be condemned in the lump: if it expofe to peculiar temptations to act amifs, he who refifts the temptation and overcomes himfelf is the more eftimable. Over the place of his birth a man had no more power than over the height of his ftature, or the colour of his fkin. It is an object of neither praife nor blame. The apoftle Peter received a fevere and juft rebuke on this head, by a vision from heaven. He was prepared, and he needed to be prepared, for the exercise of his miniftry at Cefarea, and to the family and friends of the excellent Roman centurion already mentioned, and whom his Jewish pride had taught him to hold in contempt, by a thrice repeated mandate which he dared not to disobey : "What God hath cleanfed, 'that call not thou common." Let us confider it as addreffed to ourfelves. "Why dost thou judge thy brother? or why doft thou fet at nought thy brother? for we shall all ftand before the judgment-feat of Chrift."

2. The fearful doom denounced against unbelieving Jews ought to operate as a warning to ftill more highly privileged Chriftians, left any man "fall after the fame example of unbelief." "For if the word fpoken by angels was fteadfaft, and every tranfgreffion and difobedience received a juft recompence of reward; how fhall we escape if we neglect fo great falvation; which at the first began to be fpoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him." We fometimes exprefs contempt for the pagan world, fometimes affect to pity the blinded nations, and without hesitation prefume to pass a sentence of final condemnation upon them. The unhappy tribes of Africa, in particular, Chriftian Europe calmly reduces to the condition of beafts of burthen in this world, with hardly an effort to ameliorate it in the next. And yet they are men, they poffefs many virtues which ought to put their tyrants to the blush, and which will one day rife up in judgment against them. We defpife the miferable Jews, and ftigmatize them as infidels, as if all those who bear the name of Chrift actually believed in him. "Boaft not against the broken-off branches ;"-thou wilt fay: The "branches were broken off, that I might be graffed in. Well; because of unbelief, they were broken off, and thou ftandeft by faith. Be not highminded, but fear for if God fpared not the natural branches, take heed left he also fpare not thee." I conclude with the folemn denunciation of Chrift himself, refpe&ting the men of his generation, and which is ftill in equal force. "The men of Nineveh fhall rife in judgment with this generation, and fball condemn it because they repented at the preaching of

:

I i

Jonas;

Jonas; and, behold, a greater than Jonas is here. The queen of the fouth fhall rife up in the judgment with this generation, and fhall condemn it: for fhe came from the uttermoft parts of the earth to hear the wildom of Solomon; and,behold, a greater than Solomon is here."

LECTURE XXIII.

JOHN VI. 1-14.

After thefe things Jefus went over the fea of Galilee, which is the fea of Tiberias. And a great multitude followed him, because they law his miracles which he did on them that were difealed. And Jefus went up into a mountain, and there he fat with his. difciples. And the pasover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh. When Jefus then lifted up his eyes, and faw a great company come unto him, he faith unto Philip, Whence fhall we buy. bread, that these may eat? (and this he said to prove kim: for he himself knew what he would do.) Philip an/wered him, two hundred pennyworth of bread is not fufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little. One of his difciples. Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, faith unto him, there is a lad here, which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes, but what are they among fo many? And Jefus faid, make the men fit down. Now there was much grafs in the place. So the men fat down, in number about five thousand. And Jefus took the loaves; and when he had given thanks he diftributed. to the difciples, and the difciples to them that were fet down; and likewife of the fifhes as much as they would. When they were filled, he faid unto his difciples, gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be loft. Therefore they gathered. them together, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves, which remained over and above unto them that had eaten. Then those men, when they had feen the miracle that Jefus did, faid, This is of a truth that prophet that fhould come into the world,

THE

HE course of nature is a ftanding miracle. To be an atheift is to ceafe from being a man. To think of arguing with fuch a one is to undertake a labour as fruitlefs as attempting to reason the lunatic into a found mind. A cafe like this ought to excite no emotion but compaffion, mixed with gratitude to God that he has not reduced us to a condition fo de

plorable.

plorable. Refinement in reasoning is, in general, both unprofitable and inconclufive. The man of plain common sense. may advantageoufly obferve and devoutly acknowledge the wisdom and goodness of the Great Supreme in the regular eb. bing and flowing of the tide, though he cannot trace the pro cefs of the Sun's action on the waters of the ocean; or of the wind, in conveying the fluid to the mountain's top; or of gravity, fending it down to water the plains beneath; or the. fuppofed influence of the moon, or of the melting of the polar ices, producing an alternate and regular flux and reflux on our fhores, or in our rivers. Of what importance is the theory of vegetation, compared to the fimple but valuable labour and experience of the gardener and husbandman ?: The fame obfer vation applies to the religion of the Gospel. Here the learned have no advantage whatever over the illiterate. It confists of a few plain, unadorned facts, authenticated by the testimony of a cloud of unsuspected witnesses; of a few simple, practical truths, level to the most ordinary capacity; and of a few. precepts of felf-evident importance, which it highly concerns every man to oblerve. Should it be alleged that these are blended with things hard to be understood, it is admitted. And here again the wife and prudent have no fuperiority over the. vulgar, but both meet the God of grace as well as the God of nature exerciling his divine prerogative, in miniftring to the neceffities, while he checks the pride and prefumption of

man.

The miracles of our blessed Lord which have hitherto passed in review, had a more limited object. Their design was to relieve individual, or domeftic diftrefs; they were an appeal, public indeed, to the understanding and fenfes of all who witneffed them, but flightly felt, imperfectly underflood, and little improved, except by the parties more immediately interefted in them. They were granted to importunity, and as a re. ward to the prayer of faith. That which is the fubject of the paffage now read, embraces a much wider range than any of thefe, and is the fpontaneous effufion of his own divine benevolence and compaffion. Ten thousand persons, at a moderate. calculation, were at once the witnesses and the subjects of the miracle, and in a cafe wherein it was impoffible they should be mistaken, for they had every fenfe, every faculty exercifed in afcertaining the truth. And here he waits not, as in other cafes, till the cry of mifery reaches his ear, but advances to meet it, to prevent it; he outruns expectation, and has a fupply in readiness, before the preffure of want is felt.

The duration of Chrift's public miniftry, from his baptifm

to,

to his paffion, has been calculated from the number of paffos, vers which he frequented. This, as may be fuppofed, has occafioned confiderable variety of opinion. The attentive reader will probably adopt that of our illuftrious countryman, Sir Ifaac Newton, who reckons five of thefe annual feftivals within the period. The firft, that recorded in the 2d chapter of St. John's Gofpel, at which he purged the temple, predicted his own death and refurrection, and performed fundry miracles. The fecond, according to that great chronologift, took place a few months after our Lord's converfation with the woman of Samaria, which he founds on that text, John iv. 35. "Say not ye, there are yet four months, and then cometh harveft ? be hold, I fay unto you, lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvelt." The third, a few days. prior to the Sabbath on which the difciples walked out into the fields, and plucked the ears of corn, when he cured the impo tent man at the pool of Bethesda. The fourth, that which was now approaching at the era of this miracle; and the fifth, that at which he fuffered. The people were now therefore flocking from all parts of Galilee, on their way to Jerufalem to keep the paffover; and this accounts for the very extraordina ry number who at this time attended his preaching and mir acles.

After these things," fays John. The other three Evangel, ifts connect this scene, in respect of time, with a most memo rable event in the hiftory of Chriftianity, the decapitation of John Baptift in the prifon. When thefe melancholy tidings. were told to Jefus, Matthew informs us, that "he departed thence by fhip into a defert place apart and when the people had heard thereof they followed him on foot out of the cities. And Jefus went forth, and faw a great multitude, and was moved with compaffion toward them, and he healed their fick ;" and then immediately follows the miracle of feeding the mul titude, recorded with exactly the fame circumftances in all the four Evangelifts. Mark affixes an additional date. It was at the time when the difciples returned from the execution of their first commiffion, with an account of their fuccefs: "And the apoftles gathered themselves together unto Jefus, and told him all things, both what they had done, and what they had taught." On this Jefus propofed a temporary retirement from the public eye; for the conveniency of private converfation, of repose, and of the neceffary refreshment of the body: "And he faid unto them, come ye yourfelves apart into a defert place, and reft a while for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to cat. And they departed into a

defert