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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.

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 satis

fied in a manner that it is not very easy to express. We see almost now the scenes that have so long been passed ; we are made the spectators of our Saviour's birth, and the companions of his jour ney-we follow into every house where he conversed with men, and to every solitude where he held communion with God; and, from these early narratives 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 personal 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 mem

ory 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 unsheathes the sword to propagate its own feverish and frantick 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 betray themselves 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 desert," 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 mortal opposition could withstand. It is accordingly in this singular moment, when his divine commission was most fully manifested, and when we may suppose all the vulgar passions of hope and ambition were working in the minds of the multitude, "that he sends them 66 away;" to shew them that his kingdom was a "spiritual kingdom;"-that there were greater interests which he came to serve, than those of time; and that the reign of his power was to commence in a sublimer being, when the shadows of mortality were passed, and when time itself was

no more.

2. If the words of the text have this instruction to us, with regard to the character of our Lord, they have a second instruction with regard to the character of his religion. When you examine the systems of pretended revelation which have prevailed, or which are still prevailing in the world, you will find, that if their origin betrays the ambition of their authors, their character betrays equally the weakness and imperfection of human nature. To one or other of the fundamental errours in reli. gion;-to the encouragement either of superstition or of enthusiasm, and, by these means, to the fatal separation of piety from moral virtue, they have uniformly led. They have either drawn men from the sphere of social duty, to assemble them,

under the influence of superstition, in impure and sanguinary ceremonies, and persuaded them, that guilt could be expiated by the ritual of an unmeaning devotion; or they have driven them from all the most sacred relations of life, into solitudes and deserts, and taught them, that the Deity was to be propitiated by the tears of unproductive repentance, or the dreams of visionary illumination. The conduct of our Lord, and the spirit of His religion, are very different.-He assembles the multitude, indeed, around him, in the desert of human life, that he may teach them the end of that journey upon which they are going ;-that he may going;-that recal the wandering, and animate the desponding, and invigorate the "weary and the heavy laden;" —and he points out to them, with no mortal hand, that continuing city to which they travel, where there are mansions for all the holy and the good, and where there "dwelleth knowledge, and wis"dom, and joy." But when these mighty lessons are taught, he sends them away to their usual abodes and their usual occupations.-He sends them back again to their own homes, to that sacred though sequestered scene, where all their duties meet them on their return,-where every virtue and every vice of their nature takes its origin,—and where they can best display both the strength of their faith and the purity of their obedience. It is thus that the religion of Jesus blends the great interests of piety and of morality,-that.

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