and wishes, and fix them upon whatever temporal objects you please; of love, or avarice, or ambition; they will still return and find the bosom from whence they sprang unsatisfied and craving; till, like Noah's dove, they are sent forth again and alight on the new world; and there they will rest in calm assurance or secure enjoyment. What hold have we of earthly possessions, even if they were capable of imparting unmingled pleasure, and unsatiating enjoyment? The hand no sooner grasps them than it becomes palsied with age, and the whole frame sinks into the dust; but the soul endures for ever, it is subject to no decay; and for that immortal portion of us it is that God has provided “such good things as pass man's understanding." Covet those things, my

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brethren.

SERMON VI.

ST. PAUL.

2 TIM. iv. 6.

For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand.

a

THESE are the words of St. Paul, addressed to his convert and fellow-labourers; and the person of whom they speak is the writer himself: that he is ready to be offered, that is, to suffer martyrdom; and that the time at which he is to suffer is at hand. Considered in this point of view, the words are at least striking: perhaps they are more than striking; they are calculated to produce permanent feelings of awe and reverence for the author of them, and the doctrines which he has promulgated: for you will observe there is nothing of enthusiasm in them:

a 1 Tim. i. 2.

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there is no courting of death: no braving of torments: no exultation over the defeated malice of persecutors. They are calm as the breath of old age: “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at "hand." Other religions, as I have stated or allowed before, have had their martyrs: and here is one of ours, at the approach of his execution. It is granted that a disposition to suffer martyrdom is only a proof of the sincerity of the sufferer, and cannot be alleged as any evidence of the truth of the cause for which he suffers, except so far as he may have been competent to judge of it by the mere perception of his senses, by natural ability or education.

He, then, who thus professes his readiness to die for Christianity, is Paul of Tarsus, a man acquainted with the learning of Greece, and instructed in the theology of the Hebrews. Other religions may have had such martyrs: but I have not heard of them. I shall only therefore assert (and the pretension is perhaps more humble than the case might warrant) that the Christian religion cannot be exceeded in the qualities and

character of those who have suffered for its truth by the martyrs of any other faith.

I have on preceding occasions presented you with discourses on the history of the four Evangelists, and it is now my intention to add to these some account of the Apostles Paul and Peter, together with such observations derived from the circumstances of their respective lives as may tend to prove the truth of that doctrine which they promulgated, and for which they suffered. The authentic records for the work are in general but scanty; for the Evangelists and Apostles preached not themselves, but their Master of themselves, therefore, they but rarely speak, except where their personal history is connected with the work which they had in hand. It could not, however, be but that coincidences of this kind should be more frequent in the case of St. Paul than of the others; he being, so far as we know, the chief actor in the planting of the Gospel; and the author of fourteen epistles, that is, the chief of the epistolary part of the New Testament.

To Tarsus, then, a city of Cilicia, in Asia

Minor, this Apostle frequently refers, and that with a kind of honest exultation, as the place of his birth and the scene of his youth: he calls it "no mean city." And he had probably a reason, not at first apparent, for assigning it this homage in the several defences which he made of his life and doctrine; for a man is not the better for being born in a magnificent city. But the name of Tarsus is connected with the literature and learning in the East. The earliest writer on geography and local history, who lived about the time of St. Paul', gives a singular account of this place, which I shall present to you. Such," says he, "is the "attention which is here paid to philosophy,

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bOf the period at which Strabo wrote Casaubon says: "Ad librum decimum notare nos meminimus, videri Stra"bonem diem suum obiisse (aut desiisse certe scribere, ac paulo post obiisse) ante annum A.U.C. DCCLXXVIII. "qui fuit annus Tiberii XI. vel XII *."

Ammianus Marcellinus, in speaking of Tarsus, uses an expression similar to that of St. Paul: "Ciliciam vero, quæ Cydno amne exultat, Tarsus nobilitat, urbs perspicabilis +."

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* Cas. de Strab.

† Amm. Mar. lib. xiv. c. 8.