ing to the fulness and to the sincerity of this offer; and make perfect my desires in receiving them, in order that they may be worthy of the reward which thou promisest to those who hunger and thirst after righté

ousness.

Hear, said the Lord through his prophet, to the unfaithful soul, you who live in ease and in pleasures, and who nevertheless hope in me; sterility and widowhood shall at once burst upon your heads; sterility, that is to say, that you shall no longer be able to bear the fruits of penitence; cultivation and watering shall be in vain; the power of my word, the virtue of my sacraments, the grace of my mysteries, all care shall be unavailing, and you shall no longer be but a withered tree destined for the fire: widowhood, that is to say, I will for ever forsake you; I will leave you single; I will deliver you up to your inclinations, and to the false peace of your passions; I will no longer be your God, your protector, your spouse; I will for ever forsake you.

But shall I here finish my office, my brethren, with the words formerly made use of by Jesus Christ, in finishing his mission to an ungrateful people? You have refused to believe in me, said he to them a few days before his death; you have shut your eyes against the light; you have had ears, yet you heard not: I go, and you shall die in your blindness. If you were still blind, and if you had never known the truth, your sin would be more excusable; but here, you see, I have announced to you the truths which my Father had taught me; and therefore your sin is without excuse your obstinacy is consummate; you have reject

ed that salvation which shall be offered to you no more, and the guilt of the truth despised must for ever be upon your head.

Great God! should this then be the price of my toils, and the whole fruit of my ministry? Could the unworthiness of the instrument, which thou hast employed to announce thy word, have destroyed its efficacy, and placed a fatal impediment to the progress of the gospel? No, my dear brethren, the virtue of the word of the cross is not attached to that of the minister who announces it. In the hands of the Lord, clay can give sight to the blind; and, when he pleaseth, the walls of Jericho fall at the sound of the weakest trumpets. I trust then in the Lord for you, my brethren, that having received his word with gladness, as Paul formerly said to the believers of Corinth; that having received it, not as the word of man, but as the word of God, it shall fructify in you; and that, on the awful day of judgment, when an account shall be demanded from me of my ministry, and from you of the fruit which you have reaped from it, I shall be your defence and your justification, and you my glory and my crown. So do I ardently wish it.

SERMON XIX.

ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES OF THE

GREAT.

MATTHEW iv. 8.

And the Devil sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them: and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.

men.

HUMAN prosperity has always been one of the most dangerous snares employed by the devil to entrap He knows, that the love of fame and of distinction is so natural to us, that, in general, nothing is considered as too much for their attainment; and that the use of them is so seducing, and so apt to lead astray, that nothing is more rare than piety surrounded with pomp and power.

Nevertheless, my brethren, it is God alone who raiseth up the great and the powerful; who placeth you above the rest, in order to be the fathers of the people, VOL. II.

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the comforters of the afflicted, the refuge of the helpless, the supporters of the church, the protectors of virtue, and the models of all believers.

Suffer then, my brethren, that, entering into the spirit of our gospel, I here lay before you the dangers, as well as the advantages of your state; and that I point out to you the obstacles and the facilities which the rank, to which, through providence, you are born, presents to you in the discharge of the duties of a Christian life.

Great temptations, I confess, are attached to your station; but it has likewise as great resources; people of rank are born, it would seem, with more passions than the rest of men; yet have they also the opportunity of practising more virtues: their vices are followed with more consequences; but their piety becomes also more beneficial: in a word, they are much more culpable than the common people, when they forget their God; but they have likewise more merit in remaining faithful to him.

My intention, therefore, at present, is to represent to you the extensive good, or the boundless evils, which always accompany your virtues or vices; to convince you of what importance the elevated rank to which you are born, is towards good, or towards evil; and, lastly, to render an irregular life odious to you, by unfolding the pernicious consequences which your passions drag after them; and piety amiable, through the unutterable benefits which always follow your good examples. It would matter little to point out the dangers of your station, were the advantages of it not likewise to be shown. The Christian pulpit declaims in

general against the grandeurs and glory of the age; but it would be of little avail to be continually dwelling on your complaints, were their remedies not held out to you at the same time. These are the two truths which I mean to unite in this discourse, by laying before you the endless consequences of the vices of the great and powerful, and what inestimable benefits flow from their virtues.

PART I. "A sore trial shall come upon the mighty, "says the Spirit of God; for mercy will soon pardon "the meanest; but mighty men shall be mightily tor"mented."

It is not, my brethren, because he is mighty himself, that the Lord, as the Scriptures say, rejects the great and the mighty; or that rank and dignity are titles hateful in his eyes, to which his favours are denied, and which, of themselves, constitute our guilt. With the Lord there is no distinction of persons: he is the Lord of the cedars of Lebanon, as well as of the humble hyssop of the valley: he causes his sun to rise over the highest mountains, as well as over the lowest and obscurest places: he hath formed the stars of heaven, as well as the worms which crawl upon the earth: the great are even more natural images of his greatness and glory, the ministers of his authority, the means through which his liberalities and generosity are poured out upon his people. And I come not here, my brethren, in the usual language of the world to pronounce anathemas against human grandeur, and to represent your station as a crime, since that very station comes from God, and that the object in question is not so much to exaggerate the perils of it, as to point out the infinite