too, I am confident you would either approve of the sentence from the firmest conviction, or at least acquiesce in it with silent admiration.

Such are my reasons for insisting on the real criminality of both prophets, and for dissuading you from fruitless and delusive inquiries which of them was in his conduct the most criminal. In their subsequent conditions, so far as they are recorded by the scriptures, there is an inequality. But the exemption of the old man of Beth-el from temporal punishment, furnishes no proof of his final security from a heavier punishment; nor does it in the smallest degree impeach the justice of that death to which the man of God was condemned. Far be it from me to throw the slightest gloss over an action which my own heart, and the heart of every good man, must abhor. But there is reason to fear lest the first violent emotions of our indignation should rather misguide us in our ultimate judgment on the whole cause. The sacred historian admits the claim of the offender to be considered as a man of God. We may hope, therefore, that the general tenor of his life was irreproachable, and as to his behaviour in this particular instance, we may resolve it into those sudden and almost inexplicable impulses, by which the most cautious are sometimes surprised into violence, the mildest into asperity, and the most serious even into impiety. We may find a little room even for the exercise of that candour which, while it deplores the inattention and credulity of one prophet, may also deplore in another the dismal effect of envy-a pas

sion, surely, to which the most enlightened of the human race are very subject, and to the assaults of which experience tells us the most virtuous are not always superior. We may even rejoice that he shewed some signs of contrition, and made some efforts of compensation, when, mourning over the carcase, which the lion had spared, he exclaimed, in the sharp agony of his soul, Alas! my brother!when he directed that carcase to be honoured with the rites of burial, and when he commanded his son to lay his own bones beside the bones of a fellowprophet, whom his pretences to piety had deceived→ of that guest whom his very offers of kindness had destroyed. Be it observed, too, that the very man who in the words of my text had arraigned the disobedience of the prophet from Judah, yet bore witness to the truth of the predictions he had delivered, and even assigned it as a reason for the tribute of respect which he paid to the dead-"When I am dead, then bury me in the sepulchre where the man of God is buried; for the saying, which he cried by the word of the Lord against the altar in Beth-el, and against all the houses of the high places which are in the city of Samaria, shall surely come to pass.' The detestation of idolatry, the love of truth, the reverence done to him that spoke it, were not extinguished in the breast of the prophet of Beth-el, -they were not extinguished by his knowledge of that offence which he had before condemned, or by causes yet more powerful-the consciousness he had of his own share in stimulating the offender, and by the deep envenomed hatred which usually rankles

in the human heart against those whom we have grossly injured.

I shall grapple only with one objection more. Is there not some difficulty in conceiving how one prophet should be suffered to be the instrument of deceiving another, and should be reserved, though labouring, it may be, under an equal load of guilt, to later punishment? A difficulty there is, but not of such a kind as to be peculiar to this history. In this mixed and imperfect state of discipline God, we know, permits men eminently virtuous to be ensnared by others who are less worthy than they, and even by those who are most notoriously wicked. We also know that the one are suddenly overtaken by the consequences of their offences, while the other seems at least to escape, and are supposed to live without disaster, and to die without dismay. Experience shews all this in the ordinary course of God's providence, and analogy would lead us to expect something similar to it even in extraordinary dispensations. In truth, the moral fitness of all such appointments is in both cases exactly the same, and in both we must have recourse to a future state of retribution. At the same time it is proper for me to observe, that no vindication of our misconduct can arise, either from the characters of those by whom we are seduced into evil, or by any difference in the judicial consequences of seduction upon those who employ it and those who yield to it.

The profligacy of one man's behaviour ought, you say, to put us upon our guard; the authority of another man's reputation, I say, ought not to throw us off

that guard, when we are summoned to the discharge of a very arduous duty, and have a very high interest at stake. For if the general rectitude of men be pleaded as an excuse for those whom they betray, it by a very little management will be converted into a plea for the betrayer himself. But the plain fact is this-we are always to prefer the known will of God to any plausible persuasions of our fellowcreatures, that may induce us to swerve from it.

As to any arguments drawn from the inequality of punishment, no stress at all is to be laid upon them, by which we can determine where lies the greater and where the less degree of guilt. Were those upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, sinners, think ye, above all other men? No, surely; yet we allow that they were so far sinners as to have been justly destroyed. But instead of inquiring whether the same destruction might not have fallen upon other and greater sinners as justly, we shall be more profitably and more becomingly employed in attending to that warning voice which instructs us to beware lest we also should perish. The application of our Lord's remark to the recorded suffering of one prophet and the supposed escape of the other, is too obvious to require any farther illustration. And if you would blunt the force of the application by saying that in the case of the two prophets there was a connexion of guilt, and therefore ought to have been a connexion in their punishment; whereas they who perished at Siloam were not the associates of the greater sinners to whose impunity our Lord alludes-my answer is,

that this distinction does not affect the honour of God; for if consistency must be supposed to pervade the whole of his moral government, it is incumbent upon his justice to punish every unrepented offence sooner or later, while it rests with his wisdom to determine how soon and how late that punishment shall be inflicted, and whether any room or none shall be left for repentance. But whatever difficulties may now and then press upon you when you reflect on the comparative fates of the two prophets, your feelings and your reason will induce you thus to think of their conduct. Both offended, and both deserved punishment. The disobedience of the one must not be palliated. The treachery of the other must be condemned and abhorred. Even the difference of the treatment they experienced, as it is stated in the scriptures, may be of some use to us; for against the mischievous consequences we are apt to draw from the temporary impunity of the wicked, there cannot be a more effectual preservative than the consideration of the exemplary punishment sometimes inflicted upon the righteous.

From the foregoing explanation I shall draw some directions that may be useful to us, both in our speculations and in our practice upon the momentous topics of religion.

Whether we direct our inquiries to the course of God's providence, or to the revelations of his will, we are surrounded by difficulties which the short line of the human understanding cannot fathom. But if sound philosophy teaches us to affirm of the