heathen philosophy, which a Christian, for that reason in particular, should discard. It is a new kind of argument against the truth of a proposition which a man might otherwise be disposed to receive, that it hath been asserted and maintained by wise and good and learned men, who had spent a great part of their lives in thinking most intensely upon the subject. This is a new way of managing the topic of authorities. When in the ardour of controversy a man alleges such an argument as this, he is seldom perhaps aware how little he is himself in earnest in it-how nugatory it would appear to him in any other but that particular instance wherein it happens to serve his purpose how absurd, were it once turned against him. That acute writer who would expunge the doctrine of an immaterial soul and its immortality from the creed of a Christian, because many who were destitute of the assistances of revelation were brought by the mere light of nature to believe it, does not, I am well persuaded, the less firmly believe the being and the providence of God, because in that belief

he happens to concur with Socrates and Plato.

Let us, however, turn to a meditation more adapted to this holy season. Let the pious Christian in every thing look up to God, with full assurance of faith, as to the first mover and cause of all things, the director of all events, the vigilant guardian and omnipotent protector of the virtuous: But let him no less firmly believe, that the morality of his actions is his own, that he is free to stand and free to fall, fall, the blame is with himself, in his own foolish choice; God is blameless.

that if he

According to this state of things, in which every thing is subject to the wise control of God, and human actions, and even the liberty of human actions, are constituent parts of the wonderfully complex scheme of Providence, - according to this state of things, so evidently implied in our Saviour's prediction of his sufferings, every thing fell out in exact agreement, not only with this prediction, but also with the ancient predictions of the Jewish prophets, and with the

still more ancient types of the Mosaic law and yet every thing was brought about by the ordinary operation of second causes, and in great part by the free agency of man. At the season of the passover, our blessed Lord, whose present condition of humanity imposed upon him an implicit obedience to the positive precepts of the Mosaic law which law was not yet abolished), was carried by motives of devotion to Jerusalem. The chief priests and scribes assembled with the elders in the hall of Caiphas the highpriest, to concert the safest measures of destroying him. These men, in consideration of their worldly interests, had reason to dread the success of our Saviour's doctrine. There was nothing against which he had waged more constant war, than that system of hypocrisy and superstition by which they had disfigured the true religion, and had enslaved the minds of the simple multitude. He had studiously improved every occasion of insisting upon the futility of their traditions, the vanity of their ceremonies, the insincerity of their devotion — of exposing their ignorance, their pride, their ambition, their avarice. Motives of

interest and revenge suggested the resolution, in this infernal assembly, of seizing the holy Jesus, and of putting him to death. A party of their officers and servants was sent immediately to execute the first part of the horrid purpose. Motives of avarice had prevailed upon the sordid mind of Judas to conspire with his master's enemies against his life. For a paltry bribe of something less than four pounds — for the sum that the law appointed for damages to the owner of a slave who had been killed accidentally by another man's ox, he conducts the officers of the great council to the accustomed place of our Lord's retirement; where Jesus was at this time withdrawn, to prepare himself, by prayer and meditation, against that trying hour which he knew to be approaching.

Let us once more recur to the words of our Lord's prediction, instructive words, upon which we never can too deeply meditate! He must go he must suffer — he must be killed. Whence and what was this necessity? Assuredly no absolute necessity originally seated in the nature of the thing, that the Son of God should suffer: He

might have left the miserable race of man to perish in their sins. The Son is in all things, but in nothing more than in love and mercy, the express image of the Father. Notwithstanding all that man could plead in extenuation of his transgression, (and somewhat he had to plead, the frailty of his nature the subtlety of the tempter,) yet the purposes of God's moral government rendered it unfit to pardon sin without intercession and atonement. Compassion instigates the Son of God to pay the forfeit of our crimes, and to satisfy, in his own. person, the Eternal Father's justice. Impelled by this necessity, incited by commiseration of our fallen state, he lays aside the glory" which he had with the Father before the world began." In the virgin's womb he clothes himself with flesh; and, together with that mortal clothing, he assumes man's perfect nature,-a nature subject to our wants and to our pains, not insensible to our enjoyments, susceptible, as appeared in many actions of his life, of our social attachments, and, though pure from the stain of sin, 'not exempt from the feeling of temptation. When his hour draws near, this