trines, to plant which their heroic precursors thought their blood a trifling sacrifice.

Even in the age when martyrs were most numerous, a few thousands out of the whole populous family of Christ, afford no very formidable aggregate; and how many ages have since passed away in which martyrdom has been unknown, and the mighty of the earth have, from the oppressors, been transformed into the nursing fathers of Christ's religion! It is, doubtless, true, that Christ speaks of His cross, in general terms, as that condition of His service which we must be all of us prepared to encounter, and bear with us boldly and cheerfully. And it is also true that the uniform manner of our Lord (as it would be the manner and the duty of every experienced person preparing another for the duties and dangers of a new profession) is to state those duties broadly and strongly, to the end that no one might treasure up disappointment for himself by too flattering and easy a picture of the arduous undertaking before him. But if I were preparing a young seaman or soldier for the toils he must expect to undergo, if I were painting to him the various bitter accidents of flood or field, the wounds and the watchings, the hunger and cold, the toil and thirst, the storms, the rencontres, the defeats and the captivities, the

dura navis,

Dura fugæ mala, dura belli,

would it be fair to understand me that all these or

any of these calamities were necessarily to befall the individual whom I was addressing; that no seas were ever calm, no voyages ever prosperous, and that no military man was known at any time to descend to his grave in peace, and with his children weeping around him? Such visitations, like the persecutions foretold in Scripture, are spoken of as impending over all, because they are such as may happen to any, and because all should, therefore, be prepared, if they come, to meet them boldly. But it would be a strange seaman who, during a prosperous voyage over an untroubled sea, should cry out before every ruffle of the elements as if it were St. Paul's euroclydon. And it is, surely, a strange and unthankful trifling with God's mercies and our own experience to talk of afflictions in His cause, when no man, on that account, either makes us afraid or troubles us, and when those lions have, by His Providence, been long since chained, which used, in ancient days, to scare the pilgrims in their journey to the New Jerusalem.

"But does not," it will be rejoined, " in common life, and in those smaller distresses which every day brings forth, and which determine the general character of our journey far more than the greater but less frequent dangers to which you have alluded; does not experience shew that genuine religion is still, to the generality of mankind, the object of dislike, and, so far as the present circumstances of the world will admit, of persecution? Is not the child who prays to God, and reverences its parents,

K

exposed too often to mockery from its idle companions? The young man who is sober and chaste, is he not ridiculed for want of spirit? is not the devout man of riper years too often charged with hypocrisy and are not many of every age to be found who have been disliked or ill-used on account of their piety?"

I answer that all this is very true, and a treatment like this may very possibly befall any one of us in his journey through the wilderness of the world; but still these are exceptions from St. Peter's general rule, and such exceptions will be found less numerous than they at first appear, if we distinguish those sorrows and vexations which good men endure on account of their religion, from those which they might have experienced whether they were religious or no; and those, still more, which they bring on themselves, not by their religion, but by their imprudence and their failings. Christ's kingdom is not of this world; and no promise that I can find in Scripture has been made to His followers, that they should have less than their share of the common accidents of their nature; that a ruin tottering to its foundation should necessarily remain suspended while a Christian passed beneath; that a Christian should not slip, where another man should break a limb; or that a Christian should not be stripped by robbers, or torn by wild beasts, like any other man who might pass from Jerusalem to Jericho. Christians are men, and sinful men, and they require, no less than their fellow trans

gressors, that merciful discipline of affliction and sorrow which the Almighty dispenses, more or less, to every man as He sees occasion. But how many are those who, while drinking the cup which sinners partake of at least as plentifully as themselves, are forward to claim the praise of martyrs or confessors, and to reckon up these visitations as parts of that cross which it behoves us to be ready to take up when called on!

Still more must we be careful lest the sorrows under which we groan be brought on us, not by our religion itself, but by our vanity, our ill temper, our want of common prudence, and of that serpent-like wisdom, to join which with the harmlessness of a dove should be the endeavour of every believer. Such defects as these by their nature provoke mockery, dislike, and injustice from all whose hearts are not impressed with a deep sense of their own weakness, and the necessity of bearing with the weakness of their brethren. And when a religious man shews his religion in an injudicious manner, when he makes it the occasion of judging and censuring others, or when he exhausts it in forms and trifles, (overlooking, it may be, in comparison, the weightier matters of the law while he strains out the gnat, and pays tithes of anise and cummin) though his religion might, by itself, have passed through life unnoticed, or respected, or endured, these faults will be reflected on with double severity, because they are at variance with his professed principles, and because the world, it must be

owned, will not be sorry to bring down his character to its own low level.

But do our opponents appeal to the experience of mankind? To that experience let them go! Let them ask themselves whether, among their own acquaintance, their own neighbours, the public men whose lives and circumstances are known to them, there is any considerable appearance of such persecution as they apprehend, such affliction for conscience sake as is implied in their gloomy anticipations? Is the sober, the honest, the religious labourer less employed by his superiors in rank, or less thriving in the world than his godless neighbour? Among merchants, among statesmen, I will add, among the followers of the naval or military profession, will it usually be found, (for some detached and remarkable instances are no sufficient proof of the general rule) that a man's religion has done him any harm? Why, then, should we dress up the confession of our faith with these unreasonable and unnecessary terrours, or doubt that, even in this world, as well as in the world to come, and in the necessities of the present life, as well as in the one thing eternally needful, the Lord of all things may, if we seek His help, make our very enemies to love us, and those, of whom we fear that they should carry us captive, to take pity on us?

As, however, situations may arise, in which we may be called upon, we know not how soon or how suddenly, to prefer our duty to our interest, and to