صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

of a final judgment, and an irreversible sentence to be pronounced at the last great day by JESUS CHRIST, when " they who have "done good shall go into life everlasting, "and they who have done evil into ever"lasting fire."

These awful doctrines, combined with injunctions and persuasives to the practice of those personal, relative, and social virtues, which CHRIST and his Apostles have connected with their belief, as its natural and indispensable fruits, form the substance of the public religious teaching of the great majority of the Established Clergy; who, disregarding "unlearned questions," and "strife of words," the airy creations of perverted intellects, which gender only

envy, railings, evil surmisings, and holy "disputings," exercise their responsible functions, in forwarding the spiritual and moral improvement of men here, in order that they may be qualified for happiness. hereafter. They believe, and teach, that there can be no sound morality without faith, nor any saving faith without morality; that God has associated them together; and that no man may put them asunder, without annihilating the beauty and value of both. Thus combined, they compare them to a magnificent building, grand as a whole, and

lovely in all its parts. Faith is the foundation, deep and solid; good works form the, visible edifice, ornamental and useful. But take away either from the other, say they, and the building is destroyed. Remove the superstructure of good works, and all beauty and utility are lost; displace the foundation of faith, and the whole tumbles

into ruins.

The following Sermons are offered to the public, not as a model, but as an humble attempt to illustrate, by an example, the mode, in which (in my conception) the public religious instruction of the common "people" ought to be conducted. They are plain, that they may be easily understood; they are for the most part short, that their substance may be more readily remembered; and their texts are taken from the Epistles or Gospel of the day, that they may be more appropriate to each Sunday. They develope the peculiar and characteristical doctrines of the gospel, that those to whom they are addressed, may know what they ought to BELIEVE, and they are full and unequivocal on the precept, that the hearers may under

stand what they "must Do, to be saved." In some few of them, the reader will recognise the language of the wise and good Bishop WILSON; who, according to my humble judgment, may be considered as one of the most perfect gospel preachers among uninspired men. There is a holy feeling, and a vein of piety; a warmth of affection towards. his hearers; a yearning for their welfare, and an earnestness to promote it; a clear and affecting display of the great christian. tenets; a solemn enunciation of its commandments; and (what is still more uncommon) a spirit of personal humility pervading his discourses, that give them more the tact of Scripture, than any literary productions of a similar description can boast, which have come within the range of my limited reading.

SERMON I.

[For the First Sunday in Advent.]

MATTHEW xx. 12.

Blessed is He that cometh in the name of

the Lord.

HE portion of Scripture appointed

THE

for the Gospel of the day has furnished me with the words of my text. It describes the public entry of JESUS CHRIST into Jerusalem, a few days before his crucifixion. He knew that his ministry on earth' drew towards a close; that he had finished the work which his Father gave him to perform; and that all which now remained for him to do, was, to fulfil the prophecies of scripture, and to offer himself up as a sacrifice upon the cross for the sins of the whole' world. He laid aside, therefore, the private character which he had hitherto maintained;

« السابقةمتابعة »