"In those days the multitude being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples unto Him, and saith unto them, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way, for divers of them came from far. And His disciples answered Him, from whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? And He asked them, how many loaves have ye? And they said seven. And He commanded the people to sit down on the ground, and He took the seven loaves and gave thanks, and brake, and gave to His disciples to set before them, and they did set them before the people. And they had a few small fishes, and He blessed and commanded to set them also before them. So they did eat and were filled; and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets. And they that had eaten were about four thousand. And He sent them away."

I have repeated to you the whole history that you may be the better able to judge of the meekness and moderation of our Saviour, and how greatly His conduct differed from that which would have been pursued by a fanatic or an impostor. Supposing it, for the sake of argument, to have been possible that in these miracles of loaves and fishes, He could have been Himself deceived by enthusiasm or credulity, or, could by subtlety or magical arts, have deceived the enthusiasm and ignorance of His followers; supposing, I say, this to have been possible, which few men in their senses will suppose, yet is such a supposition in the present case rendered absurd by the total and evident absence of any interested or ambitious design which could have led Him to deceive others, or of any pride or vanity by which He Himself could have been deluded. If He had either designed, as His enemies accused Him of designing, to make Himself a worldly king, or if He had derived a vain and selfish pleasure from the number of His disciples, and the hosannas of a surrounding multitude, how little would He have been disposed to send that multitude away, instead of taking advantage of

the favourable moments while their hearts were yet warm with the recollection of the miracle, to have secured the zeal and active services of those whom He had the power of thus strangely feeding. A leader who either possessed, or was believed to possess such a power, might have filled his ranks with all the idle and needy of the land; and the multitude would have flocked into the wilderness for the bread which he distributed. But the views of Christ were different; to His views His conduct was answerable; nor were either the one or the other different from what we should have expected in a Being superior to man; a Being trusting in Himself and in His Father alone, whom neither the blame nor praise of man could reach, alike above the mark of his hatred and his services. So far from priding Himself on the number and greatness of the miracles which He wrought, He does those miracles as things of course, and with the same degree of unaffected indifference with which a service of the most trifling kind is rendered by one man to another; He displays, almost uniformly, His Divine Power in works of mercy and loving kindness; and instead of collecting an army among His followers, and causing Himself, as He well might have done, to be proclaimed king over Israel, He actually dismissed two armies, one after the other, who were not only flushed with hope and inspired with the fullest confidence in Him, but were actually inclined, as we read in another chapter, to make Him king whether He would or no. Such a conduct as this is what no deceiver would have followed in his own person; nay, it may be pronounced with equal certainty, that our Saviour's character and behaviour, as described by the four Evangelists, are such as, if the Evangelists had been deceivers, they could not possibly have described or imagined. His is, in fact, a character of such perfect excellence and purity as no writer has elsewhere described either in history or fable, and which it is absolutely absurd to suppose, that the Evangelists, being, as they were, unlearned men, and writing, as they did, separately and without collusion, could have conceived or painted, if the same original had not been before them all. If, then, the history which has been read

to you be true, it is certain that Christ was, what He professed, the Son of God Most High; and that it is true, we may be sure, from the want of power in the Evangelists to describe such a person as our Lord from fancy, or to agree in imputing to Him a conduct so consistent with itself in every part, and in every part so different from that of other men. And this is the first observation which may be grounded on the words which I have read to you, namely, that they confirm our belief that Jesus was the Son of God, that all things which He hath spoken unto us from the Father are true, and that in Himself there is no falsehood at all.

The second observation relates to the tendency and character of the religion which He taught. That religion, above all others, which have been at any time offered to the world, is distinguished by its peculiarly practical nature; by its not drawing men away from the interests, the charities, nor, when used within due bounds, the enjoyments and pleasures of the present life; but by being a system of which it is the leading object not to take us out of the world, but to fit us for lives of innocence and usefulness in the world. It was the boast of ancient philosophy, and it has been the boast of false religion and of the power of Antichrist, under whatever disguise presented to mankind, to withdraw men as much as possible from the cares and duties of a worldly and industrious life; to teach them to place their ideas of perfection and their hopes of salvation in a total retirement from mankind, or in an inactive and unprofitable round of ceremonies and superstitions, commanding to abstain from labour, which is the common condition of our kind; from marriage, whereby we contribute to the common stock of happiness and of productive labour, the enjoyments and toils of our children; from meats, which God Himself hath given to be received with thankfulness; from conversation, whereby the bonds of charity are kept alive, and the common fund of religious and useful knowledge extended and preserved. But the religion of Christ, as taught by Christ Himself, and the apostles who were inspired by Him, not only does not command, but expressly discourages all heedless sin

gularity or solitude. If He calls us into the desert for a time to hear the words of life, He calls us only that we may return to the world better qualified to perform our parts in it; the more industrious in our lawful business, in proportion as we are the more fervent in spirit; and so much the better sons, the better parents, the better husbands, brethren, subjects, fellow-citizens, or friends, by how much we are the better Christians. It is in this manner that the connexion so often spoken of between faith and works is made abundantly certain and manifest; because in the Christian religion there is no single article of faith which does not immediately lead us to a necessity of some answerable practice. We believe in God, but this faith is not to be shown forth by us, as by many of the pretended wise men among the Indians, by sitting still, day after day, in the silent and fixed contemplation of that glorious Being, whose essence and attributes surpass the utmost reach of our minds. Our faith in God is an active faith, which leads us to pray to Him, and strive to please Him. Our faith in Christ is to be shown forth by loving Him, and, for His sake, loving each other; our faith in the atonement, which he has made for sin, is to be proved by our honouring His name not only with our lips but with our lives; our faith in a judgment to come is to be proved by being such men in all godly soberness as we desire the Lord of all things to find us at His return. We have promised, indeed, in our baptism, to renounce the sins and vanities of the world, but to renounce a due and temperate use of the world itself is neither desirable nor possible. Our business is to pass through its temptations and engagements like air through water, whose bubbles, though buried in the mass, still rise rapidly upwards, and keep themselves distinct from the surrounding element, till they find that Heaven to which they are tending. But to leave the world is not ours till death has set us free, and to each regenerate Christian, Christ seems to say in His Gospel, as He said of old to the restored lunatic of Gadara, "Canst thou hope that thy new religion is to set thee free from thine ancient duties? Tarry not here under an idle pretext of serving me more entirely, but return to thine

own city and thine own house, and by a diligent discharge of thy duties there, show forth how great things God hath done for thee."*

In a certain sense, then, the words which St. Mark applies to that mighty multitude whom Christ, after miraculously supporting their feeble natures, "sent away" to their respective cities, will apply to the situation of us all, when dismissed from the house of God, to put in practice the lessons which we have there learnt, in the bosom of our families, and amid the larger or smaller circles of our kindred, our friends, our neighbourhood. Each of us may consider himself as having repaired to this holy place to learn the will of the Most High, and to obtain His saving help towards its performance, and each of us, when he retires from the temple, is returning, it may be hoped, with an increased knowledge of his duty, and an increased power of performing it, to those familiar scenes where the course of his duty lies, and wherein his behaviour must determine whether he has truly profited or not, by his visit to God's house.

Let me entreat you, then, my brethren, to suppose yourselves for a moment in the situation of those persons who had been instructed by the preaching of Christ, and miraculously fed by His bounty, and whom, having thus imprinted on their minds the sense of their own duty and His own divinity, He "sent away" to their respective habitations. With what feelings, think you, would you, under such circumstances, have left the presence of the Son of God? Would the marvellous things which you had heard and seen, the proofs of power, the lessons of holiness, have been dismissed from your minds as a mere awful spectacle to please the eye, a most sweet sound of the harp or the organ which, though pleasant for a time, left no instruction behind it? Would you have allowed your former sinful habits immediately to renew their sway, and have deferred all serious thoughts, all holy words, all actions of faith or prayer, till the time of solemn worship should again come round, and you should again meet

• St. Luke viii. 39.