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tion of a most righteous and unmitigable | shape of proofs or of remonstrances on the law. And thus, in the day of reckoning, will side of Christianity? Was there a volunthis verse, in its most plain and obvious tary darkening, on their part, of the light literality, be so accomplished on the hosts of truth when it began to dawn upon their who are assembled round the judgment-souls, and threatened to carry their convicseat-that all who are free from this sin tions away from them? Was there a habit shall have their every other sin forgiven, of fetching up, at all hazards, every argujust because they have obeyed the Gospel ment, however false and however blasin embracing the overtures of forgiveness- phemous it may be, on which they might and that all who, on that day, shall find no rest the measures of a proud and interested escape, and no forgiveness, have this doom party, and thus might give the shape and laid upon them, just because each, without the colour of plausibility to that systematic exception, has incurred the sin to which no opposition they had entered on? forgiveness is awarded, by the very act of neglecting the great salvation,

It strikes us, that the whole history of the Pharisees in the New Testament, holds The sin, then, against the Holy Ghost, so them out in the very attitude of mind which far from conferring any rare distinction of we have now described to you. And think wickedness on him who is guilty of it, is, in you not that in the work of maintaining fact, the sin of all who, living under the this attitude against the warfare of all that dispensation of the Gospel, have, by their moral and miraculous argument which was rejection of it, made it the "savour of death brought to bear upon them, they never unto death." It is a sin which can be smothered the instigations of conscience, charged upon every man who has put the and through it rebelled against that Spirit, overtures of forgiveness away from him. It who conveyed, by this organ of the inner is a sin which if, on the great day of ex-man, the whispers of his still but impresamination, you are found to be free from, will argue your acceptance of the Gospel, in virtue of which its forgiveness is made sure to you. And it is a sin, which, if found on that day to adhere to you, will argue your final refusal of this same Gospel, in virtue of which your forgiveness is impossible-because you are out of the only way given under heaven whereby men can be saved. So that this sin, looked upon by many as the sin of one particular age, or, if possible to realize it in the present day, as only to be met with in a few solitary instances of enormous and unexpiable transgression, is the very sin upon which may be made to turn the condemnation and the ruin of the existing majority of our species.

Before we are done with this subject, there is one question that remains to be disposed of. Does it appear, from the historical circumstances of the case, that that conduct of the Pharisees which called forth from our Saviour the denunciation of the text, bears a resemblance to the account we have given of the sin against the Holy Ghost, as exemplified by the men of the present generation? In their rejecting of Christ, was there a determined rebellion of purpose against the light of their own conscience? Was there a wilful and resolved suppression of the force of evidence? Was there a habitual stifling within them of the movement and the impulse of moral principle? Was there a firm and deliberate posting of themselves on the ground of opposition, in the whole of their past resistance to this Jesus of Nazareth? Was there an obstinate keeping of this ground? Was there an audacious and desperate intent of holding out against all that could be offered in the

sive voice? "Which of you convinceth me of sin," says the Saviour," and if I tell you the truth, why do you not believe me?" Did conscience never tell them how impossible it was that Jesus of Nazareth could lie? Did not the words of him who spake as never man spake, bear upon them the impress of truth as well as of dignity? Is there not such a thing as the suspicious aspect of an impostor, and is there not also such a thing as the open, the declared, the ingenuous, and altogether overbearing aspect of integrity-and is it not conceivable, how, in this way, the words of the Saviour might have carried such a moral evidence along with them, as to stamp an unquestionable character on all his attestations? Now, was there no resisting of the Holy Spirit in the act of shutting the eye of the judgment against the whole weight and authority of this character? In the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the men of that day were honoured with the singular privilege of beholding God manifest in the flesh-of seeing all the graces of the Holy Spirit substantiated, without one taint of imperfection, on the life and character of one who wore the form of the species-of witnessing, if we may so express ourselves, a sensible exhibition of the Godhead-of hearing the truth of God fall in human utterance upon their ears, with a tone of inimitable candour-of seeing the earnest longing of God after the creatures he had formed, stamped in living and undeniable traces upon a human countenance-of beholding the tenderness of God expressed in human tears, by him who wept over the sins and the sufferings of mankind--and all the goodness of Deity distinctly announcing itself in the mild and impressive sympathies of a human voice.

Think you not that there was no struggling he had sealed his testimony by his blood, with their own consciences, and no wilful mark how the man who presided over the blinding of their own hearts, on the part of execution, was overpowered into the acthose by whom such an exhibition was re-knowledgment, that "Surely this was the sisted? Surely, surely, the Spirit of God Son of God;" and how they, unsoftened did much to subdue their acquiescence in and unsubdued, stood fast to their objectthe alone way of salvation-when all his and got his body to be watched, and a stoty fruits and all his accomplishments were to be devised, and a falsehood of deliberate gathered upon the person of the Redeemer manufacture to be thrown afloat, with which into one visible assemblage--when the they might stem the growing faith of our whole force of this moral ascendency was Saviour's resurrection. Now, in this differmade so nearly and so repeatedly to bear ence between the resolved and inflexible upon them-when truth, with all its plead-hatred of the Jewish persecutors of Christ, ing energy, assailed them-and gentleness and the relentings of other men, do you see tried to win them over to the cause of their no suppression of the voice of conscienceown eternity--and the soft eye of compas- no resistance to that light of principle which sion beamed upon them—and the unwearied sends forth an occasional gleam over the forbearance, which no weight of personal path of the determinedly reprobate, do you injustice could overcome, told them how, see no one of those ingredients which give for their sakes, Jesus of Nazareth was ready to the sin against the Holy Ghost all the to do all and to suffer all---and patience, even malignancy that belongs to it-or, rather, in unto martyrdom, left a meek, but a firm testi- this hard and unmovable hostility against mony behind it. O! think you not, that in one whose challenge to convince him of the perverse representations, and the spite- sin, they dared not to entertain; against ful malignity, and the sullen immoveable, one, of whom they could not fail to perceive, hardness, by which all this was withstood that he was the mildest, and the sincerest, and overborne, there was such an outrage and the most unoffending, and the most unupon the authority of conscience, and such wearied in well-doing of all the characters a dark and determined principle of rebellion that had met their observation, do you not against him who prompts it with all its in- perceive how it was in the cause of their stigations, as by provoking him to cast them own offended pride, and their own 'threatoff from all his further communications, ened interest, that they made their sysmight raise an eternal barrier against that tematic resistance to every moral argument, faith, and that repentance, and that obedi- and hurried away their minds from every ence to the Gospel of Christ, through which painful remonstrance--and that, too, in the alone forgiveness is extended to a guilty very style in which the obstinately impenitent of the day do, in resistance to every demonstration of guilt, and to every warning of danger, walk in the counsel of their own hearts, and in the sight of their own eyes.

world.

To aggravate still further this resistance to the moral claims of the Saviour, on the part of his inflexible enemies, let us see how these very claims told on the consciences of other men. The officers whom they sent It is very true, that it was upon an outto apprehend him, when they went, faltered ward act of speaking, on the part of the from the purpose, at what they saw and Pharisees, that our Saviour uttered this re-, heard---and when they returned with their markable denunciation. But remember errand unfulfilled, and the answer in their what he says himself upon this subjectmouth, that "surely never man spake like how the things which come out of a man this man," they found the masters they had are evil, because they are the products of a to deal with were made of sterner mate- heart which is evil. Remember what is rials---men who knew not what it was to said a few verses before-how our Saviour, falter---men who reproached them for their who knew what was in man, knew the moral sensibility--and who had sternly thoughts of those Pharisees; and it is upon resolved, at all hazards, and in defiance to his knowledge of their thoughts, that, he all principle, to rid themselves of this dan-ascribed such a malignity, and laid such a gerous pretender. Again, when they insti- weight of condemnation on the words gated Pilate to a capital sentence against Remember what him, the Roman governor was shaken by is said a few verses after, where the fruit all that he observed of this innocent victim is represented as bad, just because the tree ---but look all the while at the unrelenting is bad--where the words have their whole constancy with which they kept by their character of evil imparted to them, just bepurpose; and in the barbarous prosecution cause it is out of the abundance of the heart of it schooled the governor out of his diffi- that the mouth speaketh, and out of the evil culties; and raised the phrenzy of the popu- humours of the heart, that the man bring lace; and surrounded the best and kindest eth forth evil things. And surely, when, of the species with the scowl of a brutal after our Saviour had uttered such a pecuand reviling multitude. And, lastly, when liar sentence of condemnation on the sin

which conveyed them.

against the Holy Ghost, he expressly connects the words of the mouth, with the disposition of the heart, ere he tells us that it was by our words we shall be justified, and by our words we shall be condemned-we ought no longer to do what we are sure is done by many in their obscure imaginations upon this subject, we ought not to liken the sin against the Holy Ghost to the spell of some magical incantation, deriving the whole of that deadly taint which belongs to it, from some infernal charm with which the utterance of mere language is darkly and unaccountably impregnated. But knowing that every denunciation of our great Spiritual Teacher, had some clear and unchangeable principle of morality to rest upon-and perceiving, as we do, that on this very occasion he refers us to the disposition of the heart, as that which gives to the utterance of the tongue all its malignity, let us, when reading of this desparate guilt of the Pharisees, look to the spirit and moral temper of the Pharisees, and if possible, gather a something that may carry to our own bosoms a salutary and convincing application.

And a single glance at the circumstances may be enough to satisfy us, that never, in any one recorded passage of their history, did they evince the bent of so inflexible a determination against the authority of conscience-never such a wilful darkening of their own hearts against the light and the power of evidence, as in the passage that is now before us. The whole weight of that moral argument on which we have already expatiated, was reinforced by a miracle so striking and so palpable in its effects, that all the people were thrown into amazement. But what constituted the peculiarity of the miracle was, that it was just such a miracle as the Pharisees themselves had been accustomed to look upon with veneration, and had viewed as an example of successful hostility against the empire of darkness. They had faith in these possessions. They counted every one of them to be the work of Beelzebub, and the casting out of any of them as a direct triumph of warfare against the prince of the devils. They themselves, it would appear, laid claim to the power of dispossessing these demons, and we have no doubt that the imagination of such a power residing with them and their children, or proselytes, would help to give them that prophetical sanctity in the eyes of the common people, which they so much aspired after.

of every one of them, rather than own the hand of God, or submit to the demonstration of his power in the miracle before them. It was indeed a desperate fetch that they made for an argument, when the very work in which they gloried, and on which they founded the credit of their own order, was so maligned and misrepresented by them. They had ever been in the habit of ascribing the possessions of that age to the power of Beelzebub-and now to give a colour to their hatred to Jesus and his claims, they suppose the house of Beelzebub to be divided against itself, and they ascribe to his power a miracle, the doing of which went to dispossess him of a part of his empire. They pretended that their sons or their proselytes had the power of casting out those possessions, and never failed to ascribe this power to the Spirit and the countenance of God-but now they turned round upon the matter, and by rearing the argument against the Saviour in the direct face of their own principle, did they prove how firmly they were resolved to lay hold of any thing, rather than admit the claims of one who was so offensive to them. Thus did they give, perhaps at this moment, a more conspicuous evidence than they had ever done before, how every proof and every remonstrance would all be wasted upon them. The Spirit of God had gone his uttermost length with them, and on abandoning them for ever, he left behind him their blood upon their own head, and the misery of an irrecoverable condition, that was of their own bringing on. He had long borne with them-and it will be seen in the day of reckoning, when all mysteries are cleared up, how great the patience, and the kindness, and the unwearied perseverance were which they had resisted. For though the spirit strives long, he does not strive always; and they brought on this crisis in their history, just by the very steps in which every impenitent man brings it on in the present day, by a wilful resistance to the light of their own understanding; by a resolute suppression of the voice of their own conscience.

But we must bring all these explanations to a close. The distinction between speaking against the Son of man, and speaking against the Holy Ghost, may be illustrated by what he says of the difference between bearing witness of himself, and another bearing witness of him. If he had had no other testimony than his own to offer, they had not had sin. If he had not done the But when the very thing on which they works before them which none other man tried to strengthen their own claims to au- did, and which no mere son of man could thority, was done by that man, the progress do, they had not had sin. If he had noof whose authority, among his countrymen, thing to show on which to sustain the chathey were determined, at all hazards, to ar-racter that signalized him above the mere rest; they went round the whole compass children of men, their resistance could have of their principles, and quashed the voice been forgiven; but he had shown the most

abundant evidence on this point--he had just performed a deed which their every habit, and their every conception, led them to ascribe to the Spirit and the power of God, and he had brought forward what to their own judgments was the testimony of the Spirit, and they resisted it. It was no longer now an opposition to man, and a railing of man, and a contemptuous negligence of man all this is sinful; but it was not that which blocked up the way against the remission of sin; it was when they reviled him who offered to lead them on in that way, that they were ever strengthening the barrier which lay across the path of acceptance. While the last and most conclusive proof that would be given of Jesus having indeed the seal and the commission of the Spirit upon him, was not yet tried and found ineffectual; all their opposition to him still partook of opposition to one of whom the most decisive evidence that he was any thing more than the Son of man,

was still in reserve. It still partook of opposition to a fellow-man. But when that decisive evidence was at length offered, and the Spirit interposed with his last and greatest attempt to vindicate his own seal, and to authenticate his own commission on the person of Jesus of Nazareth; then that which was before the speaking evil of the Son of man become the speaking evil of the Son of God; and that, aggravated to the uttermost length that it now would be permitted to go. And the Pharisees, by smothering the light of all that evidence which the Holy Spirit had brought forward, both in the miracles that were done, and in the graces of that sinless example which was set so impressively before them, had by that time raised in their hearts such an entrenchment of prejudice against the faith of the Gospel, and so discouraged the Holy Spirit from any farther attempt to scale and to surmount it, that all recovery was hopeless, and all forgiveness was impossible.

SERMON XIII.

On the Advantages of Christian Knowledge to the Lower Orders of Society. "Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished."— Ecclesiastes iv. 13.

truth and for righteousness, to man signalized by prosperity, and clothed in the pomp and in the circumstance of its visible glories

this is quite akin with the superiority which the Bible every where ascribes to the soul over the body, and to eternity over time, and to the Supreme Author of Being over all that is subordinate and created. It marks a discernment, unclouded by all those associations which are so current and have so fatal an ascendency in our world-the wisdom of a purer and more ethereal region than the one we occupy-the unpolluted clearness of a light shining in a dark place, which announces its own coming to be from above, and gives every spiritual reader of the Bible to perceive the beaming of a powerful and presiding intelligence in all its pages.

THERE is no one topic on which the Bi- | heart, and of a spirit, and of capacities for ble, throughout the variety of its separate compositions, maintains a more lucid and entire consistency of sentiment, than the superiority of moral over all physical and all external distinctions. This lesson is frequently urged in the Old Testament, and as frequently reiterated in the New. There is a predominance given in both to worth, and to wisdom, and to principle, which leads us to understand, that within the compass of human attainment, there is an object placed before us of a higher and more estimable character than all the objects of a common-place ambition-that wherever there is mind, there stands associated with it a nobler and more abiding interest than all the aggrandizements which wealth or rank can bestow-that within the limits of the moral and intellectual department of our nature, there is a commodity which money cannot purchase, and possesses a more sterling excellence than all which money can command. This preference of man viewed in his essential attributes, to man viewed according to the variable accessories by which he is surrounded-this preference of the subject to all its outward and contingent modifications-this preference of man viewed as the possessor of a

One very animating inference to be drawn from our text, is, how much may be made of humanity. Did a king come to take up his residence among you-did he shed a grandeur over your city by the presence of his court, and give the impulse of his expenditure to the trade of its population-it were not easy to rate the value and the magnitude which such an event would have on the estimation of a common understand

ing, or the degree of personal importance among the poorest of them all, has a wiswhich would attach to him, who stood a dom and a weight of character, which lofty object in the eye of admiring towns- makes him the oracle of his neighbourhood men. And yet it is possible, out of the raw-the man, who, vested with no other auand ragged materials of the obscurest lane, thority than the meek authority of worth, to rear an individual of more inherent carries in his presence a power to shame worth, than him who thus draws the gaze and to overawe the profligacy that is around of the world upon his person. By the act him--the venerable father, from whose of training in wisdom's ways the most tat- lowly tenement the voice of psalms is heard tered and neglected boy who runs upon our to ascend with the offering up of every pavements, do we present the community evening sacrifice-the Christian sage, who, with that which, in wisdom's estimation, is exercised among life's severest hardships, of greater price than this gorgeous inhabi- looks calmly onward to heaven, and trains tant of a palace. And when one thinks the footsteps of his children in the way that how such a process may be multiplied leads to it-the eldest of a well-ordered among the crowded families that are around family, bearing their duteous and honouraus-when one thinks of the extent and the ble part in the contest with its difficulties density of that mine of moral wealth, which and its trials-all these offer to our notice retires, and deepens, and accumulates, be- such elements of moral respectability, as do hind each front of the street along which exist among the lowest orders of human we are passing--when one tries to compute society, and elements, too, which admit of the quantity of spirit that is imbedded in being multiplied far beyond the reach of the depth and the frequency of these hu- any present calculation. And while we man habitations, and reflects of this native hold nothing to be more unscriptural than ore, that more than the worth of a monarch the spirit of a factious discontent with the may be stamped, by instruction, on each rulers of our land-while we feel nothing separate portion of it-a field is thus opened to be more untasteful than the insolence of for the patriotism of those who want to give a vulgar disdain towards men of rank, or an augmented value to the produce of our men of opulence-yet should the king upon land, which throws into insignificance all the throne be taught to understand, that the enterprises of vulgar speculation. Com- there is a dignity of an intrinsically higher merce may flourish, or may fail--and amid order than the dignity of birth or powerthe ruin of her many fluctuations, may ele- a dignity which may be seen to sit with vate a few of the more fortunate of her sons gracefulness on the meanest of his subjects to the affluence of princes. Thy merchants and which draws from the heart of the may be princes, and thy traffickers be the beholder a truer and profounder reverence. honourable of the earth. So that, were it for nothing more than to But if there be truth in our text, there bless and adorn our present state, there canmay, on the very basis of human society, not be an attempt of greater promise, than and by a silent process of education, mate- that of extending education among the rials be formed, which far outweigh in cost throng of our peasantry; there cannot be and true dignity, all the blazing pinnacles a likelier way of filling the country with that glitter upon its summit-and it is, in- beauteous and exalted spectacles-there candeed, a cheering thought to the heart of a not be a readier method of pouring a glory philanthropist, that near him lies a territory over the face of our land, than that of spreadso ample, on which he may expatiate-ing the wisdom of life, and the wisdom of where for all his pains, and all his sacrifices, principle, throughout the people who live he is sure of a repayment more substantial, in it---a glory differing in kind, but greatly than was ever wafted by richly laden flo- higher in degree, than the glories of comtilla to our shores-where the return comes mon prosperity. It is well that the proto him, not in that which superficially decks gress of knowledge is now looked to by the man, but in a solid increment of value politicians without alarm-that the ignofixed and perpetuated on the man himself-rance of the poor is no longer regarded as where additions to the worth of the soul more essential to the devotion of their paform the proceeds of his productive opera-triotism, than it is to the devotion of their tion--and where, when he reckons up the profits of his enterprise, he finds them to consist of that, which, on the highest of all authorities, he is assured to be more than meat, of that which is greatly more than raiment.

Even without looking beyond the confines of our present world, the virtue of humble life will bear to be advantageously contrasted with all the pride and glory of an elevated condition. The man who, though

piety--that they have, at length, found that the best way of disarming the lower orders of all that is threatening and tumultuous, is not to enthral, but to enlighten them; that the progress of truth among them, instead of being viewed with dismay, is viewed with high anticipation--and an impression greatly more just, and greatly more generous, is now beginning to prevail, that the strongest rampart which can possibly be thrown around the cause of public tran