstances of privation and
disappointment which have afforded, in the suffer
ings of the many, a field but too propitious for the
malignant exertions of the few.
In spite, indeed, of aU those maxims of ancient
wisdom, which complain of the desire of novelty as

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 287
a natural and inherent principle in the human
mind; in spite of the gratification which vanity re
ceives by a supposed emancipation from the tram
mels of authority, and the readiness often exhibited
by the half learned and the half wise in the adop
tion of new and untried suggestions, I am inclined
to believe that the love of novelty, by itself and
simply considered, has by no means so great an
influence over mankind as to overcome, in ordi
nary circumstances, the countervailing principle of
imitation, or that mockery and dislike by which
innovation is always, in the first instance, more or
less attended.. This very persecution, indeed, is
in itself a demonstration that mankind, in general,
hke not to have their opinions or habits disturbed;
and that it is only to minds of a peculiar construc
tion, apd already accustomed to turn their thoughts
in many different directions, that the stimulus of
novelty, abstractedly considered, is pleasing. And
the fact is as certain as it is remarkable, that the
history of the world supplies no instance of any
great or extensive innovation which has not been,
in the first instance opposed by a vast weight of
prejudice, or which, when it has triumphed, has
not triumphed by slow degrees, and after a violent
and tedious struggle.
So forcibly, indeed, have many men been im
pressed by this phenomenon, that they have caUed
on us to discard entirely as, if not hurtful, at least
unnecessary, those cautions against an innovating
spirit, in which former ages have dealt so largely ;

288 SERMON XIV.
to exhort them to judge for themselves, and by the
light of their own reason, without regard to what
others have thought or established before them;
to recollect that what we caU antiquity was, in fact,
the youth of the world, and that in experience and
in information we are ourselves wonderfully supe
rior to those ages whence our principal institutions
are derived; and which, we have been taught to
regard with something hke superstitous veneration,
as haUowed by the wisdom of our ancestors.
Would these reasoners maintain that innovation
is in itself a blessing .'' Are they blind to the con
sequences by which the progress of even the most
beneficial change, provided that change is exten
sive, is inevitably and calamitously attended ?
Surely, with these before our eyes and in our re
cent memories, it is allowable to plead for some
degree of caution and discretion in the abatement
of even acknowledged abuses, when we recoUect
that every opinion and every institution is, in pro
portion to its antiquity and importance, connected
with the prosperity of thousands ; that none such
can be erased without disturbing the entire soU
where it grows, or without those indications of
agony which like the screams of the fabled man
drake, involve too often the destroyer and the
destroyed in one common arid deadly ruin !
But the caution, they wUl tell us is, unneces
sary, inasmuch as the natural bias and disposition
of mankind is not so much in favour of novelty as
of precedent ; and the danger, therefore, wiU' be

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 289
not so much that unnecessary change wiU be sought
for as that needful reformation wiU be resisted.
And so far as the natural bias of the human mind
is concerned, it is probable that they are not mis
taken. But it would argue an extremely partial
and imperfect view of human nature to overlook
the fact, that propensities, even though not inherent,
may accidentally become habitual and dominant,
or to be blind to the degree in which the feeling in
question may be generated and pampered by ex
ternal causes.
Of innovation, for its own sake, I have already
allowed that the mind of man is seldom naturaUy
desirous. Nor, even when innovation promises to
effect an addition to our present happiness, are
those who are already happy, much disposed to try
experiments. But amid the many calamities to
which our earthly condition is liable, as it is natu
ral for the wretched to seek relief, so they are in
clined to seek it in attempts which at another time
they would have regarded as idle or troublesome,
as the sick man turns from side to side on his un
easy bed, and anticipates from every change of
posture a fighter and less galling misery. And
under the pressure of public. and national calami
ties, however distinct the source of those calamities
may be from any civil or rehgious institution, yet it
almost uniformly happens that, as these institutions
take up a great space in the popular eye, and as, of
aU the circumstances by which we are surrounded,
these are they which seem most capable of altera-
VOL. I. 2 p

290 SERMON XIV.
tion, the anger of the sufferers is, in the first inr
stance, directed against their rulers or their laws;
and, instead of attempting to remedy the real cause
of the distemper, or of acquiescing with patience
in a distemper which can be remedied by Provi
dence alone, they overturn one system after ano
ther, in failure of their producing that perfect
happiness which no pohtical system can produce ;
till, wearied with ofl;en choosihg, and always meet
ing with disappointment, men renounce the power
of choice at once and for ever, and conclude the
wild race of anarchy with the iron sleep of military
despotism. It is not, then, against the reason but
against the passion of mankind, not against the
even and regular current of their disposition, but
against that dispositon when lashed into fury by
the storms of adversity, that we would uphold this
vampire of honest and useful prejudice, which pre
sumes that what is is right, till something better
can be found, which throws the burthen of proof
on the proposers of innovation, and demands a very
plain evidence of necessity and a very strong pro
bability of success before we proceed to throw
down, in the prospect of raising a new and untried
shelter, those roofs and towers which so well de
fended our ancestors in the hour of danger.
Nor, when we thus introduce the mention of our
ancestors, is it necessary to suppose that we ascribe
any unreasonable sanctity to their characters, or
any wisdom more than human to their decisions.
We only maintain that which we are fully justified

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 291
in maintaining, that the institutions which they
have left us have stood the test both of their expe-
rience and the experience of intervening ages ; that,
supposing theiri to have had the same natural abi-
;,;i,fjities, the same natural prudence with their de
scendants, we must suppose that their institutions
were, in the first instance intended to produce
some expected good, or to remedy some known
evil ; and that of their wisdom we have a right to
entertain at least as good an opinion as of those
ingenious persons who propose a departure from
their decisions.
Nor, when so much is said of the world having
gained in experience, can I omit observing that we
shall adopt a very unphilosophical mode of speak
ing, if we talk of the present generation as if it were
really in possession of all the accumulated prece
dents of former ages, or as if we could be really so
much wiser than our ancestors as we are later in
succession than they. They are the exact sciences
alone which are capable of this progressive and
endless improvement. The moral and political wis
dom of mankind are restrained within far narrower
limits ; and their leading wants and interests are, in
every generation, so nearly the same, that more is,
in such points, to be expected from the experience
of age and practical intercourse with the world,
than from any knowledge which books can supply,
even if, which is by no means the case, the study
of history inchned men to a fondness for untried
theories.

292 .SERMON XH.
If, indeed, we investigate a little more closely j
the nature of those feelings which usually operate
to make men fond of innovation, we shall find them
such as are most unfavourable to calm inquiry, or
to that modesty and moderation by which alone
the experience of past ages can be brought into
action, and on which alone the hope of practical
advantage can be founded. The impatience of
personal distress, the malignity of suppressed am
bition, the youthful ardour which looks beyond all
obstacles, the vanity which is blind to any conse
quences beyond a little present notoriety, and the
servile spirit which binds every faction to foUow
in the train of their leader, these are the ordinary
enemies against which the supporters of established
institutions have to contend. And when we con
sider how unfavourable such dispositions as these
which I have described must be, not only to the
happiness of mankind in general, but more imme
diately to a Christian and sanctified spirit in the
individuals who entertain them, we can hardly won
der that the introduction of new customs, or the
unnecessary departure from ancient customs, are
severely stigmatized in the oracles of Him who is
the God of order and harmony.
Nor must it be supposed that, in thus pleading
for established institutions as a general principle, I
am pleading on the side of slavery, or in opposition
to whatever moderate and necessary innovations
may be required in every fabric of human con
struction, from the lapse of ages or the violence of

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 29S
previous innovators. The caution with which I
would deprecate unnecessary change will apply to
the gcivernors as well as to the governed, to the
encroachment of power as well as to the impa
tience of popular feeling. The innovating ruler is
at once more foohsh and more wicked than the
innovating demagogue ; more foohsh, inasmuch as
he risks more ; more wicked, inasmuch as more is
confided to him. And the prejudiced advocate of
ancient abuse, and the pertinacious enemy of ob
vious and easy improvement should remember, that
the true friend of an establishment is not he who
conceals, but he who seeks to remedy its imper
fections ; and that to cause the ruin of a fabric, no
way is so certain as to refuse our consent to timely
and practicable repairs.
But we have a right to demand that such imper
fections should not be fancied where they do not
exist, nor exaggerated when they are really found,
by the malignity of popular invective, or by an ap
peal to popular passion.. We have a right to de
mand that the good and evil of a system should be
impartially weighed ; that more should not be al
tered than necessity requires, or than may be done
with safety ; and that the time at which, and the
persons by whom, the alteration is proposed should
both be considered with anxious vigUance before
we admit of tampering with that in which the hap
piness of thousands is so deeply interested. And
as, by the confession of aU sides, unnecessary in
novation is a great and seriousevU. we are justified

294 » SERMON XIV.
in maintaining, as a general principle to which,
before they actuaUy arise, it is by no mean^4neces-
sary to suppose exceptions, that whatever is esta
bhshed has, at least, a prima facie claim to our
support and reverence, and that the citizens of a
Christian nation wiU be ordinarily slow to alter
their ancient laws and form of government, re
membering the prophet Jeremiah's reproof of those
who forsake their old ways for new ; the blessing
,:which the same prophet pronounced on the Re
chabites for an adherence to the customs of their
forefathers, and the emphatic caution of the pro
phet Solomon, " My son, fear thou the Lord and
the king ; and meddle not with them that are given
to change."*
Yet one observation more, and I have done. If
the Rechabites were thus blessed for the reverence
which they showed to the institutions of a mortal
lawgiver ; if to the customs and forms of human
origin, to the dictates of earthly wisdom, or to the
accidental results of time and circumstance ; if to
these so much of sanctity belongs, how much holier
the obligation, how much greater the blessedness
of a sincere and hearty obedience to those rules of
conduct which have been given by God Himself,
those words of life and salvation which at the first
began to be spoken by His Son, the Holy Ghost
through all the prophets bearing witness thereto
from the beginning .'' This was the primary use
* Prov. xxiv. 21.

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 295
which God Himself made of the customs of the
Rechabites, this the especial and immediate end
for which He urged their example on the Jews ;
and I should ill discharge the duty of my profession J^
af I suffered you to depart from this holy place with
out earnestly and faithfully entreiating you to lay to
your consciences, that in this respect also it may
well become you to adhere to the institutions of
your ancestors, and to follow their piety towards
God as weU as their aUegiance' towards the king,
and their reverence for the laws of their country.
In this most loyal county, and to an audience
whose hereditary recoUections, whose hereditary
influence, whose ancient and honest prejudices are
all on the side of the laws, I may have perhaps ex
posed myself to the charge of giving needless coun
sel, when I have pleaded the cause of ancient insti
tutions. But let those who partake in this honest
zeal for the continuance of our paternal inheritance
of freedom and security, remember that unless the
laws of God are reverenced, those of man cannot
long preserve their weight, and that it is in vain
for the higher ranks to expect reverence from
those beneath them, if their own conduct displays
an habitual disregard of the duties of religion. It
is a strange and awful responsibUity which, in the
comphcated machine of society, belongs to those
men who are placed (as every magistrate is placed,
and as is the case with every man of landed pro
perty and hereditary influence) in the situation of
chiefs among their people^ and as points of imita-

296 SERMON XIV.
tion and attention to a large surrounding circle. It is
from their households that the neighbouring viUage
takes its tone ; it is from their apparent reverence
for God, from the attention bestowed by them on
the duties of their station and the welfare of those.,
beneath them, that their servants, their tenantry,*
and the poor are chiefly guided to an opinion fa
vourable or otherwise, of the laws under which
they live, and the authorities which they are caUqd
on to reverence; and, if such men desire the per
petuity of the English constitution, it behoves them
to recoUect that they are its best supporters who
sedulously perform the part (a very distinguished
and important part) which that constitution assigns
them. But why should I thus confine myself to secular
and temporary motives in enforcing that line of
conduct which a more awful consideration renders
necessary .'' The institutions of man, the best and
wisest institutions, must at length fade away be
neath the breath of time, or be crushed by the
hand of violence. The dying prayer of Sarpi was
but a fruitless and presumptuous aspiration, and
the faU of our own beloved country, as of his
Wealthy Venice, must one day prove the Vanity of
the patriot's " Esto perpetua."
But the hour must come, and to many of us is
fast approaching, when even the fate of our coun
try wiU be a secondary consideration to us all, and
when the rank which each has held in it wUl be
of infinitely little importance, except so far as each

RESPECT DUE TO ANTIQUITY. 297
may be enabled to render with gladness an account
of his own conduct before that tribunal of which
the occasion on which we are now assembled, is a
dim and imperfect shadow.
Let it not, for God's sake, for our soul's sake,
and as our everlasting happiness is dear to us, let
it not be said in that day that we have been zealous
for the commandments of men, and have omitted
the weightier considerations of a more pure and
holy Lawgiver. Let us not leave occasion to the
Judge of Heaven and earth to complain that the
idle customs of society, the indifferent regulations
of human polity, have obtained from us that respect
which we did not afford to the holy laws, the rea
sonable service of our Maker, our Redeemer, and
Sanctifier. " The statutes of Omri are kept, the
words of Jonadab the son of Rechab are performed
notwithstanding I, saith the Lord, have spoken unto
you, but ye hearkened not unto me."*
May He who hath framed us, forgive our former
provocations ; and that we may hereafter find de
light in His word ; and render obedience to His
commandments, may he gdVern and guide our
hearts with the sanctifying graces of His Holy
Spirit, through the merits of that blessed Son,
who was Himself, as man, the perfect pattern of
obedience and holiness !
* Micah vi. 16. Jerem. xxxv. 14.

VOL. I. 2 Q

SERMOJV XV.

ON THE SHIPWRECK OP ST. PAUL.
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, 1822, and at Madras, 12th March, 1826. J

Acts xxvii. 23, 24.
There stood hy me this night, the Angel of God, whose I am,
and whom I serve, saying. Fear not Paul, thou must be
brought before Ccesar, and lo, God hath given thee all them
that sail with thee.
These words are taken from one of the most re
markable passages in the life of the Apostle of the
Gentiles, of which the incidents are as interesting
as the doctrine which depends on them is impor
tant. A vessel, bound from Crete to Italy in the
stormy season of the year, and crowded with sol
diers and passengers to the number of two hundred
and seventy-six persons, had been tossed for many
days on the bosom of a tempestuous sea, without
the guidance of sun or stars, without tackling to
direct her course, and almost a helpless wreck on
the water. " AU hope that we should be saved,"
we are told by one who was himself a passenger,
" all hope that we should be saved, was then taken
away."* But there was on board that ship an
aged and a holy man, a prisoner carried in chains
to Rome, whither he had appealed for judgment
* Ver. 20.

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 299
from the envy of his countrymen. The same, while
they were yet in harbour, had warned the crew
of their approaching danger, and entreated them
to defer tiU a calmer month, their ill-timed and
unfortunate voyage. But now that the evU which
l^he then foresaw had really faUen on them, he again
came forward, not to reproach their former un
belief, or to join with them in vain lamentations
for a calamity which could not then be avoided,
but like that fabled meteor which the superstition
of the heathen world had made the mariner's idol,
he came forward to revive their hopes and stimu
late their exertions, by the assurance that their
lives were secure. Gently reminding them of his
having foretold this calamity, that the truth of his
former prediction might conciliate their attention
and belief to that which he now delivered ; " I ex
hort you," saith he, "to be of good cheer, for
there shall be no loss of any man's life among you,
but, of the ship. For there stood by me this night,.
the Angel of God, whose I am, and whom I serve,
saying, Fear not Paul, thou must be brought before
Csesar, and lo, God hath given thee aU them that
sail with thee. Wherefore, sirs, be of good cheer
for I believe God, that it shall be even as it was
told mef'
The remainder of the history may be briefly re
lated. They beheved his words, they foUowed his
directions, and though their vessel was dashed to
pieces on the rocky shores of Melita, every soul on
board was rescued from the devouring waves.

300 SERMON XV.
Among the many considerations which this his!-
tory suggests to the mind, considerations of rever
ence for the mercy and the power of that God
whose paths are in the sea, and who thus, by the
preservation of many lives, was pleased to glorify
His chosen servant in the presence of the heathen,*
there is one, which, if not so obvious as the rest, is
at least, of equal practical utility ; the benefits, I
mean, which holiness bestows not only on the chil
dren of God themselves, but on aU who are even
incidentally connected with them. It is not Lot
alone who is rescued from the devoted city ; his
daughters, his wife, his sons-in-law have all, for his
sake, the same merciful offer of deliverance. It is
not Joseph only who becomes a prosperous man,
and with whose daily toU the Lord is present to
bless and prosper it; his Egyptian master finds
his goods increased for the sake of his Hebrew
bondman. It is not Elijah only who ia miraculously
nourished during the famine ; his Sidonian hostess
also has her barrel of meal and her cruise of oil pro
longed, and herself and her chUd preserved from
perishing. It is not St. Paul alone, the chosen
vessel of the Lord, and the appointed ambassador
of the truth to the shores of the western ocean ; it
is not St. Paul alone, nor his comrades ot. Luke
and Timothy, nor the courteous centurion, whose
discerning kindness to his prisoner might have
operated as some little claim to snatch him from
the general calamity ; the selfish mariners and the
brutal soldiery are moreover given by God to the

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 301
prayers and services of His apostle; two hundred
three score and fifteen persons are preserved from
death by the presence of a single captive ; and the
vain-glorious boast of the Roman, Ccesarum vehis,
was realized in the instance of St. Paul.
So closely united, indeed, and linked together
are mankind, both in their welfare and in their suf
fering, that a great deliverance can hardly, in the
common course of things, be wrought for one in
dividual without his feUows also partaking in it.
Not even the hand of an angel could eradicate the
tares of this world without injuring the wheat
which grows among them; and the wheat, accord-'
ing to the common dispensation of God's mercy,
cannot receive its needful nourishment of dews
and sunshine without an equal share in those ad-
vanta,ges being accorded to the weed and the bram
ble. But, though even this acknowledged truth
would be sufficient to prove the advantages which
the righteous man confers on all in his immediate |
vicinity, yet does the history now under considera
tion afford a case far stronger than that of an inci
dental share in a general benefit. The protection
here extended, was more abundant, by far, than
was necessary for the preservation, or even the
prosperity of the apostle. St. Paul might have
been saved, though aU the crew besides had been
left to the mercy of the elements, and as the pre
servation of the latter was thus (according to the
literal meaning of the word xaf'^^*^"') gratuitous,
so was the Divine interposition by so much the

302 SERMON XV.
more conspicuous in proportion to the number of
persons saved, and the helpless condition of, pro
bably, the greater part of them.
, It would have been, in hke manner, extremely
.possible to have given Joseph favour in his master's
eyes without blessing that master's store with a
providential increase and prosperity; and the ravens
might have stiU continued to bring food to Elijah
whUe the widow of Zarephath had baked her last
cake and died.
On the whole, then, it is fair to conclude, from
the uniformity which is apparent in these several
dispensations of Providence, and from the obvious
tendency of, by far, the greater number, that in
cases of this kind something more is intended than
the mere preservation or even comfort of the one
favoured person ; and that, as a pious example is
of such value to the world, God is pleased by His
blessing and protection even in earthly affairs, to
add weight and influence to His chUdren, by making
them, in a conspicuous manner. His instruments
for good to all around them; by rendering their
society and neighbourhood a source of safety as
well as of honour ; and all those who touch, if the
allusion may be allowed, though it were but' the
hem of their garment, partakers of transmitted
blessing. And this wiU be strongly confirmed if we ob-'
serve that the contrary is also strictly true ; and
that God by frequently punishing not only the
wicked themselves, but those who are connected

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 303
with them, appears to stamp that connexion with
danger as weU as with infamy, and to draw, by the
sever.est judgments, a line of demarcation between
His chUdren and the perilous and contagious society
of sin. It is thus that the chUdren of God, if they
" dweU in the infected tents of Kedar," if they fly
for shelter hke Johanan and his followers, into the
cities of Egypt,* are often themselves involved in
the snare which was laid for another, and reap in
their own ruin the bitter fruits of their companions'
wickedness. What sorrows did Lot endure, right
eous as he was himself, from his choice of an
accursed neighbourhood ; what bitter reason had
he to lament the hour which beheld him first
as a sojourner among the men of the plain, when
he was carried with them into captivity by the As
syrians, or when he hardly escaped from their final
destruction with the death of half his family, and
the deep corruption of its surviving members.
When Ahaziah joined himself with Joram, and Je-
hoshaphat became the ally of Ahab, how surely did
the sms of the wicked king endanger or destroy his
misguided, though less guUty companion, and how
dreadful was the presence of Jonah, the fugitive
from God, which brought down the storms of
Heaven on the vessel and mariners who received
him.t Nor is this aU ; the sins of the fathers are
said in the second commandment to be visited by
* Psalm CXX. 5. Jer. xliii. 7.
fGen. xiv. 12. 3 Kings ix. 31—27. 3 Chron. xx. 37. Jonah i.

304 SERMON XV.
God on the chUdren ; and the sins of the prince
were in a conspicuous manner Visited on the nation
whom he governed, when David was moved by Sa
tan to give command for the numbering of Israel.*
That God is unrighteous in such terrible displays
of His power will hardly, I think, be pretended by
those who consider that, as examples to the rest of
mankind, such punishments have an obvious ten
dency to answer the purposes of mercy ; that as
all are sinners, there is no one who can plead that
the punishment which overtakes him is undeserved,
though it may be that such punishment would not
have overtaken him, unless the wisdom of the Most
High had been peculiarly called on by the sins of his
more guilty connexions; , that, lastly, the AUwise
and Almighty may so distinguish in His fiercest
judgments, as that, while the cup of His anger is
drunk by all concerned, its dregs may be reserved
as the pecuhar portion of the principal offender.
Where the connexion with a wicked person is vo
luntary and presumptuous, that connexion is, in
deed, in itself a sin, and deserving of a share in his
punishment ; but in every case and in every imagi
nable progressive shade of general guilt or inno
cence, we may weU trust to God that His ways in
this state of probation are no less righteous than
they will be hereafl;er in a fiiture and retributive
life ; that, though the mysteries of His Providence
are impenetrable to mortal eyes, His truth shall be
* I Chron. xxi. 1.

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 305 '
made plain, in His good time, to our faith and gra
titude ; and that though " clouds and darkness are"
at present " round about him," yet " righteousness
and judgment are the habitation of His throne for
ever."* Nor can it be maintained with reason that these
awful- dispensations were confined to the peculiar
case of that people, which the Almighty distin
guished as His own by an almost visible adminis
tration of their government, and by a distribution,
in the present fife, of those rewards and punish
ments which are ordinarily reserved for a future
state of existence. For, though it is certain that
the views of a Christian are not limited to temporal
recompences, and that we have no reason to anti
cipate an exact distribution of happiness or misery
in the present life, according to our good or evil
deportment, yet is it by no means true that the
dispensation of temporal rewards or punishments
was at any time confined to the tribes of Israel, or
that since the Mosaic covenant passed away, such
a dispensation has been altogether abandoned by
the Almighty. The calamities of Sodom, of Tyre,
of Nineveh, of Egypt, of Babylon, were as strictly
judicial as those with which God visited Jerusalem
or Samaria ; even under the Gospel a sentence of
extermination hangs over those religionists who re
sort to the temporal sword; the oppressions of
Antichrist are (if the words of prophecy be at aU
inteUigible) to be punished even in this world with
* Psalm xcvii. 2.
VOL. I. 2 R

306 SERMON XV.
signal plagues and misery ; and to individuals, dis
eases and death have been, we know from the tes
timony of an apostle, the righteous chastisement
of a profanation of the Eucharist.*
And though it be, doubtless, an impious pre
sumption in our present state of ignorance to de
cide what instances of pubhc or private calamity
either are or are not judicial, it is certain that the
universal feeling and universal experience of man
kind have borne witness to the fact that, even in
this world, there is retribution, and that the arm of
God has been, in certain instances, made bare
against conspicuous acts of impiety, or bloodshed,
or oppression. Nor, when we add to these more
rare and awful dispensations those usual and fami
liar cases in which poverty, disease, and shame,
are stationed in the gate of indulgence, to deter
with their paUid aspect the unwary from entering
in, and to execute some portion of God's righteous
vengeance on those who have braved His terrors,
can we avoid acknowledging that godliness is great
riches, as well in this life as in the life to come ;
and that the path of the wicked is even here beset
with snares, and his cup a cup of trembling. But,
if the power of God be thus actively employed in
the temporal punishment of His enemies, it is also
certain that it is not with the Jews alone that this
punishment has been so ordained as to include
others besides the offender. In the instances which
* 1 Cor. xi. 30.

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 307
I have already named,' it cannot be said that those
persons who hved before the law was given were
dealt with in conformity to any peculiar provision
of the law, and the same doctrine is notoriously
apphed to the chUdren of God after the cessation
of the Mosaic covenant in those several prophecies
of the New Testament, where the worshippers of
God are exhorted to fly from Jerusalem and Baby
lon, lest, by tarrying, they become partakers in their
plagues.* But even in private life, and in the occurrences
of every day, how often do we behold the conse
quences of sin extending to aU who have the mis
fortune to be connected with the offender. I do
not mean that ships are lost because they have an
* atheist on board, or that a roof is rendered unsafe
to the feUow-lodgers of the impious ; but in those
dispensations which we call natural, though to a
Christian they are no less providential than the
most awful wonders of Almighty power, how many
families are made miserable by the consequences
of a father's vice ; how many friends lament their
careless intimapy with the ungodly ; and how con
stantly does experience enforce the admonition of
Moses, " Depart I pray you from the tents of these
wicked men, and touch nothing of theirs, lest ye
be consumed in all their sins."t
No less sure, though perhaps less observed, is
the beneficial effect extending from the religious
* Rev. xviii. 4. f Numb. xvi. 26.

30N .'^ERMON XV.
man to his friends, his children, and his neighbour
hood. That we less frequently behold these fa
vourable interpositions of Providence than those
by which the associates of the wicked are clias-
tized or consumed, may be ascribed both to the
greater scarcity of real holiness in the world, and,
StiU more, to the circumstance that the mercies and
blessings of Providence, as they are more abun
dantly given, are, therefore, less noticed than His
awful and exemplary exhibitions of justice. But,
if that secret machinery by which He guides the
world were disclosed, and those springs laid bare
which, however small in themselves, supply the
most important uses, and contribute, far more than
rare and remarkable occurrences, to th^ weU-being
of the world and its inhabitants ; how many fami
hes might we find made prosperous and happy by
the virtues of one among their number ; how much
of health and strength and peace of mind derived
from such single fountains ; or (if our views were
StUl farther enlarged to the concerns of larger so
cieties,) how often should we, perhaps, behold the
fruitfulness of the earth increased, and the exist
ence of nations continued by the secret prayers
and undiscovered influence of those good men,
who, though the world hath overlooked them, are
beheld by God with pleasure ; who, like Job, are
examples of His grace to other worlds, and, like
Elias, allowed to intercede for the continuance of
His blessings to their own !
There is a striking legend in the Koran, that the

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 309
Lord delayed to bringthe waters of the flood over
the world, tiU Methuselah was gathered in peace
to his fathers ; but, to leave such fables, we know
from the Lord's own authority, that the sorrows of
the latter days are to be shortened by Him " for
the elect's sake whom He hath chosen."* And can
there be a stronger inducement to endeavour so to
rule our hearts before God as that our fives and
prayers may please Him, than the persuasion that
by acting thus we shall not only serve ourselves,
but our family, our friends, our neighbours, perhaps
our country .'' Or can the sinner have a greater
aggravation of his criminahty or his misery, than
the recoUection of how many may be condemned
on his account, to mourn; how much of wretched
ness his crimes may entail on those whom he most
tenderly loves, or how the addition of those crimes
to the weight of the common guilt may accelerate
the ruin of his people.'' Were not the sins of
Achan and the accursed treasure in his tentj sufii
cient to turnback inflight the thousands of Israel .^^t
And who is there who shaU pronounce with confi
dence that the mischief of his offences shaU termi
nate with himself, or that they may not be, in this
world, in a terrible manner required at the hands
of others .''
Or, secondly, can we be too cautious what inti
macies we form, and with whom, since we find such
important results foUow from a good or evil choice
* Mark xiii. 20. t Joshua vii. 11, 12.

310 SERMON XV.
of friends .'' For, is it not most extraordinary, that
whUe every other circumstance is attended to in
our connexions with mankind, while temper and
understanding are essential requisites in a friend ;
while the trader will not unite himself with a part
ner or correspondent of whose circumstances or
dUigence he is not weU informed, the Christian wiU
not scruple to form the closest ties with those whose
characters he must know, if he inquires into them
at all, are dangerous to themselves and all around
them.'' Yet surely such connexions are naturally
best adapted for the comfort and happiness of either
party, in which not only temper and understand
ing, but principles jointly accord, in which the
associates may not only take sweet counsel together'
but walk to the house of God in company .'' " Be
ye not unequally yoked together with unbeliev
ers,"* is a caution of which the prudence is evident
and between unbelief exphcit and implied, between
the profession of impious principle and the habitual
practice of such actions as put our better principles
to shame, the difference is so small that it is hardly
worth discussing.
Nor are such connexions only likely to disap
point us from those circumstances of dissention and
dispute, to which a disparity of principles may be
reasonably expected to give occasion. They are,
in themselves and in the first instance, for the most
part, deficient in the necessary warmth and earn-
* 2 Cor. vi. 14.

up

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 311
estness. The good-wUl of the wicked must want
that living spark of love which alone is really supe
rior to chance or change, which grieves for our
faults without despising us ; which helps our mis
fortunes without insulting us ; which bears our in
firmities without flattering us ; which hopeth all
things, believeth all things, endureth aU things.
Other bonds may be convenient; they may be
agreeable ; they may for a time be strong ; but
their strength is hke those Arabian brooks which
are rivers now, and now thorny valleys. " What
time they wax warm they vanish ; when it is hot
they are consumed out of their place. The troops
of Tema looked, the companies of Sheba waited
for them ; they were confounded because they had
hoped; they came thither, and were ashamed."*
But, fiirther, if we suppose such connexions as I
have spoken of to be maintained in this world with
mutual and unaltered affection, yet how dreadful
is the prospect which they hold out of parting in a
few years for ever. When those in whom our soul
delighteth are hidden from our sight in the grave ;
when those eyes are closed which have rested on
us with affection, and that hand is stiffened and
grown cold which was wont to answer kindly to our
pressure, though we are not without hope, a sure
and certain hope, of rejoining them to part no
more, we are by our present loss compelled, like
our Divine Master at the grave of Lazarus, to shed
* Job vi. 17. 19, 20

312 SERMON XV.
tears of natural sorrow. But when to this misery
of parting at aU, the fear is superadded that our
parting may be eternal, and that those whom we
have loved are condemned to everlasting fire, how
intense and intolerable is our agony ! And, surely,
if there be any grief which is allowed to linger
with the souls of just men made perfect ; if any
tear stUl hangs on their eyes, it must be when they
vainly seek in Heaven for those friends with whom
they have sojourned below, or behold them, in the
day of judgment, among the multitude on the left
hand! But, fourthly, it is not only on account of our
vicious friends themselves that we may, perhaps,
have cause to mourn. So perUous is the bad ex
ample of those whom we love and reverence, that
we are fortunate, indeed, more fortunate than we
have any reason to anticipate, if we do not ourselves
receive infection. I do not mean that we are of
necessity to faU into those more conspicuous vices
which, even in a friend, disgust and alarm us. This
may be, indeed, and wiU be far oftener the case
with us than we are apt to flatter ourselves ; but
this is not our only, nor, perhaps, our principal
danger. For, though our practice be less openly
offensive to God and good men than theirs, it is
certain that, by associating with tl em, we lend to
their vices the additional influence of our own more
decent example; while every excess which we coun
tenance by our presence, and every licentious ex
pression at which we smUe, are adding to the weight

THfi SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 3 13
of that account which we must one day yield to
God, and treasuring up sorrow and fear against the
hour of death and the day of judgment. " Be not
deceived," is the language of reason as well as of
revelation ; " evil communications corrupt good
manners ;"* and next to maintaining a good exam
ple ourselves^ there is no caution mOre sacred or
more necessary than that we should also choose
our fri^ds and companions from those whose ex-
^ample is good.
I know it will be answered that this is not always
in our power ; that our situation in life, the simUa-
rity of studies, the equality of years, the recollec
tions of youth, the ties of blood, the circumstances
of neighbourhood, for the most part determine our
acquaintance for us ; and so far as mere acquaint
ance reaches, the observation is strictly true. But
though it is allowed by St. Paul that, so long as we
live in the world, we must frequently form acquaint
ance with irreligious characters, and though the
Scriptures by no means require us to go out of the
world to avoid them, yet between this necessary
intercourse, and friendship or, even, familiarity,
the distinction is great indeed. And^ in general, if
we ourselves are of a conversation consistently
blameless and holy, we shaU find the irrefigious of
their own accord sufficiently disposed to shun our
society, or, if they really take pleasure in our com
pany, it will be a sign, and a very hopeful one
i llor. XV. 33.
VOL. I. 'i !«

314 SERMON XV.
that their characters are by proper means reclairii-
able. But while we shun all intimacy with those whose
contact, we fear, may defile us, it is a matter of
religious prudence no less than of rational enjoy
ment, to supply the place of wordly and dangerous
friendships by drawing nearer to those of whom
the lives and examples are likely to benefit us, who
may supply by their stronger prayers the weakness
and unworthiness of our own ; whose spirits, like
guardian angels, may plead our cause, and watch
over our safety, and whose society, as it has been
on earth our protection, may be a portion of our
reward in Heaven.
And, wherever our intimacies are already formed,
whether among the enemies or the friends of God,
it is a duty which we owe to them, to our Maker,
and to ourselves, to employ our best endeavours
to correct whatever is amiss in their principles or
conduct, and to confirm and strengthen them in
the paths which lead to salvation. For this pur
pose a double watch should be kept over the doors
of our lips, lest we ourselves say any thing, or as
sent to any thing said by others which may encou
rage them in sin, or slacken their exertions in the
cause of God and goodness. I do not mean to
recommend an affected solemnity of manner, or
that, when we are ourselves converted, we should
give our intimates occasion to suspect that we liave
cast off aU affection for them. On the contrary.
we have an additional reason for avoiding all pe-

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 315
«culiarities which may make rehgion offensive or
ridiculous, and for being more anxious than ever,
by kindness, by courtesy, by compliance in things
lawful or indifferent, and by postponing, where we
safely may, our pleasures and tastes to theirs, to
prove to them that our love is not changed but
sublimed and purified, and that religion is so far
from chilling the natural affections, that it must
needs, when sincere, make men better kindred, and
better neighbours, and better friends. But in the
mean time we should not for a moment lose sight
of the truth, that there is nothing by which our
influence over the minds of others is so much weak
ened as by inconsistency and irresolution ; that to
cast ourselves away can be to our erring friends no
possible advantage ; and that, whether they repent
or perish,'it behoves us, at least, to escape with our
lives and not to look behind us. And to maintain
our friendships in this wise and happy tempera
ment, I know no better course than that of de
voting them to God by the dihgent practice of
what is, in itself, the most essential duty of a friend,
a frequent intercession in the behalf of our friends
at the throne of grace and mercy. Nor can we, as
I conceive, be seriously impressed with either the
value of a friend, or the powerful efficacy of prayer r
to preserve that friend to our love and draw down ,
on him the blessing of our common Father, with
out sometimes recollecting his name in those mo
ments when our hearts are most warmed by their'
nearer approach to the source of aU love and ho-

316 SERMON XV.
liness, and uniting an earnest wish for his salvation
to those entreaties which we offer for our own.
We have indeed, no reason for hoping that our
tardy devotions can open the gates of Heaven for
a sinner whose day of grace is faded into darkness,
and who has gone to his account in unbelief and
final impenitence ; but of those who yet live, it is
hard to decide who have absolutely " sinned unto
death," and we are stUl less able to determine how
often the devotions of the faithful have obtained
for those, whose case was most to be despaired of,
a fresh and efficacious visit from the Spirit of Grace
and Comfort, and a little further respite to recover
their strength before they departed hence and were
no more seen.
It was a memorable saying of Ambrose to the
mother of Augustin, when she lamented to him the
indisposition which her son at that time displayed
to all rehgious feeling: "I have never known the
son allowed to perish for whose soul so many
prayers and holy tears interceded." Nor when we
hear, in like manner, complaints from parents aad
teachers, of education of example and of entreaty
thrown away on the levity and stubbornness of
those whose hearts they have desired to soften and
ameliorate, can we avoid sometimes suspecting that i
their pains might have had a happier effect if His
help had been duly sought for who only giveth the
increase either to the earthly or spiritual husband
man. Nor need we fear that, whUe thus interceding^

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 317
for our brethren, we shaU presume too far on the
mercy and patience of God; or that we shaU neg
lect our own interests whUe we are earnest on be
half of others. To the intercession which I recom
mend we are induced by those numerous passages
of Scripture which not only encourage but com
mand us to offer prayers, as for aU men gene
raUy, so especiaUy for those to whom we most owe
love and reverence. To such an intercession we
are encouraged by the successful example of those
worthies of ancient time whose devotions could
snatch men from shipwreck, from disease, from
death, and from sin ; and who had power, by their
supplications, to change the course of nature, and
to bring rain and fruitfulness on those lands which
the sins of the inhabitants had rendered barren.
To such an intercession we are emboldened, above
aU, by that example which we are in all things at
humble distance bound to foHow, the example of
Hiiaa who came down on earth that His blameless
obedience might withdraw the curse from His cre
ation, and who, even now, at His Father's right
hand, is occupied as the advocate of His brethren!
And be sure that all they who in their secret
thoughts; display such real anxiety for the happi
ness of their fellow-creatures, have an intercessor
in Christ who will never cease to care for them;
that " with the same measure which they employ
it shaU be measured to them agam," and that the
mercy and the spiritual help which they implore
God to grant to their neighbours shall be, with a

318 SERMON XV.
larger and more bounteous hand, returned into
their own bosoms !*
It is the duty then, or, to speak more properly,
it is the blessed and glorious privilege of every
Christian to be busied in prayer for aU whom he
loves or pities. But, while we thus caU down on
their heads aU teriiporal and spiritual benefits, and
whUe we pray for ourselves that our example may
be such as to become, through God's grace, the
source to them of blessing and salvation, let us
always conclude with the request that, however
strong our earthly regards may be, they may never
overpower the love which we owe to our God, our
Maker, and Redeemer !
He is, after aU, the great and only Friend on
whose love, under aU possible circumstances, our
hope may surely rely; whom no slander can de
ceive, no vain resentment sever from us ; whose
favours are abundant beyond our boldest desires,
and who, when most justly offended, is more ready
to forgive than we to ask forgiveness. The time
must shortly arrive when aU earthly friendships
wiU become less than nothing in comparison with
His favour; and when we shall find, if w0 have
not ourselves cast it away, that " no height, nor
depth, nor any other creature shaU be able to
separate us from the love of God which is in Christ
Jesus our Lord."t
When we are tossed by the storms which our
* Matt. vii. 2. t Romans viii. 39.

THE SHIPWRECK OF ST. PAUL. 319
own rashness has incurred, He is near at hand, hke
the Apostle, to support and strengthen us. If we
foUow His directions. He gives us the means and
assurance of safety, and His mighty intercession
can rescue His miserable creatures from a gulf of
destruction more dreadfiil than that deep which
yawned beneath the Cretan mariners !
To Him, therefore, with the Father and the Holy
Spirit, be aU obedience shown, and aU praise and
glory given, now and for ever !

' ," «:•

SERMON XVL

THE FEAR OF DEATH.
[Preached before the Univebity of Oxford, 1818 ; at Lincoln's Inn,
1822; and at Madras, 1826.]

Phii,. i. 21.
To die is gain.
To cure mankind of the fear of death is what
the wisest men of the ancient world have, ac
cording to the different degrees of their imperfect
knowledge, in various ways attempted to accom
plish. It is among the principal and most blessed
effects which (according to the author of the Epistle
to the Hebrews,) were to foUow from the humilia
tion of God's Son to our mortal nature ;* and how
truly and perfectly it was produced in the case of
St. Paul, is apparent from the text I have chosen.
As, then, the value of the cure maybe appreciated
from the eagerness with which it has been sought,
and its possibUity demonstrated from the example
of those who have attained it, it may be useful and
interesting to inquire how much had been effected
* Heb. ii. 1.^.

TH^ FEAR OF DEATH. 331
towards this great end by unassisted reason or an
cient tradition ; what further aids the religion of
Christ supplies ; what men those are whom Chris
tianity encourages to look forward with hope be
yond the grave ; in what manner that hope may
best be kindled and kept alive in us, and in what
manner it may be expressed most fitly.
I have said that to subdue the fear of death was
the favourite object of heathen wisdom, and the '
point to which the sages of the ancient world most
earnestly directed their labours. There have been
some, indeed, both in ancient and modern times,
who, instead of suggesting considerations whereby
death, before it came, might be contemplated with
less of horror, and, when it came, endured more
easily, have been content to advise us to avoid the
subject as much as possible, to shift the melan
choly scene whenever it came in view, and to drive
from our thoughts, by considerations of an oppo
site tendency, an event which, come when it may,
is beyond our control and remedy.
But those persons have been greatly ignorant of
the temper of the human mind and the constitution
of things around them, who did not recollect with
what a strange and mechanical impulse the soul
reverts the most to those ideas from which she is
most anxious to escape, or who did not perceive
that all nature is too closely filled with hints of our
mortality to suffer the melancholy truth to fade
away from our remembrance. Should we admit
th§ possibUity of effacing from the mind by
VOL.1. 3T

322 SERMON XVL
pleasure, or by business, the traces of what we are,
and whither our journey leads us, yet the recol
lection is sure to return when this fever of the
spirits has subsided, and -to return with greater
strength and dressed in more dismal colours. We
cannot study, we cannot feast, we cannot dance
always ; and the blithest and the busiest of us aU
wiU have enough of time in his hours of sickness or
inactivity to mourn over the shortness of his earthly
day, and to tremble at the darkness which is to
follow. But this is,not all. For, the idea of death
having once possessed the soul, it is by no means
so easily expeUed as these miserable comforters
imagine. It wiU sometimes foUow us into the midst
of the densest crowd, and mingle its hideous aspect
with whatever pictures of ambition, or of indul
gence, our most active fancy can assemble ; it wiU
make our cup bitter ; it wUl strew our bed with
thorns, and whisper to us in the midst of our mirth
with a voice of most dismal moaning.
" Linquenda tellus et domus et placens
Uxor, neque harum, quas colis, arborum,
Te, praeter invisas cupressus,
Ulla brevem dominum sequetur !*
This truth is confessed by the tenor of those very
counsels by which the votaries of vice and luxury
have enticed us to acquiesce in such pleasures as
they were able to supply, and to shut our eyes against
*Hor, Od. H. xiv. 21.

THE FEAR OF, DEATH. 323
their approaching termination. Why else are we
so repeatedly exhorted to " talk not of fate but
to talk of odours and wine :" to " pry not into the
Babylonian computations," to " recoUect that the
main evil of death lies in its apprehension .?" Why
is this very shortness of hfe so continuaUy insisted
on as an argument that we should " eat and drink
while life remains to us," unless the mirth of the
voluptuary is, indeed, mingled With heaviness, and
is, perhaps, therefore chiefly valued by him as a
contrast with the gloom which nature presents
on every side, and which throws its shadow over
every circumstance of his present pursuits or
pleasures ? There is no need of the suspended
sword of Damocles to scare him in his hours of
merriment, while the roses which wither on his
brow, and the cries of the mourners in the streets,
and the famUiar faces which pass away from around
his table, aU teach him that the hopes of earth are
nothing else than vanity, and that "there is no
counsel, nor device, nor wisdom in the grave whi
ther he goeth."
Since, then, to lose the thought of death is im
possible, it only remains to make that thought, by
some means, less intolerable. And this has been
attempted through; many different suggestions, of
which the greater part have only Served to show
the weakness and inconsistency of those by whom
they were brought forward. Some have attempted
to support us under this last visitation of our mor
tal nature by reminding us that it is, in our case,

324 SERMON XVI.
no more than aU the rest of the world have suf
fered or must suffer ; that Scipio, and Caesar, and
Alexander have passed to the same silent dweUing ;
that " Abraham is dead, and the prophets are
dead,"* and that it, therefore, iU becomes us to re
pine that death should be our portion also. " Ad
hanc legem natus es : hoc patri tuo accidit, hoc
matri, hoc majoribus, hoc omnibus ante te, hoc
omnibus post te. Quantus te populus moriturorum
sequetur, quantus comitabitur !"t
But this is a mere jargon, and " multiplying of
words without knowledge," by which, though the
voice of coinplaint may have been often awed into
sUence, as, indeed, it is by this sole principle of
the resistless force of fate, and the utter inutility
of resistance, that the inhabitants of India go
down to the grave with so much external compo
sure, yet the inward bitterness of death never was
and never will be aUeviated. If I am to lose a
limb to-morrow, I shall not feel less pain in the
operation because my neighbour has, some years
since, had the same performed on him; nor is
death at all the less misfortune, so far as I am con
cerned, because it is a calamity to which aU others
are also liable.
Those heathen writers suppose themselves to
have succeeded better, who endeavoured to fortify
us against the fear of death by representing death
as privation only ; as a long sleep without a dream ;
* St. John X. 53. f Senec. Epis. Ixxvii,

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 325
the end of all our hopes, and fears, and feelings.
" That," said Epicurus, " which when present is
nothing, is no cause of affliction when anticipated."
"Death, which is to other men the greatest of
evils, and the most terrible, is to us nothing;
inasmuch as, when we exist, death is not, and
where death is, we exist not. Death, therefore, is
literally nothing, since, where death is, there is
nobody."* It is strange how much the followers of the
school of atheism appear to have prided themselves
on this foolish quibble, but it is stranger stiU to
find, in modern times, and with lights so infinitely
superior, some writers speaking of annihilation as an
event of absolute indifference. For, first, this very
description of death (if it were indeed true, that
death were a total and eternal cessation of thought
and feeling) is so far from being a comfortable or
tolerable prospect, that it is one opposed to aU the
instincts of our nature, and which the generality of
mankind, even of those who possess least in this
present world, regard with the utmost horror. The
possessor of little is seldom, on that account, less
attached to what is in his possession. There are,
comparatively, few so wretched in this present life
as not to prefer existence in their actual state to
not existing at all; and still fewer are there, who do
not, so long as they live, entertain some memory of
past or some expectation of future happiness, which,
* Diog. Laertius Vit. Philos. x. Cic. Tusc. Quest, i.

326 SERMON XVL
vain as the first may seem, and delusive as the
second may be found, are not to be without a pang
abandoned entirely and for ever. We know the
declaration of the philosophic Maecenas, who pro
fessed to prefer to death' a life of all imaginable
misery,* and to such a lover of existence it is a
wretched encouragement indeed, to console him
under his loss by an assurance that the loss wiU be
total. But this is not the worst, for it is plain that
the knowledge that we ourselves are mortal is not
the only, perhaps not the principal way in which
our lives are embittered by the recoUection of mor
tahty. Man is not made to be alone ; he is una
ble, through the constitution of his nature, to sepa
rate his own well being from the being of those
with whom he is linked in the bands of kindred or
affection ; and he who has felt the agony of even a
temporary separation of those ties, may appreciate,
in some degree, the sufferings of the epicurean
whose brother or whose chUd was gone down
without hope to the tomb, and was hid, as he sup
posed, from his eyes forever!
No more, indeed, is necessary than to read the
cranplaints of impatient grief which Quintilian has
left behind him, to be sensible how vainly such
philosophy boasted of triumphing over the terrors
of the grave, when, in truth, they had done no
more than cover it with blacker darkness, and when
* "Debilem facito manu, debilem pede, coxa ; lubricos quate
dentes, vita dum superest, bene est; hanc mihi, vel acutam, si
das, sustineo crucem." — Senec. Epist. ci.

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 327
even they who themselves disbelieved in a life to
come, could not refrain from pronouncing those
barbarians " happy in their error," who regarded
death as the passage to another state of existence.*
Let us see, then, how these more fortunate rea
soners of paganism had succeeded in estabhshing
the faith of a fife after death, and how far this faith,
as held by them, was calculated to rob death of its
sting. They began by reasoning justly, that, as we are
composed of two distinct natures, we have no rea
son to suspect that the accidents to which the one
is hable have any necessary tendency to affect the
other. They observed that the soul can do many
things (such as reasoning, comparing, compound
ing, and remembering) without the body's help;
and concluded that the soul might continue to do
aU this, though the body were returned to its ori
ginal element. They even went farther, and sug
gested the possibility that she mig^t, under such
circumstances, exercise these powers in stiU greater
perfection than, from the presence and pressure of
the body, she is now permitted to do. And as
reason told them that whatever now is, must con
tinue to be tiU destroyed, so tiU some agent were
found competent to destroy the soul, the soul (they
were induced to apprehend) might exist for ever in
a separate state of happiness or of misery, or might
be united, at the pleasure of their gods, to a suc
cessive series of bodies. And this opinion they
* Felices eiTore sou, &c.

328 SERMON XVL
conceived to be remarkably strengthened and sup
ported both by the usual phenomena of dreams,
and by the; supposed fact that the manes' of the
dead had, on certain occasions, been seen and
heard by the fiving ; a notion which, whether true
or false, has been common in aU ages and countries,
and which the epicureans themselves were so far
from regarding as unfounded, that they had re
course to the wUdest theories to reconcUe it with
their' own opinions.* But when this possibility, or,
call it if you wiU, this probability, was admitted by
the minds of men, and it is plain that this is, pretty
nearly, the utmost length to which the unassisted
powers of human reason could proceed, the result
obtained was, surely, far from sufficient to support
the trembling spirit in its passage through the valley
of the shadow of death, or to chase from the gate
of the grave the horrors which surround it.
The first hypothesis of a separate and spiritual
existence of the soul, when deprived of those hopes
and aspirations which gild the Christian Paradise,,
revolves itself into little more than a continued but
useless consciousness of existence, a continued,
and, it may be, a murmuring recoUection of the
pains and pleasures of a life which is to return no
more, the obscure residence, the stridulous cry, the
shadowy limbs, and shivering appetite for warm
blood, which, in the estimate of Homer, made up
the comfortless elysium of departed heroes.t The
* Plato Phaedo. Cicero Tusc. Quaest. I. dec. ^
f Odys. xi. xxiv.

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 329
second, which Lucan considered the more com
fortable creed of those warlike Gothic tribes who
had derived this faith with many other circum
stances of belief and practice from their ancestors
in the north of India, held out to the dying man no
more than a return to the miseries of life and death
in another body. And, as the interruption of con
sciousness was almost a necessary accompaniment
of transmigration, it was in fact, nothing else than
to say, that while his present being was absolutely
drawing to a close, another being,' of which he was
to have no knowledge, and in which he could feel
no interest, was to arise from his essence, like a
plant froih the seed of its predecesssor. Or, though
the hope might be indulged, that where all was
unknown, some better things were in store for the
virtuous, such a chance of possible gain would but
little avail to comfort us under the present and cer
tain loss of life and friendship and enjoyment !
? ' It is true, nevertheless, that the majority of the
heathen world, and more especially, perhaps, among
those who were least entangled in the meshes of
philosophy, both had and have some better ex
pectations than these, derived from those tradi
tions which had descended from the* earliest men
from the times when our species conversed with
angels and with God, and learned from the highest
authority the secrets of that unseen world, to which
the visible world is but a passage and a vestibule.
And how much more^^satisfactory these traditions
were to the mind than^ the hardiest and most plau-
voL. I. 3 ir

330 SERMON XVL
sible conjectures of natural rt^son, may be infer
red from the eagerness with which Socrates is said
to have recurred to them in that hour when the
soul of man is most anxious in her search for com
fort. How gladly does that wise and good man
take refiige from the difficulties of abstract reason
ing in those ancient legends (of the word fiu^os in
its priipiitive application, our " fable" is too harsh
a rendering) in those legends of Egyptian and Chal
dean mystics, which speak of the soul as expiating
her crimes in the waves of Phlegethon, or enjoying
the reward of her virtues in the society of departed
sages. And surely it may be said that whoever
reads the Phaedo with attention, will not hesitate
to admit that faith is an instinct natural toman, or
refuse to bless that wisdom and goodness which
have supplied this appetite, since the truths of
Christianity were made known, with a food so pure,
so inexhaustible, so satisfactory !
But though much of truth and much more of
striking poetry may be found, beyond a doubt, in
the heathen traditions of a life beyond the grave,
the misfortune was that these traditions came down
to the civihzed nations of antiquity in a state so
encumbered with fable, where truth and falsehood
were so intinvately blended, and where the false
hood was of a kind so repugnant to reason and
probabUity, that it was difficult, if not absolutely
impossible, to determine what circumstances, if any
circumstances at aU, might be selected and adhered
to from the mass of general error. The Grecian

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 331
judges of the dead, the river, the dog, and the ferry
man of hell, are notions which the principal hea
then writers hardly ever mention without scorn.
And, unhappily, though their scorn was in these
instances justly excited, yet, when these were
taken away, very little remained on which the faith
of a dying man might fasten, except the general
probabUity that the soul did hot perish with . the
body, and that the separation of the two would be
the commencement of a new and distinct existence
to the former. But, when thus much was believed,
and this, as we have seen, was nearly all of which
the best instructed heathen was persuaded, the idea
of death must stUl have been extremely formidable,
nor to be contemplated without an anxiety which
the wisest and boldest of their number were little
able to overcome or dissemble.
The man who felt the approach of death was de
parting for a strange and distant country, where his
reception might depend on causes over which he
had no control, where aU was dark," where all was
eternal, and where aU was, therefore, terrible.
" Poor fluttering lively spirit," said the phUosopher
Hadrian, on his death, " poor guest and comrade
of the body! to what unknown regfons wilt thou
wing thy way, pale, naked, and trembling .'"' —
" Whether to live or die be most profitable," were
the words of a far better and wiser man than the
Roman Emperor; "whether my lot, oh men of
Athens, be iii this respect better than yours, there

332 SERMON XVL
is^no one who knoweth, save God."* But how dif
ferent were the dismal anxiety of Hadrian, and the
doubtfiil hope of Socrates, from the sure and cer
tain faith of that great apostle, to whom, " to die
was gain," and who exclaimed in triumphant anti
cipation of his approaching martyrdom, " I have
fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I
have kept the faith ; henceforth there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the
righteous Judge, shaU give me at that day."t
One nation, indeed, there was of the world ante
rior to the Gospel, who had received or retained, by
whatever means and from whatever antiquity, the
doctrine of a future hfe and a most righteous judg
ment after death, undebased by those preposterous
superstitions which encumbered the belief and dis
gusted the common sense of the more enlightened
heathen inquirers. That, already, in the days of
our Lord on earth, the great majority of the Israel
ites entertained these expectations, is a fact appa
rent to the most careless reader of the New Testa
ment. And though the weU known paradox of that
mighty mind,J whose wUdest speculations are not
to be treated with levity, has countenanced the opi
nion that this faith was, among the Jews, of more
recent introduction than the time of Moses ; yet
there are at present few points more generally
agreed on by learned men, that, even from the ear-
* Socrates, in Plato's Apology. f 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8.
J Bishop Warbiirton.

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 333
liest days of the law and the patriarchs, the doc
trine of the Israelites was, in this respect, the same
with our own, and that they acknowledged no less
than the Christian Church, that death was but the
beginning of another life, and that after death came
judgment. StUl, however, there were some circumstances in
their situation which prevented this truth from pro
ducing to its fuU extent that blessed effect on the
minds of the house of Israel, which, after his con
version to Christianity, the apostle of the Gentiles
experienced, stod of which he speaks, in the words
of the text, as of privileges not belonging to himself
alone, but as the common heritage of all those who
bear the name of Christian.
What those circumstances were, and in what
manner the Gospel has delivered us from their
might, I must reserve to a future sermon. But in
the mean time it is my duty most earnestly to caU
on you to consider that the- greater and more glo
rious the lights and the privileges of the Gospel
the more intense the danger from which it sets us
free, and the disquietude the, more painful, the
greater is our obligation, and the necessity the
stronger to avaU ourselves of the deliverance held
out by God's own hand5,and in our lives no less
than with our lips to manifest our fervent grati
tude. Simply to live for ever is a privUege of a
very doubtfiil character ; it is a privUege which the
spiritual enemies of the Almighty have retained in
their wUdest defection from His rule, and it is a

334 SERMON XVL
privUege which the monarch of all may continue
or decree in His wrath as well as in His mercy.
But to be happily and gloriously immortal is a
blessing which, if the Gospel be true, the Son of
God has purchased for us by His blood ; it is a
blessing which His bounty has set within the reach
of every one of us ; by Him the tree of life has
again been planted in the worfd, and it remains for
each of us to determine whether its fruit is worth
our gathering. But let us hasten to make our option,
for the shades of evening are waxing long, and the
hours of exertion are melting fast int#t wilight. To
die is the lot of aU men, but let us so live that to
die may be our gain and our immortahty !

SERMON XVIL

THE PEAR OF DEATH.
[Preached before'the University of Oxford, May 3, 1818 ; at Lin
coln's Inn, May 5, 1822; and at Madras, Feb. 26, 1826.]

Phil. i. 21.
To die is gain.
In my late sermon on this text it was my endea
vour to explain the causes which made, to the
great majority of the heathen world, the expecta
tion of death a source of almost unmingled disqui
etude and pain; and I shortly noticed, also, that
the Jews, though trained under a holier law, and
embued with a more exceUent erudition ; though
taught from the lessons of their fathers, and the
implied but sufficient testimony of their ancient
and divine oracles, to crown the temples of their
deceased friends with flowers in honour of the gar
den of Eden, and to bless, in their service for the
dead, that God who kept their bones unbroken tiU
the hour of resurrection; that the Jews, in spite of
all the presumptions and traditions which they could
plead for a life beyond the grave, were not enabled
to derive from those traditions a hope so sure, so

336 SERMON XVIL
certain, and so full of blessedness* "as that which
St. Paul experienced, and which the humblest
Christian, if he be not wanting to himself, may ex
perience through Jesus Christ our Lord ! And the
inferiority of their hope to ours may appear from
the following considerations.
It was, in the first place, less absolutely' certain
and undeniable. It was, indeed, the hereditary be
lief of their tribes since the time of those patri
archs who had faUen asleep in hope, and who, by
the testimony which • they bore to themselves that
they were pilgrims in the presenrivorld, evinced
that they expected to find a better and more en
during home hereafter. It was implied in very
many striking passages of Scripture, as where Job
declares his hope of seeing God after worms had
destroyed his body, and where God Himself, the
God of the living, laid claim to the faith and ho
mage of those who had long since fallen asleep in
the tomb of Maepelah.
But the revelation was implied, not explicit ; the
doctrine was disputed in its essential circumstances,
by the majority of the nations around them, and it
was denied circumstantiaUy and altogethfer by a
clamorous and powerful party among themselves.
And when we compare, in practice and on subjects
where the mind is little disposed to acquiesce in
uncertainties, the effect produced on ourselves by
a speculative and impugned theory in comparison
with that fulness of faith which follows an authen
tic experiment, we may be well convinced that

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 337
the actual return of the Son of God from the grave
has done more, by itself to prove the immortahty
of our nature, than aU the law and aU the prophets,
and all the traditions of the fathers from Abraham
down to Gamaliel, had effected for the confirma
tion of the house of Judah.
But this was by no means the Only circumstance
of disquietude. For, secondly, the faith of the or
thodox Jew consisted, as we have seen, not only in
the persuasion that his soul was immortal, and
that his body should revive, but in the expectation
of a most just judgment after death, in which the
eternal condition of men was to be decided accord
ing to their works done in the body. But, though
this hope would have been, indeed, a heavenly
comfort under the terrors of the grave, could they
have been sure that their own hves were such as
God approves, and that, in the integrity of their
hearts, they might pass boldly before His judgment
seat, yet would a restless conscience seldom fail
to whisper the dying man that his actions had
been far other than weU-pleasing to his Judge, and
that the power, the justice, the purity of that Judge
were to him nothing else than so many additional
arguments of dismay and danger. The same God,
he could not help remembering, who hath pro
mised to "keep mercy for thousands" beyond their
deserts, hath declared, on the other hand, that He
will " by no means clear the guUty ;"* and that
* Exod. xxxiv. 7.
VOL. X 2 X

33{< SERMON XVII.
neither the heathen nor the generality of the Jews
had any sufficient ground to hope that their imper
fect obedience would be accepted by God, and in
troduce them to Elysium or Paradise.
I say they had no sufficient grounds for hope,
though I am far from forgetting the expiatory offer
ings for sin which their law commanded, or the
connexion and correspondence which their Divine
Lawgiver designed between those offerings of vi
carious blood and the Christian truth of the one
great atonement. But as the obvious weakness and
inefficiency of such sacrifices were sufficient to de
ter the most sanguine from relying with perfect
confidence on the outward ceremony alone, so the
event of which that ceremony was the type, and
on whose retrospective blessedness its inward grace
depended, as being future, was obscure even to the
wisest and most enlightened Israelite, and could,
therefore, afford no present definite consolation
even to those who were, in the fulness of time, to
be saved by it.
Nor need we wonder, therefore, at that custom
(so strongly expressive of diffidence in themselves
and their own exertions) which began at a very
early period of the synagogue, of pleading the
merits and relying on the intercession of their more
favoured or less criminal ancestors ; nor that, be
fore this practice arose among them, and in spite
of whatever faUacious comfort they might derive
from if, the death even of holy men was, under the
old dispensation, regarded as a misfortune rather

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 339
than a blessing, nor that the dying hopes of the
more modern Jew have been mingled with very
painfiil doubt' and anxiety.
" Dost thou weep, hght of the world .-" Dost thou
tremble, piUar of Israel .f"' said the disciples of one
of their most celebrated rabbins, to their expiring
master. " Alas," was his reply, " if I were going
before an earthly king, though the worst which he
could inflict would be worldly loss or suffering, I
should StUl have cause for fear. And shall I not
weep and tremble exceedingly when I am going
before the King of kings, who, if He is angry with
me, may cast me into the hell of fire, and whose
wrath is for ever and ever ?"
Since, then, the doctrines of the heathen and
the Israelites were alike unavailing to take away
the sting of death, and enhghten the countenance
of him who was about to descend into darkness,
we must arrive at two conclusions. First, that
the wants of our nature and our reasonable fears
require some better comfort than that religious
system of a future state of rewards and punish
ments to which the religion of nature is limited,
and to which some Christian sects would persuade
us to limit Christianity. Secondly, that the opera
tion of some such better principle is implied in those
hopes which the apostle entertained, and of which
he speaks not as belongmg to himself alone, but
as the common heritage, unless their own negfi-
gence intervene, of all those who bear the name of
Christians.

340 SERMON XVIL
It is plain, however, that these hopes must rest
on a different foundation than the blameless virtues
of their entertainer. Even of St. Paul himself it
could not be said that he had, through life, so
served God that he had no reason to fear appear
ing before Him. In his youth that great apostle
had been a hinderer and slanderer of the Gospel,
and the curse of innocent blood sate heavy on the
accorapfice in Stephen's murder. True it is that
he had repented. True it is that the latter and
greater portion of his life had been occupied and
expended in the service of his God and his fellow-
creatures. But where shaU we find in the book of
God's word, or on what principle of natural reason
or justice can we ground the expectation that any
services, however great, can be offered as an atone
ment for acts of an opposite character, or as over
balancing in an account between man and his
Maker, the scale of man's transgressions .''
If, indeed, the laws of God, so far as they res
pect our conduct, were, as in the instance of
our first parents, a series of prohibitions only,
if no actions were commanded us to do, and if
the whole law could be kept by leaving certain
actions undone ; if this, which is, to a great ex
tent, the case with every human code, were the
case with the whole duty of man, as revealed to
us by reason and by Scripture; if God had not
commanded us to relieve the poor ; if He had not
commanded us to praise Him or pray to Him, or
if He had set down a limit to our duty in^ these

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 341
particulars so definite as to be distinguished by
each of us, and so low as to be surpassed by our
more earnest endeavours, it might then, indeed, be
urged, " If I have done some things which were
displeasing to Thee, I have done others which
Thou delightest to behold!" There might be
then, a merit in one part of our lives, which might
atone for a demerit elsewhere, and our obedience
beyond what was commanded might carry us to
Heaven, in spite of a certain proportion of those
faults against which the severest edge of God's
anger is sharpfened.
It is thus that we ourselves, when we aUow the
zeal and activity of one under our authority to in
duce us to pardon certain instances of misconduct,
shall always find that this activity and zeal has been
something more than the mere bond and letter of
his duty. For doing simply what we ordered, we
neither praise nor pardon him ; but it is because
he has done something more, or done it in a better
or more diligent manner than we expected or ab
solutely required of him.
But, where God and man are concerned, the latter
must, even in his best endeavours, be an unprofita
ble servant, not only because there is no one vir
tuous or pious action which is not commanded, but
because, in all these actions, the law of holiness is
too perfect and sublime to be even attained, much
less transcended by our best exertions. For
every active duty, no less than every species of
abstinence, a necessity is laid on us, a necessity

,342 SERMON XVIL
enforced by the most awful threats, and woe
to us if we faU short of the service which God
requires at our hands ! Thus if a man plead, ¦
" It is true that I have dishonoured God's name
but according to my means I have done good to
my fellow-creatures. It is true that I have been
secretly avaricious or intemperate, but by the de
cencies of my outward conduct I have set a good
example to all around me ;" the answer might be,
" Therefore thou shalt be punished as a blasphemer
only, not as having been also uncharitable. There
fore, when thy selfish and sensual habits have con
signed thee to the place of torment, those flames
shall not be superadded which the openly impious
shaU experience !" I do not deny, what is plain
from many passages of Scripture, that the good
deeds of the Christian which spring from faith, are
mercifully accepted as offerings weU pleasing, to
the Most High, and are the means, and the only
means, whereby we treasure up to ourselves,
through Christ an exceeding weight of future
glory. But we cannot too steadily bear in mind
that (considered by themselves and according to
the principles of natural religion) what we caUgood
deeds are only so many instances in which we
have not done evil, and that they can, therefore,
by themselves have no possible efficacy in remov
ing God's wrath from those actions in^which we
have positively offended Him.
" But the mercy of God," it may be urged,
" may incline the scale on the side of Heaven, and

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 343
instead of being extreme to mark what is done
amiss, may pass lightly over our provocations." —
Alas ! even our knowledge of God's mercy, if ab
stractedly considered and placed,as we have hitherto
professed to place it, on the basis of natural religion,
is by no means sufficient to reheve us from the into
lerable dread of death and judgment. God may,
indeed, and God wiU (our natural religion is able to
teach us this,) God will make His mercy to triumph
over His justice, and dispense even to the worst of
His creatures, a cup of wrath far milder than their
offences call for. But God's justice is, no less than
His mercy, an essential attribute of His nature, and
though the last may triumph over the other, it can
not extinguish it, or destroy that anger against sin,
which is a necessary perfection of the All-righte
ous. He may judge us mercifuUy ; He may con
demn us mercifully ; and yet we may be judged, and
yet we may be condemned ; and that condemna
tion (though tempered, doubtless, by every fitting
forbearance), must stiU be enough to confirm the
menaces of Him who cannot lie, and whose threats
against sin, in their least and mildest acceptation,
cannot be heard or read or recoUected without
great fear and trembling. As God is merciful. He
wiU deal as gently with His creatures as the order
of His creation, and the dignity of His laws wiU
admit of: but as God is true. He wUl condemn to
unquenchable fire all them that set at nought His
authority : and as God is the equal judge of angels
and of men, He wUl not clear the guUt of these

344 SERMON XVH.
last, lest the elder and worthier creatures should
tax him with a partial sentence !
" But the sinner may, with true contrition, re
pent him of the evil which he hath done, and cast
himself with bitter tears on the fatherly kindness of
his God !" Great, indeed, and blessed are the power
and comfort of that repentance whereby a Chris
tian is brought to the mercy-seat of Christ, and to
that expiation which the poor in spirit are taught
to look for in His name ! But who shaU tell us,
who could teU the heathen, and on what grounds
does the foUower of natural rehgion believe, that
repentance, considered by itself, though it may
doubtless prevent our sweUing the load of our guUt,
can operate to atone for sins past, and to the dis
charge of debts already contracted ? Do we find
in common life that the natural consequences of
by-gone actions can be remedied by after sorrow .''
Can we pay a debt the more easily because we re
gret our extravagance .'' If a man flings himself
from a tower, can he arrest his fall by changing his
mind half way ? It is true that, in earthly courts
of justice, not only the general good character of a
criminal, but his apparent contrition and sorrow
are, in some cases, fitly aUowed to plead in his fa
vour. But there are two grounds on which they
are thus admitted among men, neither of which, so
far as we are informed, can apply to the judgments
of the Almighty.
First. Here it is only for a first offence, or an
oflence, at least, which has not been often repeated-

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 34d
that the contrition of the culprit is ordinarUy allowed
to plead. But the sinner who trembles before the
tribunal of God is not so favourably situated, inas
much as it is no single act, no rare recurrence of
transgression which wiU then be laid to his charge,
and for which he must in that dreadful day make
answer. The sins of a whole life, the backslidings
of many years, resolutions often broken, tempta
tions presumptuously sought after, opportunities of
serving God presumptuously neglected, the world
and its forbidden pleasures pursued with systema
tic greediness, the promises of Heaven rejected with
systematic indifference or aversion ; a picture like
this is what the life of the worldly man too gene
rally offers ; and do we hope that a few tears forthe
folly of our choice will release us from a choice
made against due warning, and persisted in with a
perfect knowledge of the consequences .'' Nor is
this the only difference ; for. Secondly, an earthly
court of justice is, in its essence and spirit, correc
tional far more than penal. It is the duty of the
ruler to reclaim, if possible, the offender, before he
proceeds to make his exemplary destruction an in
strument of good to others. " ToUere nocentem"
is the last resort of the law ; " mefiorem reddere"
either is or ought to be its first endeavour. When,
therefore, a criminal is . to be sentenced, it may,
under certain circumstances, be most fitting to
suffer his tears to plead in his behalf, and to allow
him a chance of repairing his past offence by a di
hgent discharge of all his future duties. But the
VOL. I. 3 Y

34(i SERMON XVII.
last great sentence of God in the day of His wrath,
so far as that is made known to us, is not for the
amendment but the exemplary chastisement of the
sinner. It may admonish others in the higher ranks
of creation, but, so far as its immediate object is
concerned, it is penal, and penal only. All the cor
rective dispensations of God wiU have been already,
and in this preceding hfe, expended. In this life
He will have already borne long with us, and warned
and chastened us ; in this life a sufficient term of
probation wiU have been given to every man, and,
the time being past in which a change of conduct
might have been accepted, we have no good rea
son to believe that in the grave there can be par
don !
" But the repentance of which we speak may have
already, in this life, taken place; the sinner may have
already forsaken his evil ways, and have so profited
by the corrective discipline of God as that His final
vengeance may be unnecessary." And, surely, if a
man could render such an account of even his latter
years as that they should show no stain of guilt, and
that no single instance should occur in which, by
broken vows, and violated principles, and repeated
relapses, he had mocked the patience of the Lord, it
may be that such a one might lay down his head
in hope, rejoicing that he had effected a timely peace
with his Maker. But what is this to us whose lives
have been a tissue of unsteady service to God, and
irresolute rebeUion against Him; whose hearts,
even in their hohest moods, have been divided be-

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 347
tween Him and His enemies ; whose prayers have
been stained with sin, and whose very repentance
has been to be repented of.-* Sucharepentance as
we can offer, the Christian, like the rest of the
world, believes indeed to be absolutely necessary
to salvation ; but something more than repentance
is necessary, both in the eyes of Christianity and of
natural reason, to make our repentance itself avail
ing with our Judge as a cause or a condition of
pardon ! What is, then, this necessary something .''
What else shall we find, what more shall we look
for, what else or what more was desired or expected
by St. Paul,.,than that expiation for sin which the an
cients sought for in those blood offerings which were
shadows of things to come, but which the Christian
recognises in the sacrifice and meritorious suffer
ings of Him whose death hath paid the penalty of
fallen nature ; whose abundance hath made up for
our innumerable defects, and whose sinless virtue
hath sanctified our imperfect penitence .''
To men bought with a ransom so precious ; to
men protected by such an Intercessor; to men
thus more than reconcUed with God, identified
with His nature, and adopted by Him; to men
thus circumstanced, what is there in death which
can be accounted terrible .'' Is it terrible to ex
change a world of temptation and fraUty for that
quiet resting place where the wicked one ceases
from troubling, and where the struggles which
rend our mortal bosoms shall be at peace for ever
more ? Is it terrible to leave the violence or weak-

348 SERMON XVII.
ness of mankind for the society of angels and just
men made perfect, and the vision of our glorified
Lord } Is it terrible to forsake a world of toil and
penury to pluck the fruit of the tree of life, and to
rest from our labours in the green shades of Para
dise;* or does not the time seem long which must
pass before we shall " stand in our lot at the end
of the days,"t and crowned with gold, and with
triumphal branches in our hands, bear our part in
that great Hallelujah wherein the angels shall
exult to join.''
There are those, indeed, among men to whom
death is, even now, most terrible ! He is terrible
to those who, with so great and gracious encourage
ment to repentance, have preferred to remain in the
prison house of their sins rather than to seek, by the
appointed means, the glorious liberty of God's chil
dren ! He is terrible to those who have contented
themselves with an idle and fruitless recognition of
Christ's power> without an attempt or a desire to
show forth their gratitude in their lives ; who have
cried, " Lord, Lord," without giving themselves up
to His service ; who have rested on the letter of
His promises, without attending to their spirit, and
have boasted themselves the chosen of the Lord,
* Quas neque concutiunt venti, nee nubila nimbis ,
Adspergunt, neque nix acri concreta pruina
Cana cadens violat, semper sine nubibus aether
Integer, et large diffuse lumine ridet 1
Lucretius, iii. 19,
t Dan. xii. 13.

THE FEAR OP DEATH. 349
forgetting by what means their election was to be
rendered sure. He is terrible, lastly, to those who
have leaned on the broken reed of human merit, or
repentance ; who with the brightness of the Sun
of Righteousness before them, have turned back to
the twUight of natural rehgion ; who, professing to
look forward to a future life without end, have ac
quiesced in grounds of hope, than which the Jew
possessed far better, and by which the heathen, in
his grossest ignorance, was stUl too wise to be
comforted ! But to the sincere and humble be
liever in the atonement made by Christ, to him whose
faith has worked by love, and who has earnestly
panted after holiness ; who has sought for grace in
the ordinances of the Most High, and shown forth
the grace received by a progressive though imper
fect amendment, to him death is not terrible ; he
rests on a protection which no created thing can
render vain, and the garment, which is his passport
to the marriage banquet of the Son, is itself a
pledge of that Son's free grace and favour.
Of the many direct, and the stUl more numerous
imphed assertions of Christ's atonement, which are
contained in Scripture, the time forbids me to take
notice. It is enough for my present purpose to
have shown that this doctrine is not only consistent
with, but absolutely necessary to, the fears and
feelings of our nature, and that, consequently, those
sects by whom it is explained away into I know not
what apparatus of allegory and mysticism, are but

350 SERMON XVIL
little entitled to the name which they assume of
rational and phUosophical Christians.
I cannot, however, dismiss my audience without
entreating them to recoUect that this iUustrious dis
play of God's mercy in the humifiation and sacrifice
of His Son ; these glorious promises which He has
made, and this earnest of future blessedness and
perfection which He has afforded us in the gift of
His Holy Spirit, are not merely a splendid pageant
in which we are not personaUy and individuaUy
concerned : nor are they to act in our favour like
a charm, without our own application of them to
ourselves, and our earnest and consistent use of
the means of safety which they offer.
" To die is gain;" but it is gain to them only to
whom it has been " Christ to live ;" and by how
much the greater salvation has been tendered, and
by how much the easier the terms have been on
which it was tendered, so much the blacker confu
sion must our faces one day gather, if our obstinacy
in sin has abused the long-suffering of the Lord,
and we have presumed on the merits of His blood
to disgrace the name of His religion ! Those are
ill taught in the language of Scripture who suppose
that salvation is not offered to us, but forced on us;
who forget that they are the chUdren of God who
only ar€ heirs with Christ of a happy immortality;
and that the promise is not that we shall be made
the sons of Gfod, but that " power shall be given
us" to become so.* * St. John i. 12.

THE FEAR OF DEATH. 351
Let then the promises of the Most High produce
in our mind the effects for which they were in
tended ; the effect of encouraging and exciting us
to a holy energy in His cause, and to a soldierly
perseverance in our spiritual warfare. But let us
recollect, in this our struggle, that the arms with
which we fight are not our own ; that our most ac
ceptable services are clogged with sin, and our
firmest allegiance tainted with defectionj and that
in our seeming strength, as well as in our greatest
weakness, our reliance can there only be grounded
whither the natural fears and gracious aspirations
of the heart alike mount up for refuge, the cross
of that victorious Saviour who hath tamed the
Strength of sin, and made the gate of death the
entrance to immortality !

SERMON XVIIL

THE ATONEMENT.
[Preached before the University of Oxford, 1818, and at
Cuddalore, 1826.]

Romans vi. 3, 4.
Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
Christ, were baptized into His death ? Therefore we are
buried imth Him hy baptism into death, that, like as Christ
was raised up from the dead hy the glory of the Father, even
so we also should walk in newness of life.
St. Paul in these words, and in the chapter from
which they are taken, is providing against an abuse
which (even in the earliest and golden age of Chris
tianity) some mistaken Christians had begun to
engraft on its doctrines, and which had been urged,
with some show of plausibility, as an objection to
those doctrines, by the enemies of the new religion.
He had in the preceding chapter explained, in a
clear and striking manner, the general fact on which
are grounded the most important pecuharities of
our creed; that our justification is not purchased
by any virtues or merits of our own, but that it is
the free gift of the Most High, through Jesus Christ
His Son. And he had iUustrated tthe greatness of

THE ATONEMENT. 353
the mercy which God, for His Son's sake, had
shown to the world, by comparing it with the de
gree of severity which, for Adam's sake, the same
God had formerly thought fit to exercise towards
us. " The sentence," St. Paul had argued, " which,
in the case of Adam, was passed for one man's sin
on the race of mankind in general, was no more.
after all, than (even if such a sentence had not been
passed in the first instance) the subsequent crimes
of each of Adam's descendants might in his own
person have justly called for. But, in the case of
Christ, a benefit was conferred on the whole race of
mankind for the sake of one Man's obedience, to
which the whole race of mankind were so far from
having any meritorious claim, that aU men and
every man had been committing actions which me*
rited the direct contrary. So that though death, in
point of fact, reigned over the world in cons^
quence of Adam's sin, not in consequence of your
sin or of mine, yet were the sins of each of us and
of each of Adam's descendants so great as to have
caUed down such a sentence on our heads, if that
sentence had not been previously passed on us ;
whUe, on the other hand, the gift of eternal life,
which is offered to us aU in consequence of Christ'g
merits, is offered, not merely without regard to the
deserts of each particular man, but absolutely in
spite of them. " Where sin" then " abounded,
grace did much more abound." The mercy of God
was more powerful to save us from death than our
offences were to seal and confirm the doom of death
TOE. 1. 3 z

354 SERMON XVIII.
which had been passed against us ; and not only the
natural liabUity to death which we inherited from
our first parents, but those additional claims which
death had acquired on us in consequence of our
personal transgressions, were cancelled and done
away " through righteousness unto eternal life, by
Jesus Christ our Lord." Here, however, it was,
that the abuse of which I have spoken occurred,
as weU as the objection which, in consequence of
that abuse, was advanced against the Christian
doctrine. " If," it was argued, " the blessing of everlasting
life is offered to us through Christ, not only with
out regard to our merits, but actuaUy in spite of
our sins, what necessity, what obligation have we
to be virtuous ! If, do what good works we may,
we can do nothing to merit Heaven, then, verily,
we shall have purified our hearts in vain, and vainly
washed our hands in innocency ! If, do what sins
we please, the blood of Christ and the grace which
He has purchased for us are sufficient to render us
acceptable in the sight of God, why then do we
deny ourselves those pleasures to which our nature is
inclmed : why crush those passions which gnaw, like
the Spartan fox, the bosom which confines them,
but of which the wildest and most profligate indul
gence is atoned for by the common Saviour of all ?
Does nd(t, according to St. Paul's own statement,
the greatness of our undeserving enhance the splen
dour of the mercy shown us .-' Let us, then, give
this glory to the Most High ! By making ourselves

THE ATONEMENT. 35^
more vile, let us render His condescension the more
wonderful ! Let us sin that grace may abound."
It is hard, indeed, to beheve that tenets so con
trary to the tenor and temper of the Gospel of
Christ, so repugnant to the common sense of man
kind, and to all the reasonable fears and instinctive
feehngs of our better nature, can ever have been,
seriously and in simphcity, taught or believed by
even the weakest and worst instructed Christian.
However some good men, through an indiscreet
devotion to one single part of the Christian scheme,
have been led to dwell too long and too exclusively
on the promises and privUeges of the Gospel, to
the neglect of its menaces and duties ; however,
through an erroneous estimation of the nature of
Divine Grace, and the manner in which that grace
is accorded to us, they have unhappily weakened
the motives of moral exertion ; I can hardly con
ceive that there has ever been a conscientious
follower of Christ who, knowingly and systemati
cally, has upheld the doctrine of antinomianism.
To such doctrines the sermon of Christ on the
mount. His every discourse. His every action. His
every miracle, no less than every page in the re
maining works of His earhest friends and fbUowerS,
are too decidedly hostile to admit of discussion or
hesitation. And, with some necessary aUowance
for the warmth and bitterness of controversy, and
for that habit, in which controversialists have too
much indulged, of imputing to an antagonist, as
articles of faith and practice, those odious conse*

356 SERMON XVIIL
quences which that antagonist disclaims, we have,
thank God, no evidence before us of any numerous
Christian sect who have not maintained the neces
sity of hohness, either as a concurrent cause, or,
at least, as an unfaUing preliminary to our final sal
vation through Christ Jesus.
There were, notwithstanding, in the lifetime of
the apostles, and there stiU may be found, two dif
ferent descriptions of men who thus, to their own
ruin, and the shipwreck of many souls besides their
own, pervert the meaning of the Gospel. The first
are a base and sensual tribe, who having sold
themselves to work iniquity with greediness, are
glad to catch, like drowning men, at straws and
shadows, and to avaU themselves of any pretence,
how weak and futile soever to justify or excuse
their continuance in practices of which their own
consciences, and the written word of God, and the
natural religion of mankind bear witness that " the
end of such things is death." It is something, for
a person thus unhappUy circumstanced, to conceal
for a moment and by the merest sophistry from
his own eyes the ruin to which he is tending. It is
something to escape the indignant pity of his feUow-
creatures, by making others believe that he is satis
fied with his own prospects, and consistent with his
own principles, whUe, in truth, his morning thoughts
are aU of trouble and dismay, and his nightly
dreams are foretastes of torments. It is something
I fear, too often, of fiendish gratification to draw
others into the same pit from which he is himself

THE ATONEMENT. 357
unable to return ; by his pernicious reasonings to
serve the cause to which he has devoted his life,
and to comfort himself over his own destruction by
multiplying, like Pharaoh in Ezekiel,* the amount
of his associates in misery. It was thus that anti
nomianism appears to have first manifested itself
among the early gnostics and in the licentiousChurch
of Corinth, and it is hence, I am persuaded, that it
will be generally found to spring wherever it occurs
among the outward professors of Christianity.
The second, however, and as I conceive by far the
larger party, is made up of those who perceive, as
plainly as we ourselves can perceive, the absurdity
and wickedness of such a system, who are fully sen
sible that the AU Holy God is of purer eyes than
with pleasure to behold iniquity ; and that the All
Just and All Wise can never be supposed to sanctioji
the breach of those laws which He has written in
the hearts of his rational creatures ; which He has
developed in every page of the inspired and authen
tic records of His wiU; which He has enforced by
so tremendous threats and by such an awful dis
play of wonder and miracle. But this very impiety
and absurdity they make the ground- work of a
charge, either against Christianity in general, or
against the particular doctrine of Christ's atone
ment, while they contend that a tenet on which
such consequences are chargeable cannot possibly
have proceeded from God.
It is to this effect that Celsus has compared the
* Ezek. xxxii. 31.

358 SERMON XVIIL
moral qualifications required from the candidates
for admission to the heathen mysteries, with the
gracious invitations held out in the Gospel to the
most wretched and atrocious sinners ; and it has
to this effect, also, been urged by a freethinker of
the last century, that " if Christ be the propitiation
for all sin, the most wicked Christian is secure, in
asmuch as God cannot in justice lay claim to any
further satisfaction for his offences."*
And certainly, if no way could be found to escape
from such a conclusion ; if the doctrine, as it has
been stated, stood alone and without explanation
in Scripture; if nothing else were contained in
the system of Christian belief but absolute and un
conditional forgiveness of sins through the blood
of Christ, and the offer of eternal life without any
reference to our virtuous conduct; I, for one, would
not hesitate to admit either that the Christian re
ligion did not come from God, or that mankind had
not yet succeeded in discovering the purport of
some of the most striking and, apparently, some of
the clearest passages in the New Testament.
But, God be praised ! there is no need to aban
don either our common faith or this essential and
most comfortable part of it. The abominable con
sequences to which I have referred belong not to
Christianity itself^ but to an imperfect and distorted
view of it. The doctrine on which they are charged
is one part only of a vast chain of which no single
* Celsus ap. Orig. 1. 3. sect. 59. p. 147. Chubb, Posthumous
Works, p. 250. (quoted by Leland.)

THE ATONEMENT. 359
link can bear to be separated from its fellows, but
of which the links united are the bond of earth and
Heaven, the threefold cord of God's wisdom, and
justice, and mercy !
It is, accordingly, not as giving up or weakening
the doctrine itself, but as bringing forward other
doctrines with which it is inseparably connected,
that St. Paul repels the force of these objections,
and evinces that we may be saved by grace alone,
and yet the reason for good works shaU not only
continue unimpaired, but acquire, from this very
doctrine, an additional force and energy. And this
he does by an appeal to the terms themselves in
which befievers lay claim to the promise of Christ,
and to the obligations which those terms imply to
a future continuance in holiness.
" Shall we continue in sin, that grace may
abound .'' God forbid," are his words. " How shall
we that are dead to sin live any longer therein .''
Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ were baptized into His death .''
Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into
death, that, like as Christ was raised up from the
dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also
should walk in newness of life." — " Knowing this," ,
he proceeds, " that our old man is crucified with
Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that
henceforth we should not serve sin." For he that
is dead is freed from sin." The force and beauty
of this argument wUl appear from a very short
examination of its particulars.

i^60 SERMON XVIIL
It is, in the first place, abundantly certain that
(whatever the advantages may be which the merits
and death of our Lord have obtained for mankind
from His Father) they are the same with those
which every Christian both seeks and hopes in an
especial manner to obtain in the ceremony of bap
tism, that form by which he publicly enters into the
fellowship of Christ's religion, and solemnly lays
claim, according to the solemn promise of his Lord,
to all the privileges of Christ's new covenant of grace
and pardon. Whatever we seek after in His name,
whatever we obtain through His merits, we seek
and obtain by a due use of the ordinance of baptism I
But how is it, and under what limitations that we
are taught, on that occasion, to seek for and expect
the free gifts of pardon and grace .'' What is the
conventional meaning of the ceremony .'' St. Paul
has told us that it is an image of our death and
burial ; that our immersion, or aspersion (for the
import of either is the same) is to signify our inter
ment, or that "j actus pulveris," which in every age
and country has been regarded as a virtual inter
ment ; insomuch that, the form being complied with,
we are said to be born again, and to appear, in the
world to which we return, as if we were already
inhabitants of another state of existence. " We
are buried with Christ by baptism into death, that,
like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the
glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in
newness of life."
What then, let me ask, is the effect of that

THE ATONEMENT. 36 i
natural dissolution which is thus conventionally
shadowed ? Is it not the interruption of aU our
former appetites ? Do the dead hunger or thirst
any more.? WiU beauty move their love.? WiU
the tabret or the harp, the richest wines or the
most luxurious viands entice them beyond the
bounds of temperance ? Load the coffin with gold !
clothe the skeleton with scarlet and ermine ! WUl
this awaken his avarice, or wUl these elevate his
pride ? Surely, if the soul perceives at aU the
objects which surround the ruins of her recent
dwelling, she perceives them but to recognise their
utter vanity, and to feel that these are not the
things which can any longer contribute to her
happiness !
This comparison of death, indeed, is a known
and familiar figure of speech to express insensibihty
to any particular object. We say that a truculent
and inhuman man is dead to natural affection, that
an impudent person is dead to shame. Nor can
I conceive any form of words or any significant
ceremony more powerfuUy expressive than baptism
(when thus explained) will appear, of our renunci
ation of all those habits and propensities, which, in
our former nature, were offensive to God, and of
our obligation, thenceforth, to cultivate and to prac
tise those several habits and feelings which belong
to a renewed, an amended, a purified, and a spiri
tual state of existence. It is apparent that, since
baptism is, avowedly, not only an act of oblivion
on God's part for the past, but (both on God's part
VOL. I. 3 A

362^ SER-MON XVIIL
and on ours) a solemn covenant for the future, it
is apparent that a neglect of its implied conditions
must necessarUy involve a forfeiture of its advan
tages, and that, if we do not, in this life, habitually
die to sin, we cannot hope, in the life to come, to
awaken to everlasting happiness.
So far, indeed, is St. Paul from preaching faith
without works in the common and offensive mean
ing, of the term, that it would be no easy matter to
point out in any one of his epistles so many as
twenty verses together, without some severe and
powerful remonstrance on the danger of sinfiil in
dulgences ; some earnest exhortation to purity of
hfe, as a proof (the only proof which God wiU ac
cept) of the new heart and nature of which baptism
is the image ; and which, if it be not reaUy wrought
in us, our ceremonial baptism is worse than vain !
" StiU, however," it may be urged " though this
may prove the purity of the Christian doctrine, it
proves it at the expense of its consistency. When
St. Paul has said that grace alone is the efficient
cause of our justification, he comes in too late
with the supplementary clause thatpei^onal holiness
is also necessary. While we magnify grace we
detract from the importance of moral duties; while
we insist on works, we introduce something else
besides grace, as, at least, co-operative in the pro
cess of our salvation."
This difficulty has, I beheve, had considerable
weight with many of those who hsive, unhappily,
rejected the truth of our religion; and it has, also,

THE ATONEMENT. 363
been a principal occasion of many of those divisions
by which, to the great misfortune of Christianity,
the hands of its friends have been enfeebled. To
escape from it, the socinian, as the advocate of
the moral law, is reduced to explain into metaphor
and poetical ornament those striking expressions
of Scripture in which the operations of Divine grace
are spoken of, and to maintain as a general prin
ciple (what is only true of some particular passages
in St. Paul's writings) that the works which he so
carefully excludes from a share in our justification,
are not good works, properly so caUed, but the
ceremonial observances of the Jewish law.
But of such an explanation, a reference to the
present passage will prove that it is by no means
susceptible. The comparison is, in this place, not
between the different methods of atoning for sin,
but between the sin and its atonement. It is be
tween Adam and Christ, not between Christ and
Moses. They are the transgressions of the natural
not of the ceremonial law, by which only aU the chil
dren of mankind can be said to have merited death;
and it is plain, therefore, unless St. Paul have ex
pressed himself in a manner extremely at variance
with the usual rules of inteUigible composition,
that he has really denied the efficacy of moral ob
servances as instruments of justification.
Nor is it, on the other hand, sufficient to reply,
with the calvinist, that the terms which St. Paul
has employed in these different passages, are merely
different statements of the same mysterious process

:J64 SERMON XVIIL
in which man is passive and God alone is mercfful
and mighty, inasmuch as those whom His free
grace has chosen to everlasting life. He, by the
same free and sovereign influence, irresistibly dis
poses to follow the paths of holiness. For, though
this will sufficiently account for the virtues of the
favoured number, and wUl prove that without vir
tue, no person has a right to believe himself the
chUd of God, it can be by no means reconciled with
the general tenor of the moral lessons of Scrip
ture; the warnings, the cautions, the threats, and
entreaties of the Most High ; that the sinner should
forsake his way ; that the saint should take heed
lest he fall ; and that the wicked should escape,
while yet there is time, the everlasting misery
which awaits him ! Can God act a part with His
creatures ? Can He caution those who are in no
danger ? Can He threaten those whom He never
means to punish .? Can He offer mercy to those
who are morally unable to make use of it ? Surely
when God speaks. He speaks to those whom it
concerns, nor, admitting Him to have mercy on
those only whom he pleases, can it be necessary
for him to secure their salvation by the means of
delusion and hypocrisy ? When God speaks. He
speaks to moral agents, and if from such agents
He demands good works as an essential prehminary
to their final happiness, the difficulty wiU stiU return
how to reconcile this demand with free grace and
unconditional pardon. To solve this difficulty will
be my endeavour in the remainder of my sermon.

THE ATONEMENT. 365
First, then, though it is evident from Scripture
that good works are generally necessary to salva
tion, it is evident also (let him that heareth under
stand !) that they are not absolutely or universaUy
so. Our religion knows nothing of a ^' limbus in
fantum,'''' a neutral ground between Heaven and
hell, where they whose exact measure of hohness
does not come up to the level of the former are
condemned to pass an eternity without suffering
and without enjoyment. The chUd, who has no
good works to show ; the madman, who cannot be
justly made responsible for his evil works ; the
dying penitent, whose lamp of life sinks down whUe
his repentance has, as yet, reached no farther than
his heart, and whose purposes of amendment and
restitution are cut off for ever ; aU these, we trust,
may be inheritors, through Christ of endless hap
piness, and partake in the benefit of that covenant
which they have neglected, or of which they have
always remained unconscious. So true is it that,
in the case of no inconsiderable portion of man
kind, the mercy of God is bestowed without any
possible reference to human merit, while yet no
imputation fies against His justice or His truth ;
nor is the necessity weakened (which He has laid
on every capable subject) of repentance and of
holiness. But, secondly, though it is certain that in many
passages of St. Paul, justification, adoption, and
final salvation are employed as convertible terms,
inasmuch as they are aU constituent parts of one

366 SERMON XVIIL
great benefit, and the last is the natural and (so
far as God's share in the transaction goes) the
certain consequence of the former, it is plain that
the justification of which he had been here speak
ing (inasmuch as he had spoken of it as already
begun in the persons whom he was addressing,
and, in the sense 'of our Church, as the cause, not
the consequence of hohness) is distinct, as occur
ring in this life, from" our final acceptance and sal
vation in the life to come ; and is conferred, in fact,
in that baptism by whose typical form he iUustrates
its obligations. It is the same with that regenera
tion of which baptism is the outward symbol, and
which marks out, wherever it occurs (that it ordi
narUy occurs in baptism I am, for my own part,
firmly persuaded), our admission into the number
of the chUdren of God, and the heirs of everlast
ing happiness. It is the commencement of that
state of salvation in which, if a man continues,
death has no power over him, inasmuch as the
grave, which our nature so greatly fears, is to him
no extinction of hfe, but a passage to a life more
blessed and more glorious.
Now it is plain that our entrance into this state
may be of grace alone, and independent of any
exertions of our own, though our continuance in
it may, to a certain considerable degree, depend on
our own option and our own endeavours. A pardon
may be free in the first instance, though it should
be forfeited or rendered unavaUing afterwards, and,
indeed, I need hardly observe that it belongs to the

THE ATONEMENT. 367
essence of a pardon to be retrospective only. And
that our admission into a state of pardon and of
peace is, indeed, in the first instance, of grace alone,
and altogether independent of our deservings, is
apparent, not only because it is His Providence
which has determined those external circumstances
by which we have been ourselves conducted to the
visible Church of Christ, but it is apparent, more
over, from the act of admission itsplf, which is not
the aUegation of any good works but the implied
acknowledgment of many evil ones, a confession
that we are worthy of death, and a desire that we
may die, through Christ, to our previous depraved
affections. And this, by the way, may seem to prove that
the ancient and catholic institution of infant bap
tism is not only countenanced by the known prac
tice of the primitive Church, of the yet elder Syna
gogue, and the most obvious meaning of some re
markable expressions of our Saviour, but that the
objections which have most frequently been raised
against it are founded on an ignorance of its mean
ing, and on a forgetfulness of that utter absence of
human merit which adheres to the adult no less
than to the infant candidate. Baptism, it should
be borne in mind, is, on our part, no more than a
prayer (conceived and expressed in that form which
Christ Himself has sanctioned) that God would ad
mit, for Christ's sake, the person who partakes of
it into the covenant of His salvation. But, as we
may certainly pray for others as weU as for our-

368 SERMON XVIIL
selves, and for those who are unconscious 6f our
prayers, as for those who are sensible of their im
port ; and for future and secret grace and illumina
tion, as for that which is immediately and percepti
bly bestowed, there can be no impropriety, there
can be no inconsistency in entreating the Lord,
after His own appointed way, to bestow on the in
fant those blessings in the reception of which both
infimt and adult are equaUy passive ; and which,
even if in the first instance inapplicable, wUl be too
soon and too surely needed when the innate cor
ruption begins to expand, and the warmth of youth
to unlock the folds of the sleeping serpent. " Cast
thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it
after many days;"* and he who, with anxious tears,
commits the care of his seed to the Most High,
may hope at length " to come again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him."t
Nor, to return from this digression, can it be
pretended that the freedom of our Original pardon
is vitiated by its continuance being made dependent
(as in the case of baptism it undoubtedly is) on the
performance of certain duties. Those duties, it
should be recoUected, are not new burdens imposed
on us by God on the occasion of our entering into
the baptismal covenant. They are no fresh consi
deration promised to him inconsequence of Christ'ia
coming into the world, and of the mercy which He
undertakes to show us. They are no more than
* Eccles. xi. 1. t Psalm cxxvi. 6.

THE ATONEMENT. 369
we should have been bound to perform, even had
Christ never died for us, in common gratitude for
the daily and ordinary blessings of life and light,
and sunshine ; in common prudence, as the most
effectual means of passing through the present
world with comfort and safety ; in common fear, as
creatures already liable to God's wrath, but desir
ous to conciliate, by all possible means, the anger
of our dreadful Monarch. An immense and addi
tional blessing is bestowed, and no return is stipu
lated but the continuance of our former service !
Surely such a gift is, in the strictest sense of the
words, of free grace, though we aUow that its final
accomplishment is contingent on our good beha
viour. And this may be stiU further Ulustrated by the
fact, that as we ar^e commanded to do good as well
as to abstain from transgression, it is plain that our
best works are only so many instances in which we
have not done evU, and that every neglect of an
active duty is the perpetration of an actual sin
against our Maker. But it would be too much to
say that any man contributes to an act of grace,
when, in truth, the highest praise to which he can
lay claim is, that he does nothing to cancel that
act or prevent its becoming effectual. Yet this is
the only manner in which the best actions or the
most virtuous lives can be said to forward or se
cure our salvation; and it follows, that we may be
bound, as we most undoubtedly are under the se
verest penalties, to keep the laws of God, and yet
VOL. I. 3 ^

370 SERMON XVIIL
our salvation maybe accorded on grounds entirely
distinct from human merit.
But, fiirther, the consistency of grace and duty
is also apparent from the manner in which alone
we are enabled to discharge the latter. The opera
tion of grace is not confined to our free justifica
tion at first and to our merciful acceptance after
wards ; the conversion by which we first yield our
assent to God's merciful offers (whether this con
version takes place in baptism itself, or when the
beneficial effects of baptism are first made percep
tible in our spiritual nature), this conversion is, it
self, an effect of that Spirit which alone has power
to attract our attention to Heavenly things ; while,
secondly, our perseverance in the calling once re
ceived would be impossible to us without help from
above ; and lastly, it is of God's mercy alone that '
our perseverance and our services, imperfect as
they are, can obtain either reward or pardon.
Our salvation then is of grace alone, inasmuch
as our first admission into the covenant of peace is
without any previous probation of virtue, and, in the
case of adult converts, in spite of many previous sins-
It is of grace, inasmuch as the services which are
afterwards required from us have no aptitude in
themselves to caU down reward from the Most
High ; and are, on the other hand, exclusively cal
culated to promote our own happiness and the hap
piness of those around us. It is of grace, since to
the performance of these very services the strength
is furnished from above, by Him who not only calls

THE ATONEMENT. 371
on us to hope, but bestows on us the spiritual gifts
by which that hope is sealed and perfected. It is
of free grace, above all, and as it respects the con
summation of our Christian warfare, because we
are not only first freely caUed*^ and afterwards
freely strengthened to perform the obligations of
our calling ; but, even where we have neglected
and transgressed our duty, the repentance and the
faith which were, at first, our only passports to
Christianity, are still suffered to attend us and plead
for us, and by the same merits of the Redeemer
through which we were justified and sanctified, we
are accepted at length and glorified.
It is true that the grace thus given is not (so far
as I can discern in the word of truth) in any in
stance described as irresistible. We may refuse to
be converted ; we may resist the sanctifying disci
pline of the Holy Ghost ; we may turn back in our
Christian course, and render vain, and worse than
vain, our Christian privUeges ; but a gift is not the
less a gift because the object of our benevolence
may reftise to avaU himself of it : and He who has
bestowed on us " the power of becoming the sons
of God," (I quote the very terms in which St. John
describes the nature of the Christian dispensation,)
may be asserted, in the utmost strictness and pro
priety of language, to be the efficient and only me
ritorious cause of our adoption, our sanctification,
and our fihal glory.
Our justification, then, whether past or future,
whether in this world or in the world to come, our

372 SERMON XVIII.
justification is of God : but it is for ourselves to de
termine whether we wiU seek for and secure it by
the means which God has appointed. And to satisfy
ourselves that we are thus securing it, that we are
really such in our practice as in our principles we
profess to be, and that, beheving on Christ, we, with
our whole hearts, follow after the blessing which He
has brought for us, I know no better course than a
frequent mental recurrence to the ceremony and
engagements of our baptism, a frequent and un
flinching comparison of our lives with the obliga
tions which that ceremony laid on us.
Are we really so far able to resist the allurements
of vice as that, if not constantly, we are, at least,
habituaUy above their influence ? Are we really, in
the general tenor of our lives, living to God, and
in contradiction to that corrupt and fleshly principle
which our friends in our baptism besought the Al
mighty to subdue in us ? Then are we dead to sin
when we no longer feel any pleasure in it ; then,
though our emancipation may not yet be perfect,
and though in our regenerate nature some earthly
frailties may be found (as even the disembodied
spirit was supposed in platonic mythology to linger
for a time round the place of its body's sepulchre),
yet if these taints are in spite of ourselves; if these
returns to earth are waxing shorter and less fre
quent ; if our sanctification, though imperfect, is
progressive ; and if, though the bodily tabernacle
StiU weighs us down, our heart and our hope are in
Heaven, then may we rejoice with a godly joy in

THE ATONEMENT. 373
Him who hath thus far helped us : ascribing to
His grace the advances which we have made, and
imploring Him to bring to an end the good work
which He hath begun within us !
But if otherwise, blame not those friends who
prayed for your infancy ; blame not that ordinance
of God, which was, in itself, most powerful to sanc
tify and to save; blame not the Holy Spirit of God,
who, even now, as He hath promised, is warring
in youi» hearts to deliver you ; but, blame your own
heedlessness, blame your own self-flattery, blame
your own obstinacy and hardness in sin, on which
these prayers, this baptism, this inward and purify
ing grace have so long been thrown away ! Con
sider how terrible must their prospect be who
(having been replaced by the free mercy of God
in the same immortality which Adam forfeited)
prefer a continuance in the corruptions of their
mortal nature, to that easy service of the Most
High, to which He lovingly invites and enables
them. And fly, while there yet is time, to the altar
and to the grace of the Redeemer, to renew your
-broken vows, to reclaim your forfeited privUeges,
and to recommence in His might that spiritual hfe
of holiness, which death cannot interrupt, nor the
gates of the grave imprison ; but which shaU bear
us on "from strength to strength," and through
successive stages of obedience improved, of faith
confirmed, of hope yet nearer and brighter, to that
undying happmess whither He hath led the way.

374 SERMON XVIIL
who is the guide of our path, the chiefof our war
fare, the pattern of our lives, the champion of our
salvation, our hope, our strength, our crown, and
our exceeding great reward !

SERMON XIX.

THE ATONEMENT.
[Preached at Lincoln's Inn, May 1823.]

Coloss. iii. 3.
Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.
The image conveyed in these words seems to have
been a favourite one with St. Paul; he frequently
compares the condition and habits of a Christian
to the state of those spirits who have shaken off
the chains of mortality; who have left behind
them, in their coffins, the desires and anxieties of
the world, and are now expecting, in the residence
of departed souls, the return of their Lord, and
their own resurrection into glory. This iUustra-
tion is remarkably calculated to reconcile the pri
vileges with the duties of a Christian; to establish
our salvation through Christ alone, while it preserves
inviolate our obligations to personal holiness, to
exclude our boasting, and to stimulate and encou
rage our diligence.
But the use which I now intend to make of this
fertUe topic is to extract from it stiU further Ulus-
trations of the leading peculiarities of our religion.

376 SERMON XIX.
and more particularly of that which is its corner
stone and master-key, the vicarious and expiatory
nature of the Christian sacrifice.
And, in pursuance of this design, I shall examine
first, in what sense we may most reasonably under
stand those expressions which thus speak of living
men as if they were deceased already; secondly,
what pecuhar advantage this fictitious and figura
tive death can communicate to those of whom it
is predicated; thirdly, what manner of persons those
are who are said to partake in the death of Christ;
and, lastly, what moral and practical consequences
may be further derived from a comparison which
is, with St. Paul, so frequent and so favourite.
In the first place, then, it wUl hardly have es
caped your notice that the death which, in all these
passages, is predicated of persons yet ahve, is pre
dicated of them as a consequence and concomitant
effect of the death and sufferings of the Messiah.
We are dead in Him, that is, when He died we died
also, or were accounted thus to die. It is not said
merely that He died for our sakes, for our instruction,
for our example,for the establishment of our faith in
that doctrine of immortality, which, if He were not
the first to discover, He was certainly the first to
demonstrate and render familiar to all mankind
Though aU these beneficial ends, and many besides
these, were brought to pass by His innocent death
and meritorious sufferings, yet more than this is
surely implied in the expression that we are dead
in Him; nor am I aware of any manner in which

THE ATONEMENT. 377
Uie action or suffering of one person can thus be
placed to the account of another, except when
that first person is the substitute' or representative
of the other. ,
It is thus that, in the common affairs of life, and
in the ordinary language of mankind, we are often
ourselves understood to do or suffer whatever is
done or endured by another on our behalf, by our
procurement, or for our advantage. If a friend
pays a debt for us, it is we ourselves who have dis
charged it. If a substitute serves for us in the army,
we ourselves have performed whatever duty the
military conscription imposed on us ; if our repre
sentatives impose a tax, we, that is the whole na
tion, are supposed to have consented; and when
our friends or kindred answer on our behalf in
baptism, it is ourselves who, by this means, are
understood to become parties to the privUeges and
engagements of Christianity. If Christ, then, have
been in any circumstances of His life or death, the
representative of another, that action or passion,
whatever it shaU have been, may, in this form of
speech, be imputed to the person represented; and
if, on the other hand, we are declared, as in the
words of my text, to have paid the debt of mor
tality when Christ died, it must be that our Lord
in His agony and his bloody sweat, in His cross.
His passion, and the rest of those affecting details
which are famihar to the devout recollection of every
behever, was the representative and substitute of
all those who look, through Him, for salvation.
VOL. I. 3 C

378 SERMON XIX.
And thus, and thus only can we understand
those other texts of Scripture in which the Son of
God is represented as made a curse for us, as bear
ing our sins, in His body on the tree, as performing
that for us by His own sacrifice of Himself, which
the sin-offering of the elder world professed, though
vainly, to accomplish; expressions, all of them,
which, by any other method of explanation, are as
unsatisfactory and as uninteUigible as those pas
sages, without this clue, would be, which speak of
living men as virtually and in law deceased^
through the death of another person.
It is true that all these expressions are confess
edly and highly figurative. But the object of all
scriptural metaphors, I might say of all meta
phorical language, when it occurs in grave and
serious writings, is to illustrate and render more
vivid, not to perplex and obscure the subject of
which it treats. It is the collation of familiar ob
jects with objects less known, in order that the one
may enable us to understand the other; and when
the effects of Christ's death are described in terms
taken from the Roman law of debtor and creditor,
from the forms of Jewish jurisprudence and the in
stitutions of Jewish sacrifice, it is in vain to deny
that a resemblance must subsist between the objects
thus brought together. It must foUow, then, that
the death of our Lord was strictly vicarious and
propitiatory; that He suffered in order that we
might escape ; and that we all, but for Him, must
have been liable to' the same sorrows, or sorrows

THE ATONEMENl'. 379
greater than those which, in His person, satisfied
the displeasure of an offended Deity.
Nor wiU the objections, however plausible, endure
a calm inquiry, which have been often leveUed
against this cardinal doctrine of our faith, as if it
were inconsistent with the goodness of the Most
High to demand an expiation for our sins at all,
and contrary to His justice to admit the sufferings
of the innocent as an expiation for the offences of
the guilty. But these objections may seem, in part,
to arise from the habit, not uncommon with men,
of regarding the visible world as the complete cir
cle and utmost hmit of creation ; and in part, from
inattention to that analogy which, as I have often
had occasion to notice, exists and might be expected
to exist between every part of natural and of re
vealed religion ; between the dispensations of God's
will and wisdom in His ordinary and visible govern
ment of the world, and those further discoveries of
Himself which He has vouchsafed to us through
His prophets and His Son.
That God might, if He had so pleased, have for
given our iniquities on no other condition than our
own imperfect repentance; that he might have
blotted out our sins without any conditions at all;
that His mercy and tender love for His creatures,
separately considered, might naturaUy be expected
to incline Him to such unlimited indulgence, are
positions, certainly, which I am neither prepared
nor anxious to deny. But that any of God's known
attributes made it necessary for Him thus to par-

380 SERMON XIX.
don us ; that no circumstances could have power to
restrain or qualify the exercise of that indulgence,
is a conclusion at variance with all the little which
is known of God's relations with His creatures.
God is not a Father only. He is a Lawgiver, more
over, and a King. Nor is it over mankind alone
that His authority and His care extend, but over a
universe of sentient and responsible agents, of which,
it may be, the children of earth are among the
smaUest and most insignificant nations. And that
justice (which is mercy on a larger scale) may '
effectually forbid or materially quafify the exercise
of single acts of compassion; that a righteous judge
may sentence those whom he most pities ; and that
the fillet of the aUegorical Themis is, sometimes, as
lieedful to conceal her tears as to prevent her par-
tiahties, there are those among my hearers who
have been personally and most painfully sensible.
We know the ancient eastern fable which teUs
us that not only have angels tempted mankind, but
that mortals have had power to seduce the angelic
nature. And, to leave such unfounded and over
curious speculations, it cannot be thought impos
sible that the example of our rebellion might have
been contagious, had not the Almighty and the All-
wise, while remitting the more fatal consequences
of sin, thought fit to brand the sin itself with tokens
of displeasure, and to demand an awful and a pain
ful price as the purchase of his forgiveness.
With stUl less reason do we object to that dis
pensation of blended mercy and justice, which al^

THE ATONEME.NT. 381
lowed a divine and guiltless Being to put Himself
in the place of a guilty world ; and to concifiate,
not only by His obedience, but by His sufferings,
the favour of the Supreme towards his creatures.
Those sufferings, it should be remembered, great
as they were, were neither in their degree, nor in
their duration, nor in any othei' respect, than the
infinite majesty and hqliness of the Person who
submitted to them, equipoUent with the load of
misery and of sin which was, by these means, re-
tnoved from the race of mankind and the stained
and burdened universe. Those sufferings, though
an ample, were not an excessive price for the
glories to which they led the way ; for the adora
tion and gratitude, the faith and the affection of
miUions on miUions of rescued souls ; for the in
dulgence of a love imineasurable and inconceivable;
such a love, (ten thousand fold sublimed beyond
the loftiest pitch of parental tenderness) as mercy
unbounded may have felt for the undone, as the
Creator of aU may have experienced towards His
erring creatures.
Such vicarious sufferings, lastly, are consistent
in every circumstance with that general and ac
knowledged law of the universe, which has made
labour and pain the portals to every great and ex
alted object, and has rendered it, for the most part,
impossible for us to benefit others essentially, ex
cept at the price of exertion and privation to our
selves. Is it a new thing under the sun for men to
bear one another's burdens ? Is nothing of health,

382 ;SERMON XIX.
is nothing of repose, is nothing of domestic hap
piness relinquished by those who watch for the
weal of nations ; who defend by their wisdom, their
valour, their personal perUs and sacrifices, the
peace of millions whom they have never known,
and who know them, if at all, by name only ? The
friends who sit sadly and silently beside our beds
while we are labouring under those miseries which
(it may be) our own sms or indiscretions have
brought on us, are not they, to no inconsiderable
extent, the sufferers for our transgressions, and is
not the chastisement of our recovery upon them,
and can we be healed save by their sorrows ?
We remember the beautiful drama of Alcestis;
how the young and innocent wife surrendered her
self to an untimely grave, that, by her sacrifice, she
might snatch her husband from his appointed doom,
and glut the jaws of the grisly phantom which kept
watch before the gate of Admetus. But, in this
tale, it is the mythology only which is fabulous.
In the rest, agnosco fortunam muliebrem, agnosco
muliebre ingenium ! I trace in this description the
character and the frequent fate of that sex which,
with pain and anxiety, brings us into the world,
which, with pain and anxiety, watches over our first
slumbers, which, as we are gradually sinking to our
latest sleep, supports and cherishes us with more
than maternal tenderness, which endangers and
abandons its own youth, its own ease, its own
health and life, to lengthen the days, and alleviate
the sufferings of unconscious infancy, of selfish

THE ATONEMENT. 383
old age, and of querulous and unthankful sick
ness !
Let me not be misapprehended ! I do not mean
(God forbid I should meditate such blasphemy !)
I do not mean to compare for a moment, in de^ee
or importance,these comparatively trifling instances
of self-devotion with that love which disrobed
itself of Deity, and stooped down to weakness and
tears and pain and insult and mortal agony, for the
deliverance of beings so weak and wretched as the
children of Adam. But this I wiU maintain (inas
much as it is founded on the grandest and best
known phenomena of the moral and visible crea
tion,) that such a deliverance, and so obtained as
that of man by the celestial Redeemer, differs only
in degree from the corresponding instances to which
I have referred as of daily and hourly occurrence ;
that, in common life, no deliverance was ever
wrought by one man for another without the exer
cise of some virtuous self-denial, the endurance of
some voluntary suffering ; that the justice of God,
in the work of our redemption can only be im
pugned on principles inconsistent with natural as
weU as revealed rehgion ; and that the Almighty
has but acted in conformity with the general scheme
of His providential government, when He placed
pain and peril in the road to so great a blessing as
the restoration of a world ; and when, in designing
to bring many sons to glory. He first made the
Chief and Captain of their salvation perfect through
suffering. *

384 SERMON XIX.
This doctrine, however, once estabhshed, it 13
apparent how much of blessed comfort, how much
of glorious hope, result to us as its necessary con
sequences. When our nature sues for pardon at the
mercy-seat of God, not with her own voice, but
through the pleading of His Son ; when a sacrifice
is offered for us, not of buUs or goats, but of the
blood of the eternal covenant, what room can re
main for carnal fear, what regret of the mortality
which we leave behind us .'' Nor is it our pardon
alone which we may look for through the worthi
ness of our Advocate. So truly is Christ the repre
sentative of those for whom he was born, and for
whom He died, that not only do His unmerited
sufferings outweigh our debt of punishment, but his
meritorious obedience is also reckoned to the ac
count of His constituents. He lived as weU as died
for us ; His prayers are ours ; ours are His blame
less innocence and purity ; it was our nature which
fasted with Him in the desert; it was our nature
which was transfigured in the mount with Him; it
was our nature in which, united with His person,
and inseparable from Him for ever, the Almighty
Father declared himself weU pleased ! In Him we
are the sons of God once more, and the Heaven
whither He is gone to prepare a place for us, is
henceforward not only His but our inheritance !
How is it then, in the second place, that a Chris
tian lays claim to and establishes this virtual union
with the Messiah ! Nay, rather, how is it that, in
the affairs of the present world, when a substitute

THE ATONEMENT. 385
or representative is found for us, we receive him as
our substitute, and make ourselves entitled to the
merit (for in worldly no less than in religious trans
actions, the idea of imputed merit is famUiar) to the
inerit, I say, of his exertions .'' Surely, by trusting
in his professions, by pleading His services instead
of our own. His sufferings instead of those to which
we ourselves are liable, and by doing all this in the
confidence that he has really discharged our debt,
that he has done and suffered whatever was neces
sary for, and sufficient to, our welfare.
And what is this but faith .'' What is there in all
the legal forms to which men recur in simUar trans
actions, their powers of attorney, their commissions,
their public choice of representatives, whether for
the affairs of a viUage or an empire ; what is there
in all these but an expression of confidence in the
individual thus selected, that he can and will, sin
cerely and effectually, do for us that which is need
ful to be done, and to do which, of ourselves, we
are unable ? Or is there more than this imphed in
the solemn ceremonies of our rehgion, in all the
words which, by the appointment of the Church,
are employed as expressive of our inward feelings.^
In aU alike, we acknowledge Christ as our Advo
cate, our Representative, our Preserver ; in aU we
profess to surrender our cause entirely into the
hands of this our Champion, and submit ourselves,
our own weakness, our own errors, our own blind
ness, to His merits. His strength. His conduct, and
His wisdom. Our baptism, our eucharist feast,
VOL. T. 3 D

386 SERMON XIX.
our daily prayers, and our daily services, alike are
taught to repose on Him, and are offered up through
Him to the Almighty as means and symbols where
by we plead the merits of His blood as a cause
why judgment should not be passed against us, and
reply, in the words of St. Paul and in answer to
that doom of mortahty which attaches to our
guilty nature, that we are no longer criminals, since
our punishment is past; that we are no longer
debtors, since our debt is paid ; that we are no
longer mortal, since we are already virtuaUy de
ceased in the person of our substitute ; that we are
dead, and our life is hid with Christ in God !
It is through Christ, then, that we are saved;
and it is by faith that the merits of Christ are ren
dered applicable to our salvation. And it now
only remains for me to point out in what manner,
on these two principles, depend aU the leading cir
cumstances of a Christian's life and feelings.
It is, in the first place, plain that this view of our
condition and our prospects must cut up by the
root aU lofty opinions of ourselves, aU confidence
in our own virtues, and all expectation of being
able, by our - own merits, and exertions, to please
our Judge and pass the gates of Paradise. The
very act of committing our cause to another im
plies a renunciation of all power to help ourselves;
and it would be worse than folly, whUe professing
to rely on what Christ has done and suffered, to
encumber this authorized and effectual plea with
considerations so trivial and irrelevant as our own

THE ATONEMENT. 38l
weak efforts, our own little sacrifices. We know,
indeed, (so good and gracious is our God), we know
from Scripture that not even the least of those la*
hours which proceed from our love for Him and
for our fellow-creatures, wiU remain unnoticed or
unrecompensed in that day When even a cup of
water bestowed for Christ's sake shaU not fail of
its exceeding great reward. But we know also,
and it becomes us to bear in mind, that the rewards
of virtue are matters of favour and mercy, not of
debt or covenant ; that, do aU we may, we must
still remain unprofitable servants, and that our re
demption from death and our entrance into life are
alike assured to us through the merits of our Re
deemer only.
On the other hand, it is needful to observe,
though it may possibly have already occurred to
most of my hearers, that though our good actions
cannot add to the vahdity of a pardon which has
been already obtained for us through the merits of
another person, yet, doubtless, our evil actions, or
the neglect of our necessary duties, may detract
from, may annul, may defeat and overturn the ex
ecution of whatever might else have been the
gracious purposes of God, through Christ con
cerning us. There is an infinite difference between
the power of obtaining a thing for ourselves, and
the power of preventing another person from ob
taining it for us ; and this distinction is then most
evident when, as in the case of aU the promises of
the Gospel, the very terms of the favour granted

388 SERMON XIX.
are, in a certain degree, conditional. He who
claims immortality as having already passed
through a virtual death, must beware how he does
any thing which can tend to vitiate his plea ; and
in the very notion of a separation from the body,
its passions and temptations, the idea is implied of
an existence intellectual, innocent, pious ; a per
ception of Divine things the more vivid as disen
cumbered of that material frame by which the
energies of the soul are now clogged and hebe
tated; and a solemn but not a hopeless expectation
of that hour when, being clothed anew in a glorious
and incorruptible body, we shaU receive the final
accomplishment of Christ's work, and the reward
of our life-long patience !
I cannot now do more than notice the opposition
of this sentiment of the apostle to that gloomy code
of false philosophy which degrades the undying
mind into a property of perishable matter ; which
transforms the glories of Paradise into the darkness
of a lengthened slumber ; and which resolves the
resurrection itself into a reproduction of something
which shall bear our name. Against such a phjjoso-
phy, or such a rehgion, the voice of reason, the feel
ings of humanity, the testimony of Scripture, alike
cry out aloud ; against such dogmas the souls of
the righteous protest from their tranquil dweUing,
where St. John beheld them in vision beneath the
altar of their Lord ; against such the promise of
Christ to the dying robber, and the argumenjt by
which Christ overcame the petulance of the ancient

THE ATONEMENT. 389
Sadducees, are alike triumphant. But in that mo
ral application of the doctrine with which I now am
principally concerned, it is apparent that an answer
is thus supplied to all the principal arguments with
which the tempter is wont to assail us ; and that, if
we only act up to our professions, there can be no
stoicism like that of the Christian. The terrors
and enticements of the present life can have no
force to disturb the tranquillity or ensnare the spirit
of 1 him who is declared to have already paid the
debt of nature. What power hath an earthly ty
rant over the man who has renounced his life, or
why do we so fondly linger in a world which is no
longer our appropriate residence .'' The intensity
of hope had done that, in our instance, which, in
the case of the ancients, a pompous philosophy
attempted in vain. With Heaven before our eyes
we cannot descend to the allurements of a lower
region ; with Hell in our recoUection the terrors
of the world are children's play. Let this be our
answer under every trial of our faith and patience,
that the motives which our tempters urge might
¦certainly be unanswerable to those whose hfe is in
the body ; but that on us they fall as idly as buffets
on the air, inasmuch as we " are dead, and our life
is hid with Christ!"
But, " alas," it will be said in reply, " this pre
tended death to the world, while the world stiU
ranks us in the number of its living inhabitants ;
this pretended escape from the body whUe we stiU
feel hunger, and cold, and pain, is no more, after

390 aERMON XIX.
aU, than a mockery of our misfortunes ; inasmuch
as our freedom is imaginary, while our duties are
real, and we are by no means empowered to with
stand the enticements of our mortal nature by
these empty boasts of a fictitious and virtual dis
solution." I answer, that the lesson which in these and si
milar passages the apostle conveys is sufficiently
intelligible, as illustrative of those principles by
which a Christian is to confirm his faith and per
form his duty; though the expressions be figura
tive, and though our present imperfect condition
makes the application of the rule, to its fuU extent,
impossible. And this, whUe we remain on earth,
must be the case with every exalted and heavenly
principle of action, inasmuch as our utmost efforts
can never attain to that purity which alOne is weU-
pleasing to God, that riectitude of perception and
clearness of soul to which our spiritual nature is of
itself inclined to aspire.
But that we cannot do all to which these hea
venly principles should lead us, is no reason why,
perceiving their Excellence, we should not follow
them as far as possible : and that much is in our
power even our own experience will convince us.
If we must not actuaUy neglect or destroy the body
which is regarded as dead, we can, certainly ,^ by
self-command and self-denial, so far overpower its
mutiny, as that it shall no longer be able to extin
guish or defile the spiritual principle within us. If
we must wait our time before we Can really take

THE ATONEMENT. 391
leave of the world, we may, at least, so fix our at
tention on that departure, the time of which is fast
approachmg, as thataU which the world can offer or
threaten shall have little more power to move us
to evil, than the same inducements possess over
those disembodied spirits to whose number we are
shortly to be added,
Above aU, however, since that freedom from
earthly evU which death confers is conferred by
death alone; since, while our fleshy tabernacle
endures we must remain, to a considerable extent,
under the dominion of sorrow and of sin; since the
world is, to a Christian, made up of little else than
afflictions and snares; and since much of which the
world makes boast as most advantageous, he is
called on to renounce before he professes Chris
tianity, how deeply may we be sensible of the
truth that our abiding portion is not here ; and
how courageously and how joyfully should faith
enable us to contemplate the approach of that day
when all danger and temptation shall be no more,
and when, not by a figure only, but in the reality
of repose and blessedness, we shaU be " dead, and
our hfe be hid with Christ in God !"
Death, it has been weU and eloquently said, is to
those who view it firmly, no more than a change
of habitation. Even in this world we may often
die ; and whosoever finds occasion to tear himself
from the friends of his earliest love and the scenes
of his happiest recoUections, wiU have experienced
some of the worst and bitterest pangs by which our

392 SERMON XIX.
final dissolhtion can be accompanied. But it is in
the power of us aU so to fill up the measure of our
pilgrimage in this world, as that the separation
which we so much dread, whenever it comes, can
never be eternal; but our parting with our friends
may be the prelude to a happier and more endur
ing friendship in those regions where love is unal
loyed and truth unsuspected, and where we shaU
reap their blessed harvest !

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