SERMON VI.

ON THE ENCOURAGEMENT WHICH THE GOSPEL AFFORDS TO ACTIVE DUTY.

St MARK, viii. 9.

"And they that had eaten were about four thousand and he sent them away."

THESE words are the conclusion of the account of the first miracle which our Saviour performed in feeding a multitude in the desert; and, simple as they seem, they yet contain much valuable instruction.

H

There is a curiosity natural to every Christian mind, to retrace the events of the life of their Master;-to go back, as it were, to the age in which he appeared;-to see his humble origin, and his melancholy progress ;-and, amid those scenes of beneficence and of sorrow through which he passed, to listen to the accents of his voice, and to the lessons of his wisdom. It is this natural and becoming curiosity which the books of the Gospel so singularly indulge. In these artless narrations, the mind of the serious reader is satisfied in a manner that it is not very easy to express. We see almost now the scenes that have so long been past; we are made the spectators of our Saviour's birth, and the companions of his journey; we follow into every house where he conversed with men, and to every solitude where he held communion with God; and, from these early narra

tives of his humble and unlearned disciples, we derive a more intimate conception, both of his peculiar character and of the character of the religion which he taught, than from all the laboured expositions of learned skill, or of ambitious eloquence.

The words of the text seem to me to convey to us some instructions of this interesting kind. They represent, in the first place, one singular feature in the character of our Lord,-his superiority to all the selfish passions of our nature. The world, (as ye know, my brethren,) has seen many false religions; and many prophets have come unto them in the "name of Heaven." Whatever may have been the usefulness to barbarous ages of these religious impositions, whatever even may have been the sublimity of some of the doctrines they contained, they are yet all marked by one decisive feature;

their combination with some per

sonal interest, or some selfish passion of the Man. They have been mingled, either with that love of glory which aims at the subjugation of the minds of mankind, and which perpetuates its memory in the temples it erects to Heaven; with that love of power, which, under the mask of piety, aims at supremacy and dominion ; or with that dark enthusiasm, which unsheaths the sword to propagate its own feverish and frantic imaginations. In the character of our Saviour, on the contrary, there is always something above the world :—a superiority alike to all that is great and all that is weak in man;—a forgetfulness of himself, which results rather from nature than from effort, and which assimilates him, in our opinion, to some higher and purer order of existence. No love of glory or of power ever betrays itself in his conduct; and, instead of awakening the enthusiasm

of men by revelations, sublime only from their obscurity, his object is ever to veil, as it were, the majesty of the truths he reveals:-to speak to the heart, rather than to the imagination of those who heard him; and to make them rather the children of God, than the temporal followers of himself. Of this distinguishing feature in our Saviour's character, we have a remarkable proof in the words of the text. The miracle which he had performed, "that "of feeding four thousand men in the de"sert," you will observe, was of a nature very different from those which he usually performed. It was one, which demonstrated his power over nature itself; which taught those who witnessed it, that, if his kingdom were of this world, he possessed the power to maintain it; and which might lead them to wish to assemble under a leader, whose commands nature obeyed, and whom, therefore, no