against, so much as to preserve the character of religion itself from the obloquy she would sustain from the faults of her disciples. His great object why the ministry should not be blamed was, because he knew how ineffectual all teaching would be rendered, if the teacher committed the faults he reprehended, or even exercised a religious vocation in an imprudent manner.

In another place, after recapitulating some of the hardships which himself and his companions were suffering, up to the very moment when he was describing them, their hunger and thirst, their nakedness and buffeting, deprived of domestic comforts, destitute of a settled home; having shown what was their treatment, he proceeds to show what was their temper under it:

- Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat. This is indeed practical Christianity!

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After enumerating the trials to which they may be exposed, he sets over-against them a catalogue of the qualities by which they should be distinguished, pureness, knowledge, kindness; thus encouraging them to patience by the integrity of their motives; and to the adornment of their calling, by the skilfulness and affection with which they exercised it. He tempers their sorrows, and mitigates their difficulties, by interspersing with the recital those Divine consolations, from which alone genuine cheerfulness in suffering can be derived.

In this enumeration he had not to rack his invention for precedents; he had only to make a transcript of the state of his own mind, and the tenor of his own practice, to give them a complete delineation of the ministerial character. While he encourages them to perseverance by the success which might attend their labours, he prepares them also to expect reproach; mingling good and evil report as the probable lot of every devoted servant of Christ.

When he was setting out from Ephesus to Jerusalem, "bound in the spirit, not knowing the things that should befall him," the indefinite yet certain anticipation of calamity which he expressed, might have been interpreted into the pusillanimous forebodings of his own apprehensive mind: he guards against this suspicion by informing us, it was by the unerring inspiration of the Holy Ghost, he was assured "that bonds and afflictions awaited him;" so that he knew infallibly, wherever he went, it was only a change of place, not of peril, to which he was proceeding. Yet was this conviction, so far from arresting his purpose, so far from inclining him to hesitate, or not to persist in the path of duty because it was the path of danger, that his mighty faith converted duty into choice, elevated danger into joy. Hear his triumphant proclamation: "But none of these things move me,

* Acts, xx.

neither count I my life dear, so that I may finish my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God."

It is not the nature of Christianity to convert a man of sense into a driveller: if it make him self-abased in the sight of God, and in his own eyes, it does not oblige him to a renunciation of his just claims in civil society, nor to a base abjection in the sight of men. He is not des sirous of honours which do not belong to him, but he does not despise those to which he has a lawful claim. The character of Saint Paul, like the religion he taught, is manly, rational, ingenuous.

This combination of dignity with humility he uniformly presents to us. He always hum= bles, but never disparages himself. He, who on one occasion was "the least of all saints." was, on another, "not a whit behind the chiefest of them." He, that was "not worthy to be called an apostle," would yet magnify his apostleship." He, who would patiently endure injury and reproach, yet refused to be scourged contrary to law. He, who was illegally imprisoned at Philippi.* accepted not deliverance till the magistrates themselves came in person to release him, a resolution not only due to his own innocence, but probably intended also

Acte, xvi.

to render the magistrates afraid of proceeding unjustly against other Christians. He, who could submit to live by the labour of his own hands, and to receive charity in his sickness, would yet vindicate his civil title to respect, and not only urge his right of Roman citizenship, but press his peculiar ground of superiority over the officer who would have contended with him, by declaring that his own freedom was not a purchase, but an inheritance. He, who determined to know nothing "but Jesus Christ, and him crucified," could assert, when it became proper, his liberal education under a master in Israel. He, who was now lying at the foot of the Cross, avowed that he had been bred at the feet of Gamaliel. He, who was beating down the pride of "gifts" in the assuming Corinthians, scrupled not to declare his own superiority in this very article, yet with an exclusive ascription of the gift to the Giver, -"I thank my God, that I speak with tongues more than you all."

To those who understand what Bishop Horsley calls "the paradoxes of Christianity,” it will be perfectly intelligible, that one, who was so feelingly alive to the perception of sin, as to deplore that "when he would do good, evil was present with him,” could also, in the integrity of his heart, boldly appeal to the Thessalonians for the purity of his own conduct and that of his companions—“You know how holily, and

duct be acceptable to God, to whom it renders no homage, to whom it gives no glory?

Scripture abounds with every motive to obedience, both rational and spiritual. But it would achieve but half its work had it stopped there. As peccable creatures, we require not only inducements to obedience, but a heart, and a power, and a will to obey; assistance is as necessary as motives; power as indispensable as precept; all which requisites are not only promised by the Word, but conferred by the Spirit of God.