This peculiar force, connected with the Evangelical dispensation, is often impressed upon us, in the New Testament. (Hebrews, i. 1-3; ii. 2, 3.) The grandeur and authority of our Lord should induce us to receive, with profound reverence, the doctrines which he taught, the promises vouchsafed, the threats denounced. If we profess to believe in him, let us take care that our faith be not a speculative assent; but such a practical vital persuasion, as may prove our conviction of his great purpose in coming into the world,—to redeem us from all iniquity, and to purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. (LELAND, chiefly.)

§ 54. Sublimity and Purity of our Saviour's Doctrines and Precepts. MATTHEW, vii. 28: AND it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine.

THE word doctrine, in this passage, denotes our Saviour's manner of teaching: but the word is also applicable to the peculiarity of his moral instruction: the wide difference between these and the discourses of the Jewish preceptors, afforded to the people ample cause for astonishment. The hearers of Christ were not exempted from laborious virtue by observing one commandment to the neglect of another; but were taught to regard all God's commandments with due reverence. Murder and adultery were no longer crimes, except in actual commission: angry language and impure desires were to be repressed, as the guilty causes of the crimes. Marriage was no longer to be dissolved by mere caprice; the only excuse for divorce was a wife's infidelity. While the Pharisees permitted a great variety of oaths, the language of Christ was 'Swear not at all.' His hearers were admonished to discard the lesson which excluded an enemy from just allowance. In their fasts, in their alms, in their devotions, they were forbidden to imitate the vanity and ostentation of their former teachers, but to cultivate humility, and to expect their rewards not from the applause of spectators, but from a God who, though seeing in secret, would reward them openly. Our Lord's hearers on the Mount were not taught things of a mean and trifling nature. Christ did not, like the

heathen philosophers, entertain his hearers with dry metaphysical discourses; nor did he, like the Jewish Rabbis, content himself with dealing out ceremonies and traditions, with discoursing on mint and cumin, and estimating the breadth of a phylactery. His hearers were not instructed in the nature of disputes between the schools of Hillel and Shammai; or what this or that celebrated Rabbi said and decided upon such or such a point: his instructions tended to make them wiser and better; to purify their hearts and to reform their lives. Not one 'saying' dropped from the lips of this new Instructor, which was not calculated to excite the astonishment of the people.'

But to us, who, in the present age of the Church, meditate upon the doctrines and precepts of Christianity, is there less cause of astonishment than to our Lord's immediate hearers? Every serious enquirer after religious truth will find in the Sacred Scriptures an internal evidence for the confirmation of belief in the divine mission of Jesus Christ.

There is nowhere to be found such important information, and such just and noble sentiments, concerning God and religion, as in the Scriptures of the New Testament.

They teach us, in the first place, that there is one Almighty Being, who created all things, of infinite power, wisdom, justice, mercy, goodness; that He is the governor and preserver of this world, which He has made; that his providential care is over all his works; and that He more particularly regards the affairs and conduct of men. They teach us, that we are to worship this great Being in spirit and in truth: and that the love of Him is the first and great commandment, the source and spring of all virtue. They teach us more particularly how to pray to Him, and for that purpose supply us with a form of prayer, called the Lord's Prayer, "which is a model of calm and rational devotion; and which, for its conciseness, its clearness, its suitableness to every condition, and for the weight, solemnity, and real importance of its petitions, is without an equal or a rival." (PALEY.) They teach us, moreover, what we all feel to be true, that the human heart is weak and corrupt; that man is fallen from his original innocence; that he is restored, however, to the favour of God, and the capacity of happiness, by the death and mediation and atonement of CHRIST, who is the way, the truth,

and the life; and that he will be assisted in his sincere, though imperfect, endeavours after holiness, by the influence of God's Holy Spirit.

They assure us, in fine, that the soul does not perish with the body, but shall pass, after death, into another world: that all mankind shall rise from the grave, and stand before the judgment-seat of Christ who shall reward the virtuous, and punish the wicked, in a future and eternal state of existence, according to their deserts.

These are great, and interesting, and momentous truths, either wholly unknown, or but very imperfectly known, to the world before; and they render the meanest peasant in this country better acquainted with the nature of the Supreme Being, and the relation in which we stand to Him, than were any of the greatest sages of ancient times.

Equally excellent, and superior to all other rules of life, are the moral precepts of the Gospel.

Our divine Master, in the first place, laid down two great leading principles for our conduct, love to God, and love to mankind and thence deduced (as occasions offered and incidents occurred, which gave peculiar force and energy to his instructions) all the principal duties towards God, our neighbour, and ourselves.

With respect to God, we are commanded to love, fear, worship, and obey Him; to set Him always before us; to do all things to his glory; to seek first his kingdom and his righteousness to resign ourselves wholly to his pleasure; and submit, with patience, cheerfulness, and resignation, to every thing He sees fit to bring upon us.

With regard to our neighbour, we are to exercise towards him the duties of charity, justice, equity, and truth; we are to love him as ourselves, and to do unto all men as we would they should do unto us; a most admirable rule, which comprehends the sum and substance of all social virtue, and which no man can mistake.

As to those duties which concern ourselves, we are commanded to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, to be temperate in all things, to keep under our body, and bring it into subjection, to preserve an absolute command over all our

passions; and to live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world.

These are the general directions given for our conduct in the various situations and relations of life. More particular injunctions are given in various parts of Scripture, especially in our Saviour's admirable sermon on the Mount, where we find a multitude of most excellent rules of life, short, sententious, solemn, and important, full of wisdom and dignity, yet intelligible and clear. But the principal excellence of the Gospel morality, and that which gives it an infinite superiority over all other moral instructions, is this; that it prefers a meek, yielding, complying, forgiving temper, to that violent, overbearing, inflexible, imperious disposition, which prevails so much in the world; that it regulates, not merely our actions, but our affections and our inclinations: and places the check of licentiousness exactly where it ought to be, that is, on the heart: that it forbids us to covet the praise of men in our devotions, our alms, and all our other virtues: that it gives leading rules and principles for all the relative duties of life; of husbands and wives, of parents and children, of masters and servants, of Christian teachers and their disciples of governors and subjects: that it commands us to be, as it were, lights in the world, and examples of good to all; to injure no man, but to bear injuries patiently; never to seek revenge, but to return good for evil; to love our very enemies, and to forgive others as we hope to be forgiven; to raise our thoughts and views above the present life, and to fix our affections principally on that which is to

come.

But besides all this, the manner in which our Lord delivered all his doctrines and all his precepts; the concise, sententious, solemn, weighty maxims into which he generally compressed them; the easy, familiar, natural, pathetic parables in which he sometimes clothed them; that divine authority, and those awful sanctions with which he enforced them; these circumstances give a weight, and dignity, and importance to the precepts of Holy Writ, which no other moral rules can boast.

If now we ask, as it is very natural to ask, who that extraordinary person could be, that was the author of such uncommonly excellent morality as this? the answer is, that he was, to all outward appearances, the reputed son of a carpenter,

living with his father and mother in a remote and obscure corner of the world, until the time that he assumed his public character. "Whence, then, had this man these things, and what wisdom is this that was given unto him?” He had evidently none of the usual means or opportunities of cultivating his understanding, or improving his mind. He was born in a low and indigent condition, without education, without learning, without any ancient stores from whence to draw his wisdom and morality, that were at all likely to fall into his hands. You may, perhaps, in some of the Greek or Roman writers, pick out a few of his precepts, or something like them. But what does this avail? Those writers he had never read. He had never studied at Athens or at Rome; he had no knowledge of orators or philosophers. He understood, probably, no language but his own; and had nothing to give him juster notions of virtue and religion, than the rest of his countrymen and persons in his humble rank of life usually have. His fellow-labourers in this undertaking, the persons who assisted him during his life, and into whose hands his religion came after his death, were a few fishermen on the Lake of Tiberias, as unlearned and uneducated, and, for the purpose of framing rules of morality, as unpromising as himself. Is it possible, then, that such men as these could, without any assistance whatever, produce such perfect and incomparable rules of life as those of the Gospel; so greatly superior in purity, solidity, perspicuity, and universal usefulness, to all the moral lessons of all the philosophers upon earth put together? Every man of common sense must see that this is absolutely impossible; and that there is no other conceivable. way of accounting for this, than by admitting what these persons constantly affirmed, that their doctrines and their precepts came from the fountain of all perfection; that is, from God himself. (BISHOP PORTEUS.)