equal pertinacity in outraging the laws of the land; if these characterize the hypocrite, we need not look far back or far round for faces, wherein to recognize the third striking feature of this prophetic portrait!— 'There is no new thing under the sun.' We have heard it with our own ears, and it was declared to our fathers, and in the old time before them, that one of the main characteristics of demagogues in all ages is,

TO PRACTISE HYPOCRISY.

"The instruments also of the churl are evil: 'he deviseth wicked devices with lying words.' He employs a compound poison, of which the following are the main ingredients, the proportions varying as the case requires, or the wit of the poisoner suggests. It will be enough rapidly to name and number the components, as in a catalogue. 1. Bold, warm, and earnest assertions, it matters not whether supported by facts or no, nay, though they should involve absurdities, and demonstrable impossibilities. 2. Startling particular facts, which, dissevered from their context, enable a man to convey falsehood while he says truth. 3. Arguments built on passing events, and deriving an undue importance from the feelings of the moment. 4. The display of defects without the accompanying advantages, or vice versa. 5. Concealment of the general and ultimate result behind the scenery of local and particular consequences. 6. Statement of positions that are true only under particular conditions, to men whose ignorance or fury make them forget that these conditions are not present, or lead them to take for granted that they are. 7. Chains of questions,

especially of such questions as the persons best authorized to propose are ever the slowest in proposing; and objections intelligible of themselves, the answers to which require the comprehension of a system. 8. Vague and common-place satire, stale as the wine in which flies were drowned last summer, seasoned by the sly tale and important anecdote of but yesterday, that came within the speaker's own knowledge! 9. Transitions from the audacious charge, not seldom of as signal impudence as any thing was ever carted for,' to the lie pregnant and interpretative: the former to prove the orator's courage, and that he is neither to be bought or frightened; the latter to flatter the sagacity of the audience. 10. Jerks of style from expressions in ostentation of superior rank and acquirements to buffoonery in pledge of heartiness and good fellowship. 11. Lastly, and throughout all, to leave a general impression of something striking, something that is to come of it. This is the pharmacopoeia of political empirics, here and every where, now and at all times! These are the drugs administered, and the tricks played off by the mountebanks and zanies of patriotism; drugs that will continue to poison as long as irreligion secures a predisposition to their influence; and artifices, that like stratagems in war, are nevertheless successful for having succeeded a hundred times before. They bend their tongues as a bow: they shoot out deceits as arrows: they are prophets of the deceit of their own hearts: they cause the people to err by their dreams and their lightness: they make the people vain, they feed them with wormwood, they give them the water of gall for drink; and the

people love to have it so. thereof? **

And what is the end

"The prophet answers for me in the concluding words of the description-To DESTROY THE POOR EVEN WHEN THE NEEDY SPEAKETH ARIGHT-that is, to impel them to acts that must end in their ruin by inflammatory falsehoods, and by working on their passions, till they lead them to reject the prior convictions of their own sober and unsophisticated understandings."-Coleridge's Lay Sermon.

L. SERMON VI. p. 76.

IGNORANCE AND CRUELTY.

"IGNORANT of all things, a young boy will in very wantonness destroy nests, which have been patiently built, with a watchful eye, and a weary wing, and a cheated appetite, and a fond instinct, till all should be warm and ready for the expected brood; and that very brood, so carefully lodged and so tenderly watched, he shall dash to the ground without pity, for he is without knowledge."

Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman.'

"Would we learn from Christ himself in what the will of our Maker consists, let us contemplate it in the whole tenor of his instructive and wonderful life. Did he fulfil that will by pompous displays of superior

* Jer. passim.

wisdom, by austere and arrogant pretensions to superior righteousness, by solicitude for ritual observances, by dogmatism upon abstruse speculation, by a supercilious contempt of ignorance, or a ferocious intolerance of error? No. But the will of God, such at least as was that which he exemplified, is to be found in lessons of virtue, attractive for their simplicity, impressive from their earnestness, and authoritative from the miraculous evidence which accompanied them: in habits of humility without meanness, and of meekness without pusillanimity; in unwearied endeavours to console the afflicted, to soften the prejudiced, and to encourage the sincere; in unshaken firmness to strip the mask from pharisaical and deceitful guides: in kindness to his followers, in forgiveness to his persecutors, in works of the most unfeigned and unbounded charity to man, and in a spirit of the purest and most sublime piety to his Father and his God."-Dr. Parr.

M.-SERMON VII. p. 86.

OPINIONS.

WE may be persuaded that "authors should be consuls to advise, not dictators to command." But it is also true, that, "an opinion gravely professed by a man of sense and education, demands respectful consideration." What were the conclusions of Bacon, Selden, Milton, Sir Matthew Hale, Boyle, Locke, Newton, Milton, Addison, Sir W. Jones?

N. SERMON VIII. p. 88.

CANDOUR.

It has been urged, "that a perfectly candid and unbiassed state of mind, a habit of judging in each case entirely according to the evidence, is unattainable. But the same may be said of every other virtue : a perfect regulation of any one of the human passions is probably not more attainable than perfect candour; but we are not, therefore, to give a loose to the passions; we are not to relax our efforts for the attainment of any virtue, on the ground that, after all, we shall fall short of perfection."- Whately. Essays on the Writings of St. Paul, p. 21.

"Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath."*

O. SERMON IX. p. 107.

EXIGENCY OF THE TIMES.

"WE must learn, by the aid of an invigorated and well-informed industry, fitting the urgency of the times, to combine the public labours of christian charity with arduous studies; and especially with the habit of profound meditation upon the higher matters of the Divine testimony."-Saturday Evening, p. 130.

Matt. xiii. 12.