to have done what was righteous, even though all these anticipations had been realized. But look at the fact, and see what became of the bugbear when reduced to the dimensions of truth and of nature. Trace the history of that very town which sent forth the largest capital on these expeditions of barbarity. Tell me if she went into annihilation; or if in virtue of that vigorous principle of resurrection, in virtue of which commerce is ever found to break an unfettered way out of all its difficulties and alarms, she did not rise to a prouder elevation than in those days when she pursued her guilty career through the distress of unoffending habitations, and steeled her heart against the shriek of ravaged homes and desolated villages. No, my brethren ! the argument was nothing against the urgency of so righteous a cause; but the argument was in itself a delusion, and should teach us how to distinguish between the inconveniencies of a change in the direction of trade, and the miseries of its final and irrecoverable extinction,-and at all events never, never to give it the weight of one particle of dust, when set in array against either one demand of justice or one object of Christian policy.

I have hitherto confined myself to the most direct and obvious application of the text that has been submitted to you, and have scarcely broken ground on what I conceive to be by far the most useful and interesting of its applications. I have not had time to enter into any details of that way in which the fancied interests and necessities of trade are set up in opposition to the cause not of public but of personal Christianity. How out of its maxims and its usages there has arisen what I would call the wisdom of this world, which opposeth itself to the foolishness of preaching-how the principles of the gospel in all their extent and spirituality, are somehow or other conceived to be utterly inapplicable to the business of its week-day operations. And in this way has a strong practical barrier been raised against the admission of Christian truth in all its entireness, and against obedience to the lessons of Christian practice in all that power of universality which belongs to them. This my time at present will not permit me to enter

upon, and therefore it is that I confine the argument of this day to one lesson which even still is capable of being turned to practical application. For, let it be observed, that Britain has not yet done with the magnificence of her moral career-that her watchful eye is still going to and fro upon the earth, and expatiates over the whole of its ample territory as a field for the plans and the adventures of benevolence-that under her auspices the gospel is breaking forth beyond the limits of Christendom-and whether we look to the accomplishment of her labours in distant lands, or to the efforts of her religious population after the establishment of perpetual and universal peace amongst the nations, we see an expansion in her designs which, if crowned with success, as they nobly were in the abolition of the slave trade of Africa, bids fair to spread the belief and the obedience of the gospel over the whole extent of our habitable world. The interest of trade has been set up against these great operations, and it were well the argument of the Ephesian silversmith could be appreciated in all the impotence which belongs to it.

But I hasten to a conclusion; and however dimly you may perceive the bearing of all I have alleged on the cause of Christ in the great matter of personal religion, I trust that the day is coming when an enlightened world shall be brought to acknowledge how the authority of the gospel is paramount to all the imaginary interests of trade-how its pure and spiritual law should set aside all that is unchristian in its usages-how there is not one corruption of principle, or one relaxation from that simplicity and godly sincerity which it bears along with it, that the high and indispensable morality of the New Testament does not bid away,-that all its practical advantages might be realized, though its votaries were all thoroughly pervaded in all their desires and all their doings by the spirit of the gospel, -and that such a moral revolution, so far from arresting any one of the benefits of commerce, would give prosperity to all her movements, and make those comforts which follow in her train to flow as largely as ever over the nations and families of the world.

SERMON XXVI.

[THE date of this sermon I have not been able to ascertain.]

I. CORINTHIANS I. 25.

"The foolishness of God is wiser than men."

If it be thought that this statement serves very much to reduce the importance of human learning, let it be observed, on the other hand, that still to human learning there belongs an important function in the matter of Christianity. One does not need to be the subject of a material impress upon his own person in order to judge of the accordancy between the device that is submitted to his notice and the seal that is said to have conveyed it. Both may be foreign to himself; and yet he, by looking to the one and to the other, can see whether they are accurate counterparts. And, in like manner, a man of sagacity and of natural acquirements may never have received upon his own heart that impression of the Bible which the Holy Ghost alone has strength to effectuate. But still, if such an impression be offered to his notice in the person of another, he may be able both to detect the spurious, and in some measure to recognise the genuine marks of correspondence between the contents of Scripture, on the one hand, and the creed or character of its professing disciple, on the other. It is well when such a man looks, in the first instance, to the written word; and by aid of the grammar and lexicon, and all the resources of philology,

evinces the literal doctrine that is graven thereupon. It is also well when he looks, in the second instance, to the human subject, and by aid either of natural shrewdness or of a keen metaphysical inspection into the arcana of character, drags forth to light that moral and intellectual picture which the doctrine of the Bible is said to have left upon the soul. If there be a single alleged convert upon earth who cannot stand such a trial when fairly conducted, he is a pretender, and wears only a counterfeit and not the genuine stamp of Christianity. And thus it is, that he who has no part whatever in the teaching that cometh from God-who is still a natural man, and has not received the things of the Spirit, may, to a certain extent, judge the pretensions of him who conceives that the Holy Ghost has taken of the things of Christ, and shown them to his soul. He can institute a sound process of comparison between the testimonies of Scripture, which a natural criticism has made palpable to him, and those traces of the soul which a natural sagacity of observation has also made palpable to him; and without himself sharing in an unction from the Holy Ghost, or being sealed by the Spirit of God unto a personal meetness for the inheritance of the saints, still may he both be able to rectify and restrain the escapes of fanaticism, and also to recall the departures that heresy is making from the law and from the testimony.

The work of Bishop Horsley against Unitarianism is a work which erudition and natural talent are quite competent to the production of. It is the fruit of a learned and laborious research into ecclesiastical antiquities, and a vigorous argumentatious application of the materials that he had gathered, to that controversy on the field of which he obtained so proud and pre-eminent a conquest. We would not even so much as hazard a conjecture on the personal Christianity of this able and highly gifted individual-we simply affirm, that for the execution of the important service which he at that time rendered to the cause, his own personal Christianity was not indispensable. And whether or not, by the means of a spiritual discernment, he was enabled to take off from the inscribed

Christianity of the record an effectual impression of it upon his own soul, it was well that, by the natural expedients of profound sense and profound scholarship, he cleared away that cloud in which his antagonist, Dr. Priestley, might have shrouded the face of the record both from the natural and spiritual discernment of other men. It is possible both to know what the doctrine of the Bible is, and most skilfully and irresistibly to argument it, without having caught the impress of the doctrine upon our own soul. It is possible for a man not to have come himself into effective personal contact with the seal of holy writ, and yet to demonstrate the character of the seal, and purge away its obscurities, and make it stand. legibly out, which it must do ere it can stand impressively out to the view of others. There are many who look with an evil eye to the endowments of the English Church, and to the indolence of her dignitaries; but to that Church the theological literature of our nation stands indebted for her best acquisitions; and we hold it a refreshing spectacle, at any time that meagre Socinianism pours forth a new supply of flippancies and errors, when we behold, as we have often done, an armed champion come forth in full equipment from some high and lettered retreat of that noble hierarchy. Nor can we grudge her the wealth of all her endowments when we think how well, under her venerable auspices, the battles of orthodoxy have been fought, that in this holy warfare they are her sons and her soldiers who have been ever foremost in the field, ready at all times to face the threatening mischief, and by the might of their ponderous erudition to overbear it.

But if human talent be available to the purpose of demonstrating the character of the seal, it is also in so far available to the purpose of judging of the accuracy of the impression. The work, perhaps, which best exemplifies this, is that of President Edwards on the Conversions of New England, and in which he proposes to estimate their genuineness by comparing the marks that had been left on the person of the disciple with the marks that are inscribed on the book of the law and of the testimony. He was certainly much aided in his processes of

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