place at your feet their crown of immortality, as if publicly to acknowledge that they are indebted for it to you! What consolation to be able to say to yourselves, that, in serving God, you will attract other servants to him, and that your piety becomes a source of blessing for the people! No, my brethren, if there be any thing flattering in rank, it is not those vain distinctions attached to it by custom; it is the power of becoming, by serving God, the source of public good, the support of religion, the consolation of the church, and the chief instruments employed by God for the accomplishment of his merciful designs upon them.

What then do you not lose when you live not according to God! What do we ourselves not lose when you are wanting to us! Of how many advantages do you deprive believers! Of what consolations do you not deprive yourselves! What joy in heaven for the conversion of one sinner elevated in rank! How highly criminal when you live not according to God! You can neither be saved nor condemned alone. You resemble either that dragon of the Revelation, who, being cast out from heaven into the earth, drags after him in his fall so many of the stars; or that mysterious serpent spoken of by Jesus Christ, who, being exalted upon the earth, yet attracts all after him. You are established for the ruin or for the salvation of many; public scourges or public comforts. May you, my brethren, know your true interests; may you feel what you are in the designs of God, how much you have it in your power to do for his glory, how much he expecteth of you, how much the church, and even we ourselves, expect of you!

Ah! my brethren, you have an exalted idea of your rank and of your stations with regard to the world! But, permit me to tell you: You are yet unacquainted with all your greatness; you see but the humblest part of what you are; you are still greater with regard to piety; and the privileges of your virtue are much more illustrious and more marked than those of your titles. May you, my brethren, fulfil your destiny! And thou, O my God! touch, during these days of salvation, the great and the powerful, by the force of that truth with which thou fillest our mouths; draw to thyself those hearts upon whose conquest depends that of the rest of believers; have compassion upon thy people, by sanctifying those whom thy providence hath placed at their head; save Israel, in saving those who rule it; give to thy church great examples, who may perpetuate virtue from age to age, and who may assist, even to the end, in forming that immortal assembly of righteous which shall bless thy name for ever and ever.

SERMON XX.

ON THE INJUSTICE OF THE WORLD TOWARDS THE GODLY.

JOHN ix. 24.

Give God the praise; we know that this man is a sinner.

WHAT can be expected by the purest and most irreproachable virtue from the injustice of the world, seeing it hath formerly found subjects of scandal and censure in the sanctity even of Jesus Christ? If, in the sight of the Jews, he work wonderful miracles, if, on the occasion recorded in the text, he restore sight to the blind, they accuse him of being a Sabbath-breaker, of working miracles through Beelzebub rather than in the name of the Lord, and of only wishing, through these impostures, to overturn and to destroy the law of Moses; that is to say, they attack his intentions, in order to render his deeds suspicious and criminal.

If he honour with his presence the table of the Pharisees, that he may have an opportunity of recalling and instructing them, he is looked upon as a sinner, and as a lover of good cheer: that is to say, they make his deeds criminal when they find it inconvenient to search into the integrity of his intentions.

Again, If he appear in the temple, armed with zeal and severity, to avenge the profanations which disgrace that holy place, the zeal with which he is inflamed for the glory of his Father appears now to them, an unjust usurpation of an authority which belongs not to him : that is to say, they exercise themselves in vague and unfounded reproaches, when they have nothing to allege against his intentions, or his works.

I am obliged, my brethren, sorrowfully to confess that the piety of the godly doth not, at present, experience more indulgence among us, than the sanctity of Jesus Christ formerly met with in Judea. The pious are become objects of censure and derision to the public; and, in an age, when dissipation is become so general, when scandalous excesses of every kind furnish ample matter to the malignity of conversation and censure, every thing finds favour but virtue and innocence. Yes, my brethren, if the conduct of the godly appear irreproachable, and furnish no materials for censure, you fix yourselves on their intentions which pear not; you accuse them of labouring towards their own purposes, and of having their own separate views and designs.

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If their virtue seem to draw nearer to an equality with our own, and sometimes abate from its severity, in order to attach us to God, by an ostensible confor

mity to our manners and customs, you make their most innocent amusements and recreations appear criminal, without troubling yourselves about their intentions.

Again, If their virtue, inspired by a divine flame, no longer keep measures with the world, and leave nothing to be alleged against either their intentions or their acts; you then employ yourselves in vague discourses, and unfounded reproaches against even their zeal and piety.

Now, suffer me, my brethren, for once, to stand up against an abuse so disgraceful to religion, so injuriqus to that Being who forms the holy, so scandalous among Christians, so likely to draw down upon us those lasting curses, which formerly turned the inheritance of the Lord into a deserted and forsaken land, and so worthy of the zeal of our ministry.

You attack the intentions, when you have nothing to say against the works of the godly: this is an act at least of temerity. You exaggerate their weaknesses, and make their slightest imperfections appear criminal: this is inhuman. You turn even their zeal and fervour into ridicule this is impious. Behold, my brethren, the three descriptions of injustice committed by the world towards the pious. That rash species of injustice which always suspects their intentions: injustice of inhumanity, which gives no palliation to the slightest imperfections: The injustice of impiety, which, of their zeal and sanctity, makes a subject of contempt and derision. May these truths, O my God! obtain for virtue that honour and glory which are due to it, and force the world itself to respect pious characters, whom it is unworthy to possess !

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