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enjoy the praise they have one of another, and care not for the distant blame that is cast upon them by the public voice. They will carry in their bosoms the swelling consciousness of worth, and be regaled by the home testimony of those who are about them; and all this at the very time when, to the general community, they offer a spectacle of odiousness; all this at the very time, when the power and the justice of an incensed government are moving forth upon them.

introduction of it We allude to the case | never think of the ignominy. They will of smugglers. These men, in as far at least as it respects one tie of allegiance, may be considered as completely broken loose from the government of their country. They have formed themselves into a plot against the interests of the public revenue, and it may be generally said of them, that they have no feeling whatever of the criminality of their undertaking. On this point there is utterly wanting the sympathy of any common principle between the administrators of the law and the transgressors of the law, and yet it would be altogether untrue But another case, still more picturesque, to nature and to experience to say of the and, what is far better, still more subservilatter, that they are entire strangers to the ent to the establishment of the lesson of our feeling of every moral obligation. They text, may be taken from another set of adhave a very strong sense of obligation to venturers, hardier, and more ferocious, and each other. There are virtues amongst more unprincipled than the former. We them which serve to signalize certain mem- allude to the men of rapine; and who, rather bers, and vices amongst them which doom than that their schemes of rapine should be to infamy certain other members of their frustrated, have so far overcome all the own association. In reference to the duties scruples and all the sensibilities of nature, which they owe to government, they may that they have become men of blood. They be dead to every impression of them. But live as commoners upon the world; and, at in reference to those duties, on the punctual large from those restraints, whether of feelfulfilment of which depends the success, or ing or of principle, which hold in security, even the continuance, of their system of together the vast majority of this world's operations, they may be most keenly and families, they are looked at by general sosensitively alive. They may speak of the ciety with a revolting sense of terror and informer who has abandoned them, with of odiousness. And yet, among these monall the intensity of moral hatred and con-sters of the cavern, and practised as they tempt; and of the man, again, who never are in all the atrocities of the highway, will once swerved from his fidelity; of the man, you find a virtue of their own, and a highwho, with all the notable dexterity of his toned morality of their own. Living as they evasions from the vigilance that was sent do, in a state of emancipation from the law forth to track and to discover him, was universal, still there is among them a law ever known to be open as day amongst the isoterical, in doing homage to which, the members of his own brotherhood; of the hearts of these banditti actually glow with man, who, with the unprincipledness of a the movements of honourable principle; most skilful and systematic falsehood, in and the path of their conduct is actually reference to the agents and pursuers of the made to square with the conformities of law, was the most trusty, and the most in- right and honourable practice. Extraordicorruptible, in reference to his fellows of nary as you may think it, the very habit of the trade; of the man who stands highest my text is in full operation among these amongst them in all the virtues of pledged very men, who have wandered so far from and sworn companionship;-why, of such all that is deemed righteous in society; and a man will these roving mountaineers speak disowning, as they do, our standard of prinin terms of honest and heartfelt veneration; ciple altogether, they have a standard among and nothing more is necessary, in order to themselves, on which they can adjust a scale throw a kind of chivalric splendour over of moral estimation, and apply it in every him, than just to be told, along with his in- exercise of judgment on the character of flexible devotedness to the cause, of his each individual who belongs to them. In hardy adventures, and his hair-breadth mi- reference to every deviation that is made racles of escape, and his inexhaustible re-by them from the general standard of right, sources, and of the rapidity of his ever-suiting and ever-shifting contrivances, and of his noble and unquelled spirit of daring, and of the art and activity by which he has eluded his opponents, and of the unfaltering courage by which he has resisted them. We doubt not, that even in the history of this ignominious traffic, there do occur such deeds and characters of unrecorded heroism; and still the men who carry it on, measuring themselves by themselves, may

there is an entire obliteration of all their sensibilities,-and this is not the ground on which they ever think either of reproaching themselves, or of casting any imputation of disgrace on their companions. But, in reference to their own particular standard of right, they are all awake to the enormity of every act of transgression against it,and thus it is, that measuring themselves by themselves, and comparing themselves amongst themselves, there is just with them

in the relation of a condemned malefactorfeels, how preposterous it were, if, on the plea of being the most innocent of the whole assemblage, he was to claim, not merely exemption from punishment, but the reward of some high and honourable distinction at the hands of the magistrate. He is fully aware of the gap that lies between him and the administrators of justice,-is sensible, that though he deserves to be beaten with fewer stripes than others, yet still, that, in the eye of the law, he deserves to be beaten; and that he stands at as hopeless a distance, as the most depraved of his fellows, from a sentence of complete justification.

Let us, last of all, go along with these malefactors to the scene of their banishment. Let us view them as the members of a separated community; and we shall widely mistake it, if we think, that in this settlement of New South Wales, there is not the same shading of moral variety, there is not the same gradation of character, there is not the same scale of reputation, there is not the same distribution of respect, there is not the same pride of loftier principle, and debasement of more shameful and abandoned profligacy, there is not the same triumph of conscious superiority on the one hand, and the same crouching sense of unworthiness on the other, which you find in the more decent, and virtuous, and orderly society of Europe.

as varied a distribution of praise and of obloquy as is to be met with on the face of any regular and well-ordered commonwealth. And who, we would ask, is the man among all these prowling outcasts of nature, on whom the law of his country would inflict the most unrelenting vengeance? He who is most signalized by the moralities of his order,-he who has gained by fidelity, and courage, and disinterested honour, the chieftainship of confidence and affection amongst them,-he, the foremost of all the desperadoes, on whose character perhaps the romance of generosity and truth is strangely blended with the stern barbarities of his calling,-and who, the most admired among the members of his own brotherhood, is, at the same time, the surest to bring down upon his person all the rigours and all the severities of the judgment-seat. Let us now follow with the eye of our observation, a number of these transgressors into another scene. Let us go into the place of their confinement; and, in this receptacle of many criminals, with all their varied hues of guilt and of depravity, we shall perceive the habit of my text in full and striking exemplification. The murderer stands lower in the scale of character than the thief. The first is worse than the second-and you have only to reverse the terms of the comparison, that you may be enabled to see how the second is better than the first. Thus, even in this repository of human worthlessness, we meet with grada- Within the limits of this colony there extions of character; with the worse and the ists a tribunal of public opinion, from which better and the best; with an ascending and praise and popularity, and reproach, are a descending scale, which runs in conti- awarded in various proportions among all nuity, from the one who stands upon its the inhabitants. And without the limits of pinnacle, to the one who is the deepest and this colony there exists another tribunal of most determined in wickedness amongst public opinion, by the voice of which an them. It is utter ignorance of our nature unexpected stigma of exclusion and disgrace to conceive that this moral gradation is not is cast upon every one of them. Insomuch, fully and frequently in the minds of the that the same individual may by a nearer criminals themselves,-that there is not, judgment, be extolled as the best and the even here, the habit of each measuring most distinguished of all who are around himself with his fellow-prisoners around him, and by a more distant judgment, he him, and of some soothed by the conscious- may have all the ignominy of an outcast ness of a more untainted character, and laid upon his person and his character rejoicing over it with a feeling of secret may, at one and the same time, be regaled elevation. They, in truth, know themselves by the applause of one society, and held in to be the best of their kind,—and this know-rightful execration by another society. In ledge brings a complacency along with it, the former, he may have the deference of a and, even in this mass of profligacy, there positive regard rendered to him for his swells and kindles the pride of superior at- virtues,--while, from the latter, he is justly tainments. But there is at least one delu- exiled by the hateful contamination of his sion from which one and all of them stand vices. And in him do we behold the inexempted. The very best of them, how-structive picture of a man, who, at the bar ever much he may be regaled by the inward sense of his advantage over others, knows, that in reference to the law, he is not on a footing of merit, but on a footing of criminality,-knows, that though he will be the most gently dealt with, and that on him the lightest penalty will fall, yet still he stands to his judge and to his country,

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of his own neighbourhood, stands the highest in moral estimation,-while, at a higher bar, he has had a mark of foulest ignominy stamped upon him.

We want not to shock the pride or the delicacy of your feelings. But on a question so high as that of your eternity, we want to extricate you from the power of

objects of Heaven's most righteous execration.

mony of the Bible, when it tells us that however fair some may be in the eyes of men, yet that all are guilty before God; that in his eyes none are righteous, no not one: that he, who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, finds out iniquity in every one of us; that there is none who understandeth, and none who seeketh after God; that however much we may compare ourselves amongst ourselves, and found a complacency upon the exercise, yet that we have altogether gone out of the way; that however distinctly we may retain, even in the midst of this great moral rebellion, our relative superiorities over each other, there is a wide and a general departure of the species from God; that one and all of us have deeply revolted against him: that the taint of a most inveterate spiritual disease has overspread all the individuals of all the families upon earth; insomuch, that the heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and the imaginations of his thoughts are only evil, and that continually.

every vain and bewildering delusion. We want to urge upon you the lesson of Scripture, that this world differs from a But is this the real place, it may be asked, prison-house, only in its being a more spa- that our world occupies in the moral unicious receptacle of sinners,-and that there verse of God? The answer to this question is not a wider distance, in point of habit may be obtained either out of the historical and of judgment, between a society of con- informations of Scripture, or out of a survicts, and the general community of man-vey that may be made of the actual charackind, than there is between the whole com- ter of man, and a comparison that may be munity of our species, and the society of instituted between this character and the that paradise, from which, under the apos-divine law. We can conceive nothing more tacy of our fallen nature, we have been uniform and more decisive than the testidoomed to live in dreary alienation. We refuse not to the men of our world the possession of many high and honourable virtues; but let us not forget, that amongst the marauders of the highway, we hear, too, of inflexible faith, and devoted friendship, and splendid generosity. We deny not, that there exists among our species, as much truth and as much honesty, as serve to keep society together: but a measure of the very same principle is necessary, in order to perpetuate and to accomplish the end of the most unrighteous combinations. We deny not, that there flourishes on the face of our earth a moral diversity of hue and of character, and that there are the better and the best who have signalized themselves above the level of its general population; but so it is in the malefactor's dungeon; and as there, so here, may a positive sentence of condemnation be the lot of the most exalted individual. We deny not, there are many in every neighbourhood, to whose character, and whose worth, the cordial tribute of admiration is awarded; but the very same thing may be witnessed The fall of Adam is represented, in the amongst the outcasts of every civilized ter- Bible, as that terribly decisive event, on ritory, and what they are, in reference to which took place this deep and fatal unthe country from which they have been hingement of the moral constitution of our exiled, we may be, in reference to the whole species. From this period the malady has of God's unfallen creation. In the sight of descended, and the whole history of our men we may be highly esteemed, and we world gives evidence to its state of banishmay be an abomination in the sight of an- ment from the joys and the communicagels. We may receive homage from our tions of paradise. Before the entrance of immediate neighbours for all the virtues of sin did God and man walk in sweet comour relationship with them,-while our re-panionship together, and saw each other lationship with God may be utterly dis- face to face in the security of a garden. A solved, and its appropriate virtues may nei- little further down in the history, we meet ther be recognized nor acted on. There with another of God's recorded manifestamay emanate from our persons a certain tions. We read of his descent in thunder beauteousness of moral colouring on those upon mount Sinai. O what a change from who are around us,—but when seen through the free and fearless intercourse of Eden! the universal morality of God's extended God, though surrounded by a people whom and all-pervading government, we may look he had himself selected, here sits, if we as hateful as the outcasts of felony,-and may use the expression, on a throne of living, as we do, in a rebellious province, awful and distant ceremony; and the liftthat has broken loose from the community ing of his mighty voice scattered dismay of God's loyal and obedient warshippers, among the thousands of Israel. When he we may, at one and the same time, be sur-looked now on the children of men, he rounded by the cordialities of an approving looked on them with an altered countefellowship, and be frowned upon by the su-nance. The days were, when they talked preme judicatory of the universe. At one together in the lovely scenes of paradise as and the same time, we may be regaled by one talketh with a friend. But, on the top the incense of this world's praise, and be the of Sinai, he wraps himself in storms, and

orders to set bounds about the mount, lest | amongst men,-not what have you done at

the people should draw near, and God should break forth upon them.

the mere impulse of sensibilities however amfable, or of native principles however upright, and elevated, and manly,-but what have you done unto me? how much of God, and of God's will, was there in the principle of your doings? This is the heavenly measure, and it will set aside all your earthly measures and comparisons. It will sweep away all these refuges of lies. The man whose accomplishments of character, however lively, were all social, and worldly, and relative, will hang his head in confusion when the utter wickedness of his pretensions is thus laid open,-when the God who gave him every breath, endowed him with every faculty, enquires after his share of reverence and acknowledgment,-when he tells him from the judgment-seat, I was the Being with whom you had to do, and yet in the vast multiplicity of your doings, I was seldom or never thought of,-when he convicts him of habitual forgetfulness of God, and setting aside all the paltry measurements which men apply in their estimates of one another, he brings the high standard of Heaven's law, and Heaven's allegiance to bear upon them.

But we have an evidence to our state of banishment from God, which is nearer home. We have it in our own hearts. The habitual attitude of the inner man is not an attitude of subordination to God. The feeling of allegiance to him is practically and almost constantly away from us. All that can give value to our obedience, in the sight of an enlightened Spirit who looks to motive, and sentiment, and principle, has constitutionally no place, and no residence in our characters. We are engrossed by other anxieties than anxiety to do the will, and to promote the honour, of him who formed us. We are animated by other affections altogether, than love to him, whose right hand preserves us continually. That Being by whom we are so fearfully and wonderfully made; whose upholding presence it is that keeps us in life, and in movement, and in the exercise of all our faculties; who has placed us on the theatre of all our enjoyments, and claims over his own creatures the ascendency of a most rightful authority; that surely is the Being with whom we have to do. And yet, when we It must be quite palpable to any man who take account of our thoughts and of our has seen much of life, and still more if he doings, how little of God is there? In the has travelled extensively, and witnessed the random play and exhibition of such feelings varied complexions of morality that obtain as instinctively belong to us, we may gather in distant societies,—it must be quite obaround us the admiration of our fellows,vious to such a man, how readily the moral and so it is in a colony of exiled criminals. feeling, in each of them, accommodates itself But as much wanting there, as is the ho-to the general state of practice and observa mage of loyalty to the government of their tion,—that the practices of one country, for native land; so much wanting here, is the which there is a most complacent tolerahomage of any deference or inward regard, tion, would be shuddered at as so many to the government of Heaven. And yet this atrocities in another country,-that in every is the very principle of all that obedience given neighbourhood, the sense of right which Heaven can look upon. If it be true and of wrong, becomes just as fine or as that obedience is rewardable by God, but obtuse as to square with its average purity, that which has respect unto God, then this and its average humanity, and its average must be the essential point on which hinges uprightness,-that what would revolt the the difference between a rebel, and a loyal public feeling of a retired parish in Scotsubject to the supreme Lawgiver. The re-land as gross licentiousness or outrageous quirement we live under is to do all things cruelty, might attach no disgrace whatever to his glory; and this is the measure of to a residenter in some colonial settlement, principle and of performance that will be set-that, nevertheless, in the more corrupt over you, and tell us, ye men of civil and relative propriety, who, by exemplifying in the eye of your fellows such virtue, as may be exemplified by the outcasts of banishment, have shed around your persons the tiny lustre of this world's moralities; tell us how you will be able to stand such a severe and righteous application? The measure by which we compare ourselves with ourselves, is not the measure of the sanctuary. When the judge comes to take account of us, he will come fraught with the maxims of a celestial jurisprudence, and his question will be, not, what have you done at the shrine of popularity,--not, what have you done to sustain a character

and degraded of the two communites, there is a scale of differences, a range of character, along which are placed the comparative stations of the disreputable, and the passible, and the respectable, and the superexcellent; and yet it is a very possible thing, that if a man in the last of these stations were to import all his habits and all his profligacies into his native land, superexcellent as he may be abroad, at home he would be banished from the general association of virtuous and well-ordered families. Now, all we ask of you is, to transfer this consideration to the matter before us,-to think how possible a thing it is, that the moral principle of the world

at large, may have sunk to a peaceable we gather these principles from the book of and approving acquiescence, in the existing God's revelation,-when we are told that the practice of the world at large,-that the law of the two great commandments is, to security which is inspired by the habit of love the Lord our God with all our strength, measuring ourselves by ourselves, and com- and heart, and mind, and to bear the same paring ourselves amongst ourselves, may love to our neighbour that we do to ourtherefore be a delusion altogether, that the selves,-the argument advances from a convery best member of society upon earth, jecture to a certainty, that every inhabitant may be utterly unfit for the society of hea- of earth when brought to the bar of Heaven's ven-that the morality which is current judicature, is altogether wanting; and that here, may depend upon totally another set unless some great moral renovation take effect of principles from the morality which is upon him, he can never be admitted within held to be indispensable there;-and when the limits of the empire of righteousness.

SERMON VIII.

Christ the Wisdom of God.

"Christ the Wisdom of God."-1 Corinthians i. 24.

We cannot but remark of the Bible, how | pose, are thus driven in, where in the whole uniformly and how decisively it announces compass of nature or revelation can any itself in all its descriptions of the state and effectual security be found? It may be character of man,-how, without offering easy to find our way amongst all the comto palliate the matter, it brings before us the plexional varieties of our nature, to its ratotality of our alienation, how it represents dical and pervading ungodliness; and thus us to be altogether broken off from our alle- to carry the acquiescence of the judgment giance to God, and how it fears not, in the in some extended demonstration about the face of those undoubted diversities of cha-utter sinfulness of the species. But it is not racter which exist in the world, to assert so easy to point this demonstration towards of the whole world, that it is guilty before him. And if we would only seize on what may be called the elementary principle of guilt,-if we would only take it along with us, that guilt, in reference to God, must consist in the defection of our regard and our reverence from him,-if we would only open our eyes to the undoubted fact, that there may be such an utter defection, and yet there may be many an amiable, and many a graceful exhibition, both of feeling and of conduct, in reference to those who are around us, then should we recognize, in the statements of the Bible, a vigorous, discerning, and intelligent view of human nature, an unfaltering announcement of what that nature essentially is, under all the plausibilities which serve to disguise it, and such an insight, in fact, into the secrecies of our inner man, as if carried home by that Spirit, whose office it is to apply the word with power into the conscience, is enough, of itself, to stamp upon this book, the evidence of the Divinity which inspired it.

the bosom of any individual,-to gather it up, as it were, from its state of diffusion over the whole field of humanity, and send it with all its energies concentered to a single heart, in the form of a sharp, and humbling, and terrifying conviction,-to make it enter the conscience of some one listener, like an arrow sticking fast,―or, when the appalling picture of a whole world lying in wickedness, is thus presented to the understanding of a general audience, to make each of that audience mourn apart over his own wickedness; just as when, on the day of judgment, though all that is visible be shaking, and dissolving, and giving way, each despairing eye-witness shall mourn apart over the recollection of his own guilt, over the prospect of his own rueful and undone eternity. And yet, if this be not done, nothing is done. The lesson of the text has come to you in word only and not in power. To look to the truth in its generality, is one thing; to look to your own separate concern in it, is another. What we want is that each of you shall turn his eye But it is easier far to put an end to the homewards; that each shall purify his own resistance of the understanding, than to heart from the influence of a delusion which alarm the fears, or to make the heart soft we pronounce to be ruinous; that each and tender, under a sense of its guiltiness, or shall beware of leaning a satisfaction, or a to prompt the inquiry,-if all those secu- triumph, on the comparison of himself with rities, within the entrenchment of which I corrupt and exiled men, whom sin has dewant to take my quiet and complacent re-graded into outcasts from the presence of

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