discourses. "h Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may glorify thee. As thou hast given him power over all flesh; that he should give everlasting life to as many as thou hast given him. Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory which thou hast given me for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world."

But our Lord occasionally moves as well as persuades; and commands our passions as well as conciliates our affections. This will appear from the following instances; in which pity, terror, and hatred of vice, are strongly excited.

ye

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her brood under her wings; and would not? Behold your house is left unto you desolate." "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace: But now they are hidden from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, when thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another: because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." "Wo unto them that are with child, and unto them that give suck, in those days." Behold, the days are coming in which they shall

say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bare, and the breasts which never gave suck,"

"Fear not them who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell." "Nation ⚫ shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows." "p Immediately after the tribulation of those days, shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken." "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken." "Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us and to the hills, Cover us." "Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the land mourn; and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a trumpet of a great sound, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other."

"O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the

"Matt. x. 28. Luke xxiii. 30.

• ib. xxiv. 7, 8. Pib. v. 29. 9 Luke xxi. 25, 26. Matt. xii. 34.

Matt. xxiv. 30, 31.

W

heart the mouth speaketh." " Every " plant which my heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up." "Let them alone. They are blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch." "O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky: but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign: and there shall be no sign given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas." "Ye are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father ye seek to do: he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it."

But in our Lord's last address to the Scribes and Pharisees we have the most remarkable example of grave and sharp reproof, dictated by so perfect a knowledge of the heart, that every word must have stung the conscience of his hearers to the quick; and uttered, we may well suppose, with an earnestness and vehemence becoming the justest indignation against vice, and the dignity of a rejected and persecuted prophet.

The audience consisted of the disciples, the persons reproved, and all the people. The scene was the temple; now last filled with a glory by the presence of Jesus. The time was the paschal week, the fourth day before our Lord's crucifixion, and that on which he concluded his public instructions.

" Matt. xv. 13, 14. y Matt. xxiii.

w Matt. xvi. 3, 4. zib. 1, 13, 14. Luke xx. 45.

* John viii. 44.

a

• Haggai ii. 7.

The remote occasion of this severe reprehension was the conduct of the Scribes and Pharisees throughout our Lord's ministry. Before he had finished half his course, they twice sought to kill him for healing on the Sabbath; though we have seen that he defended these acts of humanity and mercy by invincible arguments. They hardened themselves in their disbelief of him, notwithstanding the witness which God gave of him at his birth, at his baptism, and during his whole intercourse among them; notwithstanding the testimony of his forerunner whom all held to be a prophet, the excellence of his doctrine, the sinless rectitude of his life, his acquaintance with all their thoughts, his appeals to Moses and the prophets whose predictions of the Messiah he was daily fulfilling, and. his own great and numerous miracles: ascribing these to Satan, though designed to subvert the kingdom of Satan; and endeavouring to compass Jesus's death for the most illustrious of them, the raising of Lazarus after he had lain four days in the grave.

The immediate occasion of our Lord's asperity was, that the chief priests and scribes questioned him by what authority he acted, with a design of putting him to death for avowing that authority; that the Pharisees sought to apprehend him for describing the punishment of their unbelief in a parable; that they suborned spies to ensnare him in his discourse, in order to deliver him up to the Roman governor; and that their malice prompted a

John v. 16, 18. Matt. xii. 11-14. xxi. 23.

⚫ ib... 45, 46.

c Matt. xxi. 26.

f Luke xx. 21. ).

d Matt.

feeble attempt to lessen his public reputation for wis dom by proposing to him difficult questions. These, we must observe, were the preceding events of this very day.

The subject of this intrepid, eloquent, and pathetic animadversion is, the attention due to the Scribes and Pharisees as teachers of Moses's law, notwithstanding the strange inconsistency between their doctrines and practice; their rigorous exaction of tra ditionary observances, burdens which they refused to alleviate in the smallest degree, though they saw the people sinking under the weight of them; their ostentation in "all their works," pompous shew of reverence for the law, pride, love of reputation for religious wisdom, and of uncontrolled authority in religious decisions. A wo is denounced against them for excluding men from the Messiah's kingdom by the terrors of 1 temporal punishments; for devouring the substance of widows, and hiding their rapacity under the cloak of superior holiness; for their unwearied zeal in making proselytes to doctrines and practices which plunged men in destruction; for their blindness and infatuation in deciding that oaths by the gold of the temple and by the gift on the altar were obligatory, and discharging those from all obligation, who swore by the temple and altar, to which the gold and the gift owed their sanctity; for their scrupulousness in performing the minuter parts of

Matt. xxii. 34, 35.

h John ix. 22. xii. 42.

¡ Christ, a divine teacher, and searcher of the heart, had authority to reprove in This is proverbially expressed in a strong manner They strained out a gnat, and swallowed a camel. So the Eng.

this manner.

lish bibles of 1549, and 1599.