in all their pomp, and realize to our conceptions the by-gone world. The minor virtues, the frequently occurring enjoyments, the minutia of morals and happiness, so far from incongruity, have a close affinity with the broadest principles of truth, and the most majestic qualities of character. I have little faith in the very good people of every day life, who are confessedly, and almost boastfully, unequal to the great sacrifices and exertions which are sometimes bounden duties. The great principles and virtues are the trunk of which the others are the foliage, which we are not accustomed to see flourish independently. An enlightened and comprehensive notion of an omnipresent and beneficent Providence is the likeliest preparation for finding 'Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, An enlarged perception of the divine plan of instruction disposes us to elicit lessons of wisdom from a thousand sources, while ignorant superstition is waiting for the oracle. That everything is from God and for good to all, makes good felt where else its existence would not have been suspected. The fragments of enjoyment are best gathered up by those whose imaginations have expanded to the hope of an universe of felicity. All incidental helps to the formation of character tell most on those with whom the training of themselves to excellence is a deliberate purpose and a determined pursuit. It is here as in physics; the minutest atoms are attracted, by a force proportioned to its mass, towards the mountain or the globe. Let us learn, then, never, in affecting the great, to despise the minute; nor to think of enlarging the whole while neglecting the parts; nor of doing much in years while insensible to the waste of hours; nor of having the happiness of any portion of time while we aim not at that of eternity. Sound philosophy is the combination of accumulation and accuracy in particulars, with comprehensive generalization. Moral excellence is analogous; and so is the spirit of religion. Christianity has its prayer for the child, and redemption for the world; and the prayer would not be so good were not the redemption so stupendous. That not a single sensation of pleasure, nor the most trifling impulse of benevolence, should be despised or crushed, is the lesson which commends itself most to him who most enters into the plan of infinite wisdom and the prospect of universal happiness. The Omnipotence of the universal Creator ordains that of the merest fragments of his works nothing should be lost. And nothing shall. The withered hope, the broken spirit, the imperfect character, the moral fragments of the present state, shall be gathered for nobler forms and combinations, as out of dissolving elements shall arise the new heavens and earth wherein righteousness and blessedness will ever dwell, SERMON X. THE SOCIAL EXAMPLE OF CHRIST. LUKE Vii. 34. The Son of Man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. A calumnious accusation is seldom an unmixed falsehood, even when directed against the purest character. Though it be not truth, it yet will often serve as a finger-post to point the path in which we may journey towards the truth. Scandalous 'as was the description of Christ, which he himself quoted from his enemies, in the text, it yet was a description which malice itself never would or could have given of John the Baptist. What they said of him was, that he was a demoniac. The fact was, that the one was a stern and solitary man, and the other bland and social; and the fact was used to float the falsehood into the public mind, and give it currency. Malignity is generally shrewd enough to fix itself on some disposition which is virtuous or vicious according to the degree of its indulgence, and then the comparatively easy work of simple exaggeration or diminution may serve to sully the lustre of the brightest character, and hold up the best men as the worst. But the very process shows that there is something to be exaggerated or diminished, and guides us to what that something is. Without any other evidence than the calumny in the text, we should have had proof that Christ was of a social disposition. We should have known from it, that he was accustomed to mingle with mankind on different principles from those which prevailed among the supercilious hypocrites who took the lead in the Jewish society of that age. We might, with very little other knowledge of him, have been able to perceive that the latter part of this charge, false in the sense in which it was meant to be received, of sympathy with the despised persons referred to, was true in another sense, and as honorable a truth as could be recorded of him. The friend of publicans and sinners must have been a disinterested and generous friend. He must have had a soul full of benevolence and energy. He was the friend, not only of the friendless, but of the scorned and trampled on. There is moral heroism in the allegation: it gives a glimpse of a great work of beneficence. His friendship to such must to them have been recovery, deliverance, salvation. And so the curse became a blessing, the shame a glory; and Pharisaic malice,like Balaam of old, over-ruled by the spirit of truth, with which it thought to tamper for its base purposes, hears its own constrained utterance doing homage to the excellence it meant to vilify. The truth thus gathered inferentially is abundantly confirmed by the facts of the Gospel narrative. They describe Christ as eminently social. Not social in the sense in which vain and empty creatures are, who are unaccustomed to, and dread, solitude; who live not only without God in the world, but without mind in the world; who suppose living is to see and be seen, to be talked to and to talk; who find the seclusion intolerably wearisome which might be intensely interesting, and utterly vacant which might be most amply occupied. This is not sociality, but inanity, which seeks kindred inanity for its relief. Christ was much alone. Alone for days and nights on the mountain side; alone for weeks in the recesses of the wilderness. There is no strength of mind, nor depth of reflection, nor solid worth of character without solitude. There is no progressiveness without it, and that is essential both to mental and moral greatness. But he was no solitary dreamer, no monk or hermit, no mere meditator even on the things of heaven, no mere student even of the truth of God. He was in willing and frequent intercourse with mankind. He sat at meat with the Pharisees, in their ostentatious hospitality. He turned not from the door of Levi and Matthew, and their publican associates, when they spread the feast of gratitude. He sojourned with the brother and the sisters that dwelt at Bethany. His ministry both began and ended with a social act. His first miracle was at the wedding feast in Cana, when he changed the water into wine. And his last request was made at the Paschal supper, in the upper room of a house in Jerusalem, when he expressed his wish. that in after times his apostles should remember him as they passed round, according to Jewish custom, |