the most uncongenial. We see a force of character, which difficulties cannot conquer, an energy which calamity cannot relax, a fortitude and constancy which sufferings can neither subdue nor bend from their purpose, connected with the most melting tenderness and sensibility of spirit, the most exquisite susceptibility to every soft and gentle impression. We see in him the rare union of zeal and moderation, of courage and prudence, of compassion and firmness; we see superiority to the world without gloom or severity, or indifference or distaste to its pursuits and enjoyments. In short, there is something in the whole conception and tenor of our Saviour's character so entirely peculiar, something which so realizes the ideal model of the most consummate moral beauty, something so lovely, so gracious, so venerable and commanding, that the boldest infidels have shrunk from it overawed; and though their cause is otherwise desperate, have yet feared to profane its perfect purity. One of the most eloquent tributes to its sublimity that was ever uttered, was extorted from the lips of an infidel. "Is there any thing in it," he exclaims," of the tone of an enthusiast or of an ambitious sectary? What sweetness, what purity, in his manners; what touching grace in his instructions; what elevation in his maxims; what profound wisdom in his discourses; what presence of mind, what skill and propriety in his answers; what empire over his passions! Where is the man, where

is the sage, who knows how to act, to suffer and to die, without weakness and without ostentation. When Plato paints his imaginary just man covered with all the ignominy of crime, and yet worthy of all the honours of virtue, he paints in every feature the character of Christ. What prejudice, what blindness must possess us to compare the son of Sophroniscus to the son of Mary. How vast the distance between them. Socrates, dying without pain and without ignominy, easily sustains his character to the last; and if this gentle death had not honoured his life, we might have doubted whether Socrates, with all his genius, was any thing more than a sophist. The death of Socrates philosophizing tranquilly with his friends, is the most easy that one could desire; that of Jesus expiring in torture, insulted, mocked, execrated by a whole people, is the most horrible that one can fear. Socrates, when he takes the poisoned cup, blesses him who weeps as he presents it; Jesus, in the midst of the most dreadful tortures, prays for his infuriated executioners.-Yes! if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage-the life and death of Jesus are wholly divine."

Now let me ask whether, if for this perfect conformity with his own perfect precepts our Saviour had no model, not only among his own countrymen, but in the wide world; if nothing like it had ever before appeared, or been imagined; if we find in his situation not one external advantage

which could give the promise of such a character, but every thing most adverse to it; if we are unable to assign a single circumstance adapted to raise his mind above the depression of the grossness and superstition which surrounded him; must we not feel, that to say that this greatest and purest of all characters was at the same time the greatest of all hypocrites and impostors, is to assert a most glaring and absurd contradiction?

If you say, against all evidence, that this character is fictitious, and never really existed, you increase instead of lessening the prodigy. You make the histories of the evangelists the greatest wonder of human invention. That for the purposes of fraud, these simple and unlearned men should be inspired with powers for the most difficult of all the efforts of genius, the consistent and harmonious representation of a perfect character, cannot for a moment engage our belief. That ignorant Jewish impostors, without any model to copy from,

should have succeeded in the delineation of a character so wholly original, placed in circumstances so various and new, especially where supernatural agency is introduced, is surely beyond all comparison more difficult of belief, than that the God of benevolence, in mercy to his children, should have sent his Son on the earth to realize such a character, and to teach us by his perfect example how we should live, how we should suffer, and a still harder lesson, how we should die.

Such are some of the grounds on which it is apparent that the gospel is a system altogether original, and unborrowed from any human source; and that its fundamental principles are such that it is impossible to suppose they should have proceeded from one under the circumstances of our Saviour, unless God had been with him. This, it is to be remembered, is a view of the evidences of christianity from but a single point; and one which has been but little noticed. If then the argument appears so strong when rested on this single ground, how great must be the accumulated evidences from history, from its prophecies, its miracles, its internal marks of credibility, and its universal conformity to the wants and feelings of mankind. If a single and almost neglected pillar of this temple be so strong, how vast, how august, how eternal must be the foundation on which it reposes!

SERMON XIII.

SAVING FAITH.

ACTS, X. 34, 35.

Then Peter opened his mouth and said, of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him.

E

We have here one proof, from among many, of the slowness with which the minds of the first disciples of our Lord were opened to the liberal and comprehensive spirit of his gospel. Educated with all the prejudices of a Jew, Peter had supposed that his own nation was the peculiar object of that divine favour, from which all others were entirely removed. The prayers and alms of an uncircumcised Roman must be, he had supposed, an abomination in the sight of God. He had thought, in all the pride of his nation's bigotry, that the universal Father of mankind had no grace to bestow on any, who had not the happiness to be born among the