P. SERMON IX. p. 116.

PROGRESS OF CHRISTIANITY.

"If there are any who wish ill to Christianity, let them hasten to prevent the measures of its friends; let them teach their babes to hate the gospel; for those who love it are taking such means to ensure its future triumph as can hardly fail of success, and such as, on all common grounds of calculation, make it likely that even the sons and the daughters of the present race of infidels may be involved in the approaching conquests of the Son of David, and actually join in the loud hosanna that shall announce his accession to the throne of universal empire."-Natural History of Enthusiasm, p. 279.

Q.-SERMON X. p. 124.

TO THE INTEMPERATE.

EXAMINE Well the subject of the cause of what is termed insanity. See in how many instances mental aberration may be traced to bodily derangement. Look at inherited disease. Look at inherited insanity. See the word "excess" in the sacred writings. Compare Deut. xxiv. 16; 2 Kings xiv. 6; Ezek. xviii. Unto how many generations can be traced the consequences of one man's intemperance?

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R. SERMON XI. p. 135.

PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA.

"WHAT is the Roman arch of triumph, or the pillar crowded with sculpture, compared, as a memorial, to the Hebrew song of victory, which, having survived so many ages, is still fresh and vivid as ever; and excites the same emotions of awe and piety in every human breast susceptible of such feelings, which it did in so many ages past in those of the triumphant children of Israel?

"Local traditions have retained the remembrance of the same memorable catastrophe, if not with equal accuracy, with equal fidelity. The superstitious Arabs still call fountains or wells by the names of Moses and Pharaoh. The whole coast is looked on with awe. Wherever, says Niebuhr, you ask an Arab where the Egyptians were drowned, he points to the part of the shore where you are standing. There is one bay, however, where, in the roaring of the waters, they pretend to hear the cries and wailings of the ghosts of Pharaoh's army.

"If these were mere modern notions, they would be of little value; but Diodorus Siculus states as a tradition derived by the Icthyophagi (the people who live on fish,) from their remote forefathers, that once an extraordinary reflux took place, the channel of the gulf became dry, the green bottom appearing, and the whole body of water rolling away in an opposite direction. After the dry land in the deepest part had

with whom debauchery has outwrestled rapacity, easy because unprincipled, and generous because dishonest, are suddenly cried up as men of enlarged views and liberal sentiments, our only genuine patriots and philanthropists and churls, that is, men of sullen tempers and surly demeanour; men tyrannical in their families, oppressive and troublesome to their dependants and neighbours, and hard in their private dealing between man and man; men who clench with one hand what they have grasped with the other; these are extolled as public benefactors, the friends, the guardians, and advocates of the poor! Here and there, indeed, we may notice an individual of birth and fortune

('For great estates enlarge not narrow minds')

who has been duped into the ranks of incendiaries and mob-sycophants by an insane restlessness, and the wretched ambition of figuring as the Triton of the minnows. Or we may find, perhaps, a professional man, of showy accomplishments, but of a vulgar taste, and shallow acquirements, who, in part from vanity, and in part as a means of introduction to practice, will seek notoriety by an eloquence well calculated to set the multitude agape, and excite gratis to overt-acts of sedition or treason, which he may afterwards be fee'd to defend! These, however, are but exceptions to the general rule. Such as the Prophet has described, such is the sort of men; and in point of historic fact it has been from men of this sort, ' that profaneness is gone forth into the land."*

* Jer. xxiii. 15.

"He that hateth his brother is a murderer!' says St. John: and of many and various sorts are the brother-haters, in whom this truth may be exemplified. Most appropriately for our purpose, Isaiah has selected the fratricide of sedition, and with the eagle eye and practised touch of an intuitive demonstrator, he unfolds the composition of the character, part by part, in the secret history of the agent's wishes, designs, and attempts, of his ways, his means, and his ends. The agent himself, the incendiary, and his kindling combustibles, had been already sketched by Solomon, with the rapid yet faithful outline of a master in the art: The beginning of the words of his mouth is foolishness, and the end of his talk mischievous madness.'* If, in the spirit of prophecy, the wise ruler had been present to our own times, and their procedures; if, while he sojourned in the valley of vision, he had actually heard the very harangues of our reigning demagogues to the convened populace; could he have more faithfully characterized either the speakers or the speeches? Whether in spoken or in printed addresses, whether in periodical journals or in yet cheaper implements of irritation, the ends are the same, the process is the same, and the same is their general line of conduct. On all occasions, but most of all, and with a more bustling malignity, whenever any public distress inclines the lower classes to turbulence, and renders them more apt to be alienated from the government of their country-in all places, and at every opportunity, pleading to the poor and ignorant, no where, and at no time, are they found actually pleading for them. Nor is this the worst. They even

Eccles. x. 13.

plead against them. Yes! sycophants to the crowd, enemies of the individuals, and well-wishers only to the continuance of their miseries, they plead against the poor and afflicted, under the weak and wicked pretence, that we are to do nothing of what we can, because we cannot do all that we would wish. Or if this sophistry of sloth (sophisma pigri) should fail to check the bounty of the rich, there is still the sophistry of slander in reserve to chill the gratitude of the poor. If they cannot dissuade the Liberal from devising liberal things, they will at least blacken the motives of his beneficence. If they cannot close the hand of the giver, they will at least embitter the gift in the mouth of the receivers. Is it not as if they had said within their hearts, The sacrifice of charity has been offered indeed in despite of us; but with bitter herbs shall it be eaten ! ' * Imagined wrongs shall make it distasteful. We will infuse vindictive and discontented fancies into minds already irritable and suspicious from distress, till the fever of the heart shall coat the tongue with gall, and spread wormwood on the palate?

"If, then, to promise medicine and to administer poison; if to flatter in order to deprave; if to affect love to all and show pity to none; if to exaggerate and misderive the distress of the labouring classes in order to make them turbulent, and to discourage every plan for their relief in order to keep them so; if to skulk from private infamy in the mask of public spirit, and make the flaming patriot privilege the gamester, swindler, or adulterer; if to seek amnesty for a continued violation of the laws of God by an

* Exod. xii. 8.