rectitude towards God, and with a willingness to appreciate it under that character, and to apply it to our own guidance and encouragement under analogous circumstances, were it possible to imagine conduct more answerable to such a description ?—to imagine a severer trial of obedience towards God than was put upon Jesus, and of fidelity and resolution in his discharge of that mediatorial office to which he was alleged to have been divinely appointed, and prosecution of the work which he was declared to have undertaken to accomplish for mankind? Could any mode of attack upon his integrity have been adopted, more expressive of the craft and treachery of such a being as Satan is described in the Scriptures, or any manner of repelling him more befitting the character of the predicted Messiah? We allude particularly to the first suggestion of the tempter, "If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread." It will be remembered, when this insidious counsel was given to Jesus, he had fasted a great length of time, forty days and forty nights—whether it be meant that he was miraculously supported during that period, or that he had taken no more nourishment than was necessary to his bare subsistence- and had become faint and exhausted from want of nourishment. And what was that counsel of the

1 Matt. iv. 3.

tempter? How did he urge him to satisfy his hunger? Not by an act of dishonesty so readily excused in the extremity of want; not by conduct which could trench in the smallest degree upon the right or property of any human being; but by the exercise of a miraculous power, by converting the stones of the desert into bread. With that power, however, Christ had been invested, not for his own advantage and welfare, not to raise himself above the wants and sufferings of humanity, but to enable him to exemplify in a more illustrious manner the patience, and resignation, and unshaken confidence in God, with which, as his servants, we are bound to endure them; to set a conspicuous example of that obedience to the will of the Most High, which, as the elder brother of the human family to which he had consented to ally himself, it was preeminently his part to practise. It was surely in a spirit corresponding to the office and destination ascribed to him, of entire self-renunciation and unreserved devotion to the honour of God and the welfare of mankind, that he foiled the artful adversary, and forbore to appease the craving of his own hunger, by the exercise of a power with which he afterwards, as related in the same history, fed the famished multitude in the desert; thus setting a conspicuous and encouraging example to the children of adversity who should afterwards "believe in his name," and

whose integrity is so often tried by the urgency of their wants, to hold fast their profession and, on no account, to swerve from the path of duty. Surely such conduct exhibits a perfect consistency with the representation given of him in the Scriptures, as at once the appointed mediator between God and man, and as setting us "an example that we should walk in his steps." Surely it is a luminous comment upon the language of Scripture:-" For we have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." It is unnecessary, for our purpose, to proceed any farther with the particulars of this narration of the Evangelist. Suffice it to say that if, with a view to appreciate the strength of moral evidence, the amount of internal probability, in this miraculous account in the Scripture, we presume the assumption of our nature by the Son of God to be a reality, it was in utter solitude and extreme privation--so far as any being can be alone and destitute who "endures as seeing Him who is invisible "-that the adversary of God and man was permitted to assail the rectitude of his mind; to ply him with instigations to distrust in God, and the indulgence of ambition and cupidity, and to urge him to desert the cause of truth and righteousness. It was in the pangs of hunger, and the horrors of the wilderness, that he dis

dained the abundance of all nature, and exemplified the declaration made of him in the Scripture, that it was "his meat to do the will of Him that sent him." And we may well ask, whether any example more impressive in its character, better fitted to admonish us of our inalienable duties towards God, and to animate us to discharge them, to fortify our patience and encourage our trust in God-in a word, to accomplish the end for which the Scripture is declared to have been penned, and which our reason concludes it must be the object of a divine revelation to promote, could have been given us,—namely, that of being "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in RIGHTEOUSNESS?"

LECTURE VIII.

THE DEMAND IN THE GOSPEL OF IMPLICIT

BELIEF.

1 Tim. iii. 16.

AND WITHOUT CONTROVERSY GREAT IS THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS.

THE argument in support of the reasonableness and credibility of the Christian religion, from the conformity which it exhibits with the conclusions of human reason, or the principles of natural religion, is often very inadequately regarded in its bearing upon that demand which is made of an implicit assent to its peculiar and distinguishing doctrines. Moreover, in collecting and expounding the doctrines of Christianity, the authority of human reason is sometimes appealed to in a manner inconsistent, as we are persuaded, with the dictates of a rational piety in the belief of its divine origin. We propose, then, in our concluding discourse, to consider