withering disease with which every part of the soul must deeply sympathise; it is one which obstructs the only avenues whereby the light, and the very elements by which it lives,-and which, in its own dark and helpless desolation, it ever derives from sources out of itself,-are conveyed within. If the spiritual eye be dim, the whole soul is full of darkness. Nothing that is cheering, nothing that could give pure and animated enjoyment, is admitted there. All its thoughts and operations are involved in uncertainty and gloom. The "understanding itself," as St. Paul describes, "is darkened because of the blindness of the heart."* And, in the absence of that light of heaven which has not been suffered, as it was designed to do, to circulate freely its living and animating radiance through the innermost recesses of the soul, the course of its proper evolutions is retarded, and all its moral mechanism becomes eventually corroded and destroyed.

In proceeding to the more particular interpretation of this subject, it will be first necessary to shew how just a description of sin is that which is given in the early part of the text, and then to explain the force of the concluding * Eph. iv. 18.

paragraph, as applying to the condition of a true disciple of Christ.

I. And in dwelling on the first of these topics, we shall find no difficulty in obtaining proofs of the fact mentioned by our Lord. The deadness of the soul of man to all impressions of sacred truth, the dulness of his very sight, and hearing, and understanding, and heart, to all spiritual objects and spiritual thoughts, is a conspicuous and glaring principle that is written on almost every page of his history from the very earliest period of time. Even as we read the sacred records of the chosen people of God, it is difficult to restrain a feeling of indignation mingled with surprise, not only at the enormity of their transgressions against heaven, but at the short sightedness and the dimness. of ordinary perception with which they seem to have risked the danger of the divine displeasure, and to have remained in obstinate obduracy amidst the many miraculous and spirit-stirring scenes which ever surrounded them, and which, from their very nature, would seem, under any circumstances, to have demanded the most wakeful and intense excitement of all their observant faculties. And, more especially, that they should have done so under the government of a God whose immediate superintendence betrayed itself by ensigns and

evidences of power far transcending all the most engaging magnificence of human pomp, and calculated apparently to impress them with the most lively sentiments of awe and astonishment. Strange does it seem how the Israelite could have gazed on that cloud which rested on the tabernacle in the wilderness, or have looked forth from his tent on the mysterious fire which hung over it by night-the direct emblems of the Deity -and yet forget (as so many of them perpetually did) that he was in the immediate presence of his Maker! Strange that they should have ever dreamed of idolatry who had witnessed the glories of the Deity upon Sinai; or that that people should be found to murmur or repine, who had seen refreshing fountains extorted even from the barren rock, and bread from the unfruitful skies, to satisfy their wants. Nor can we otherwise explain than by ascribing it to a judicial blindness of the spiritual vision, asin-born infirmity of the spiritual hearing, a self-inflicted apathy and obduracy of soul, the extraordinary and persevering senselessness to all the proofs of God's mercy and vengeance which so remarkably characterizes the history of the Jews; especially when we recollect that that mercy and vengeance, surrounded as they were with so many circumstances of awful and preternatural interest-the manifestations of a present

God-the audible voice-the lightnings and the fire-the miracles of benevolence and love-the visible desolation of the Almighty's wrath-" the blasting of the breath of his displeasure"-were all of them so calculated, not only to smite powerfully on the outer senses, but to knock loudly at the very door of the heart, and to write their records of hope or of fear, of darkness or of light, in characters never to be erased, on the inmost tablets of the soul. But precisely so do we find it to have been throughout their history, and so it continued down to the coming of Christ himself. Even then a short-sighted generation could listen to the gracious eloquence that fell from the lips of Him "who spake as never man spake," and watch the works of wonder that were done by his hand, and yet discern not the attributes, or even the commissioned authority, of the Godhead that was shrouded under that humble form. And, while angels of heaven descended to minister unto him, and the fiends of darkness quailed beneath his power; while, I say, the whole of the invisible world was moved at his coming upon earth, and the everlasting gates were opening to receive him as the King of glory above, a perverse and blinded people could see in him nothing more than the poor and persecuted outcast who had no home or resting place, the

despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,-in his life a companion of the afflicted and the poor, and "numbered with the transgressors" at his death.

Circumstances like these may well excite our extreme astonishment, and, at first sight, wear the semblance of almost inexplicable paradox. Nor, while we contemplate them, is it easy to believe that the persons of whom they are related were a race of men endued with intelligence like ourselves, and possessed of the common faculties and apprehensions of our nature. But in these details of self-chosen infirmity we find, alas! too accurate a picture of the general condition of humanity; and from the clearness with which, at this distance, we are enabled to discern the infatuation of others in its real and naked deformity, we may, with too much reason, turn to ourselves, and judge hence of the aggravated criminality with which our own blindness ́ and deafness of soul must stand charged in the sight of those heavenly beings who, placed far above the reach of human passion or human prejudice, can yet watch with the tenderest and deepest interest over every incident in the moral history of this lower world.

And need I say in what manner the dulness of which I speak is displayed in the character