minute and penetrating air; in another school, a portion of the divinity. Some made it to die with the body; others would have it to have existed before the body some again made it to pass from one body to another; from man to the horse, from the condition of a reasonable being to that of animals without reason. There were some who taught that the true happiness of man is in the senses; a greater number placed it in reason; others again found it only in fame and glory ; many in sloth and indolence. And what the most deplorable feature was, that the existence of God, his nature, the immortality of the soul, the destination and the happiness of men, all points so essential to his destiny, so decisive with regard to his eternal misery or happiness, became problems, destined merely to amuse the leisure of the schools and the vanity of the Sophists; idle questions, in which they were never interested for the principle of truth, but solely for the glory of coming off conqueror.-Great God! It is in this manner that thou sportest with human wisdom.

If from thence we enter into the Christian ages, who could enumerate that endless variety of sects which, in all times, hath broken the unity of faith, in order to follow strange doctrines? What were the abominations of the Gnosticks, the extravagant follies of the Valentinians, the fanaticism of Montanus, the contradictions of the Manicheans? Follow every age; as, in order to prove the righteous, it is necessary that there be heresies, so you will find that in every age the church hath always been miserably rent with

them.

Recall to your remembrance the sad dissentions of

the age just past. Since the separation of our brethren, what a monstrous variety in their doctrine! What endless sects sprung from only one sect! What numberless divisions in one and the same schism!-0 faith! O gift of God! O divine light with which darkness is cleared up, how necessary art thou to man! O infallible rule, sent from heaven, and given in trust to the church of Jesus Christ, always the same in all ages, always independent of places, of times, of nations, and of interests, how requisite it is that thou shouldest serve as a check upon the eternal fluctuations of the human mind! O pillar of fire, at the same time so obscure and so luminous, of what importance it is that thou shouldst always conduct the camp of the Lord, the tabernacle and the tents of Israel, through all the perils of the desart, the rocks, the temptations, and the dark and unknown paths of this life!

For you, my brethren, what instruction should we draw from this discourse, and what should I say to you in concluding? You say that you have faith; shew your faith by your works. What shall it avail you to have believed, if your manners have belied your belief? The gospel is yet more the religion of the heart than of the mind. That faith which makes Christians is not a simple submission of the reason; it is a pious tenderness of the soul; it is a continual longing to become like unto Jesus Christ; it is an indefatigable application in rooting out from ourselves whatever may be inimical to a life of faith. There is an unbelief of the heart, equally dangerous to salvation as that of the mind. A man who obstinately refuses belief, after all the proofs of religion, is a monster, whom we

contemplate with horror; but a Christian who believes, yet lives as though he believed not, is a madman, whose folly surpasseth comprehension: the one procures his own condemnation, like a desperate man; the other, like an indolent one, who tranquilly allows himself to be carried down by the waves, and thinks that he is thereby saving himself. Make your faith certain then, my brethren, by your good works; and if you shudder at the name alone of an impious person, feel the same horror at yourselves, seeing we are taught by faith, that the destiny of the wicked Christian shall not be different from his, and that his lot shall be the same as that of the unbeliever. Live conformably to what you believe. Such is the faith of the righteous, and the only one to which the eternal promises have been made.

SERMON XXIII.

DOUBTS UPON RELIGION.

JOHN vii. 27.

Howbeit we know this man, whence he is; but when Christ cometh, no man knoweth whence he is.

SUCH is the great pretext opposed by the unbelieving Jews to the doctrine and ministry of Jesus Christ; doubts upon the truth of his mission. We know who thou art, and whence thou comest, said they to him; but the Christ whom we expect, when he cometh, we shall not know whence he is. It is far from clear then, that thou art the Messiah promised to our fathers; perhaps an evil spirit through thee, operates these wonders before our eyes, and imposes upon the credulity of the vulgar; so many deceivers have already appeared in Judea, who, giving themselves out for the Great Prophet who is to come, have seduced the people, and at last drawn down upon themselves the punishment due to their imposture. Keep us no longer in doubt: if thou be the Christ, tell us plainly, and in such a way as that no room shall henceforward be left either for doubt or for mistake.

I would not dare to speak thus in this place, my brethren, were the language of doubt not become so common now among us, that precaution is needless in undertaking to confute it, and we find in it the almost universal pretext employed by the world to authorise a criminal life. We every where meet with sinners who coolly tell us, that they would be converted were they well assured that all we tell them of religion were true; who hint that perhaps there is nothing after this life; that they have doubts and difficulties in regard to our mysteries, to which they can find no satisfactory answer; that, after all, every thing appears uncertain; and that, before engaging to follow all the rigid maxims of the gospel, it would be proper to be well assured that our toils shall not be lost.

Now, my intention on this occasion, is not to overthrow unbelief, by the great proofs which establish the truth of the Christian faith independent of our having already established them, it is a subject far too extensive for a discourse, and often even beyond the capacity of the majority of those who listen to us; and it seems like paying too much deference to the frivolous objections of those who give themselves out as free-thinkers in the world, to employ the gravity of our ministry in refuting and overthrowing them.

We must take a shorter and more easy way, therefore, at present. My design is not to enter into the foundation of the proofs which render testimony to the truth of faith; I mean only to expose the falsity of unbelief: I mean to prove that the greatest part of those who call themselves unbelievers, are not so; that almost all those sinners who vaunt, and are con