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tendency, and say that as it was their endeavuor, so it was their hope, to obliterate the remembrance of God's Son from the earth, and blot out his words of mercy to mankind? Or shall we not rather call to mind the words of the Lord Jesus which he spake, saying, Judge not, that ye be not judged," and acquiesce in the milder censure of the text by supposing that they deceived others, because they were themselves deceived? Strange indeed it may appear that, upon any subject, the cloud of error should cast its delusive darkness over minds like theirs, into which God in his mercy had poured a double portion of the spirit of understanding. Yet it is vain, and happily it is needless, to deny that they, like many other unbelievers, were men of comprehensive genius and a mighty mind. But it is neither the strength nor the acuteness, it is the direction of the understanding which alone can secure us from perversion or error. God gives us our faculties, but leaves their use or abuse to our own responsibility and care. The resistless mightiness of Samson's frame forms the reverential wonder of our childhood, and the belief and meditation of our riper years. We know that such mightiness was given him for purposes of holiness, to impress the terror of God's name on the enemies of God's people, and to bless both himself and others by the lawful exertion of his power. We know all this; but we

know also that the end corresponded not with the intention. Sold by his own fault and folly into the hands of a woman, and brought into captivity under those he was intended to subdue, he remembered with sorrow the waste and perversion of his wondrous gifts, and grasping the pillars of Dagon's house with the yet terrible power of his enfeebled arms, shook the fabric from the foundations on which it rested, and was buried in the ruins which his own strength had made. What is there in the mind to preserve it from the same misguided exercise of its power? Is the spirit of a man relieved from the dangers to which his body is subject, and is the freedom of the agent to abuse his powers, suspended when applied to his intellectual endowments? The history of human opinions upon every science should teach us the idleness of such an expectation, and convince us that there is no subject of inquiry, however clear and incontrovertible in itself, into which the pride and prejudices of the heart will not intrude to disturb the judgment, and teach it to hold fast to that which is manifestly erroneous and confessedly evil. If there be any sphere of investigation in which we might hope that the vanity and passions of mortality would cease to operate, it is in those questions of pure and abstract science which are capable of strict and mathematical demonstration. Yet even here we find that the force of the most

undeniable truth has been sometimes unable to prevail over the perverseness of a powerful and reasoning mind. It is a curious and important fact in the history of the philosophic world, that Hobbes, one of the most ingenious of those who have lifted up their voices against the Lord of life, maintained his mathematical as well as religious errors, errors in which he was condemned and deserted by all, with a fruitless obstinacy and in the face of repeated defeat. It is not then the mere strength of a cause which can repel, nor is it its weakness alone which invites the attacks of adversaries. A thousand unseen springs are in operation to pervert the judgment and mislead the heart in every case, but more especially in the consideration of the truth of the Christian creed, which is so holy in its precepts as to arm against its purity a host of evil inclinations, and so humbling in its doctrines as to make the pride of human reason its natural enemy. In many of those who have laboured in the defence of infidelity we may distinctly trace the operation of this cause of enmity to our holy faith. In the impure imagination of Gibbon, unable to restrain its pruriency even amidst the learned researches of the historian, in the sensual Confessions of Rousseau, and the degrading blasphemies and vices of Paine, we may easily discriminate the origin of doubt or disbelief. The word of God was against them, and therefore they were

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against the word of God. But there are many upon whose ruling passion we are not able to lay our finger, and thus point out the principle of error. Ignorant of the windings of the human heart, we must leave the scrutiny of such men's motives to Him who is the Searcher of hearts, and their condemnation to the Judge of all, satisfied with the comfort of being persuaded that the claims of Christianity for our reception and reverence, stand unaffected by the number and nature of her enemies. Conscious, then, of themanifold infirmities which beset the understandings and affections of men, let us remember the double duty we owe to others and ourselves—to others, in lamenting that so many of those who might have been, who perhaps still are, amongst the brightest ornaments of the human race, should have sullied their glory by the sin of unbelief-and to ourselves, by praying that God would direct us aright in the exercise of our own faculties, and preserve us alike from the guilt of deceiving and the danger of being deceived.

DISCOURSE V.

JOHN, chap. v. ver. 39.

"But I have a greater witness than that of John, for the works which the Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me."

THE Jews sent unto John, and he bare witness to the truth. He pointed to Jesus as the promised Messiah. We turn to the pages of the New Testament, and there find the Apostles and the Evangelists bearing witness to the same. But Jesus hath a greater witness than any of these, in the works which the Father had given him to finish. His pretensions are, in part at least, grounded upon the wonders he performed, and, so far, therefore, are to be tried by an examination into their nature and effects. These works the Jews had an opportunity of viewing with their own eyes and in their own persons, and were consequently capable, from their own