that God will judge us, not acccording to the manner in which we live, but according to the manner in which we die? Have they not agreed in representing to us the inability of dying people to meditate with any degree of application; and, in a manner, the impossibility of being entirely renewed on a dying bed and yet, do not the greater number of Christians, even of those whose piety seems the most genuine, defer a great part of the work of their salvation to a dying hour? If you think I colour the corruption of the age too strongly, answer me one question: Whence proceeds our usual fear of sudden death? Since the last stages of life are in general the most fatiguing; since the reliefs, that are applied then are so disgustful; since parting adieus are so exquisitely painful; since slow agonies of death are so intolerable; why do we not consider sudden death as the most desirable of all advantages? Why is it not the constant object of our wishes? Why does a sudden death terrify a whole city? Is it not because our consciences tell us, that there remains a great deal to be done on our death-beds; and that we have deferred that work to the last period of life, which we ought to have performed in the days of vigour and health? Let us enter into these discussions, and we shall find that it does not belong to us, of all people, to exclaim against the obstinacy and infidelity of the Jews.

I have run this disagreeable parallel, I own, with great reluctance. However, the inference from the whole, I think, is very plain. The multitude ought to be no rule to us. We ought rather to imitate the example of one good Christian, than that of a multitude of idiots, who furiously rush into eternal misery. They, who rebel against the doctrine of Jesus Christ, are idiots: they who submit to them, are wise men. If the first class exceed the last, beyond all comparison in number, they ought to have no influence over our lives. If the smallest be the wisest class, we are bound to imitate them. Thus Jesus Christ reasons: Whereunto shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the market place, and calling one to another, and saying, we have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. For John the Baptist came neither eating bread, nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners. But wisdom is justified of all her children,' Luke vii. 31, &c.

There were but very few of the Jews, who entered into the spirit of the gospel; as, I own, there are but few of those called Christians, who enter into it; but they are the wise and rational part of mankind. Jesus Christ himself has determined it. Wisdom is justified of ALL her children.', This is not the opinion of a declaimer; this is the axiom of a philosopher, that carries its proof and demonstration with it.

Who were those Jews, who resisted the powerful exhortations of Jesus Christ, and the clear evidence of his miracles? They

were idiots, who imagined God would suffer all the laws of nature to be interrupted to favour falsehood, and to authorize an impostor: idiots, who thought Satan would oppose himself, and would himself lend his power to a man whose doctrine had no other end than the subversion of his empire; idiots, who annihilated prophecy under a pretence of giving it a sublime meaning: idiots, who knew not the true interest of mankind; who could not perceive, that to put riches and grandeurs into the possession of men, whose dispositions, like theirs, were unrenewed, was to put daggers and death into madmen's hands; idiots, who for a great number of years had lightnings flashing in their eyes, and thunders roaring in their ears; but who coolly endeavoured to shut their eyes, and to stop their ears, till the tempest struck them dead, and reduced them to ashes.

What is the character of a modern infidel, who prefers a system of irreligion before the system of Christianity? He is an idiot; a man who voluntarily shuts his eyes against evidence and truth: a man who, under pretence that all cannot be explained to him, determines to deny what can a man who cannot digest the difficulties of religion, but can digest those of skepticism: a man who cannot conceive how the world should owe its existence to a Supreme Being, but can easily conceive how it was formed by chance. On the contrary, what is the character of a believer? He is a wise man, a child of wisdom; a man who acknowledges the imperfections of his nature: a man who, knowing by experience the inferiority and uncertainty of his own conjectures, applies to revelation: a man who, distrusting his own reason, yields it up to the direction of an infallible Being, and is thus enabled, in some sense, to see with the eyes of God himself.

What is the character of a man who refuses to obey this saying of Jesus Christ, No man can serve two masters?' Matt. vi. 24. He is an idiot; he is a man who, by endeavouring to unite the joys of heaven with the pleasures of the world, deprives himself of the happiness of both: he is a man, who is always agitated between two opposite parties, that makes his soul a seat of war, where virtue and vice are in continual fight. On the contrary, what is the character of a man who obeys this saying of Jesus Christ? He is a man who after he has applied all the attention of which he is capable, to distinguish the good from the bad, renounces the last, and embraces the first: a man who, having felt the force of virtuous motives, does not suffer himself to be imposed on by sensual sophisms: a man, who judges of truth and error by those infallible marks which characterize both; and not by a circulation of the blood, a flow, or dejection, of animal spirits, and by other similar motives, which, if I may be allowed to say so, make the whole course of the logic, and the whole stock of the erudition, of the children of this world.

What is the character of the man who refuses to obey this command of Jesus Christ, Lay not up treasures upon earth; for where your treasure is, there will your heart

neither the rage of Jezebel nor the remembrance of so many prophets of the true God sacrificed to false gods, nothing terrifies him, nothing affects him. I have not troubled Israel, replies he; but thou, and thy father's house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim,' ver. 13. Was ever charge retorted with more magnanimity and courage?

My brethren, I invite you to day to contemplate men more unjust than Ahab, and I invite you to contemplate one more magnanimous than Elijah. Jesus Christ undertook a work, that all the prophets,-what am I say ing? he undertook a work which all the angels of heaven united would have undertaken in vain. He came to reconcile heaven and earth. God, who sent him into the world in this grand business, communicated the Spirit without measure to him,' John iii. 34. Jesus Christ dedicated himself entirely to the office. He made the will of the Father who had charged him with the salvation of mankind, his meat and drink,' chap. iv. 34. By meditation, by retirement, by a holiness formed on the plan of the holiness of God, of whose glory' he is the brightness,' of whose person he is the express image,' Heb. i. 3, he prepared himself for that grand sacrifice, which was designed to extinguish the flames of divine justice, burning to avenge the wickedness of mankind. After a life so truly amiable, he was dragged before judges, and accused before human tribunals of being a firebrand of sedition, who came to set society in a flame. Jesus Christ was not moved with this accusation. Neither the inveteracy of his accusers, nor the partiality of his judge, neither the prospect of death, nor the idea of the cross, on which he knew he was to expire, nothing could make him act unworthy of his character. Always ready to communicate to inquirers the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, of which he was the depositary, and to reveal himself to them, as the true light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world, John i. 9. On this occasion, he justly discovered his superiority over his accusers, and over his judges, by refusing to gratify the vain desire of Herod, who wished to see him work a miracle, and by leaving, without any other apology, his doctrine to apologize for itself.

These are the grand objects which are proposed to your meditation in the text, and in the seven following verses that are connected with it. The whole period is perhaps the most barren part of the history of the passion: but the most barren parts of this miraculous history are so fruitful in instruction, that I must needs omit many articles, and confine myself to the examination of the first words, which are my text, he stirreth up the people.' It will be necessary, however, briefly to explain the following verses, and, after a short explication of them, we return to the text, the principal matter of this discourse. We will examine the charge of troubling society, which has always been laid against Jesus Christ and his gospel.

O, you! who so often blame religious discourses for troubling that false peace, which you taste in the arms of security, blush to

day to see what unworthy models you imitate! And we, ministers of the living, God, so often intimidated at this odious charge, let us learn to day courageously to follow the steps of that Jesus who bore so great a 'contradiction of sinners against himself!' Heb. xii. 3. May God assist us in this work! Amen.

Jesus Christ had been interrogated by Pilate, and had answered two calumnies that had been objected against him. The conduct of Jesus Christ had always been remarkable for submission to magistracy, and for contempt of human grandeurs. However, he had been accused before Pilate of having forbidden to pay tribute to Cesar, and of having affected royalty. Pilate had exami ned him on these two articles, and, on both, Jesus Christ had justified his innocence, confounded his accusers, and satisfied his judge.

An upright judge would have acquitted this illustrious prisoner after he had acknowledged his innocence. Pilate took another method. Whether it were cowardice, or folly, or policy, or all these dispositions together, he seized the first opportunity that offered, to remove a cause into another court, which he thought he could not determine without danger to himself. My brethren, I have known many magistrates of consummate knowledge; I have seen many of incorruptible principles, whose equity was incapable of diversion by those bribes which the Scripture says 'blind the eyes of the wise,' Exod. xxiii. 8. But how rare are they who have resolution enough, not only to judge with rectitude, but also to support with an undaunted heroism, those suffrages which are the dictates of equity and truth! Pilate instead of discharg ing Jesus Christ from his persecutors and executioners, in some sort assisted their cruelty. Neither able sufficiently to stifle the dictates of his own conscience to condemn him, nor obedient enough to them to acquit him, he endeavoured to find a judge, either more courageous, who might deliver him, or less scrupulous, who might condemn him to death.

6

The countrymen of Jesus Christ furnished Pilate with a pretence. They were the more fierce,' says our evangelist, saying, He stirreth up the people from Galilee to this place.' Who were they who brought this accusation against Jesus Christ? Were they only the Roman soldiery and the Jewish populace? No: they were divines and ecclesiastics!.... let us turn from these horrors. When Pilate heard of Galilee,' adds St. Luke, he asked whether the man were a Galilean?' Christ was born in Bethlehem, a town in Judea, according to this prophecy of Micah, And thou, Bethlehem in the land of Judah, art not the least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall come a governor, that shall rule my people Israel,' Matt. ii. 6; but his mother was of Nazareth, in Galilee, from whence she came to Jerusalem with Joseph, on account of a command of Augustus, which it is needless to enlarge on here. In Galilee, therefore, and particularly at Nazareth, Jesus Christ passed those thirty years of his life, of which the evangelists gave us no account. We may remark, by the way, that these circumstances brought about

ported to find that Jesus Christ was an inhabitant of this city; because it served them for a pretence to give him a name of contempt; accordingly, they called him a Nazarene. They afterward gave the same despicable name to his disciples. St. Jerome tells us, that in his time they anathematized Christians under the name of Nazarenes. We see also in the book of Acts, that Christians were called Galileans; and by this name they are known in heathen writers.

Let us return. Herod Antipas (son of Herod the Great, the same whom John the Baptist reproved for keeping Herodias, his brother Philip's wife) reigned in Galilee, under the title of Tetrarch, when Jesus Christ was cited before Pilate. This was what engaged the Roman governor to send him to this prince. Whether Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, descended from heathen parents, as some affirm; whether he were of Jewish extraction, as others say; or whether he were an Idumean, according to the general opinion, is not very material. It is very certain, that if this prince were not sincerely of the religion of Moses, he pretended to be so; and, as the law required all heads of families to celebrate four grand festivals in the year at the capital of Judea, he had come up to Jerusalem to keep the Passover, at which time the Lord Jesus underwent his passion.

The reputation of our Saviour had reached this prince. The gospel tells us the absurd notion that he had entertained of him. He thought him John the Baptist, whom he had sacrificed, with as much cowardice as cruelty, to the revenge of Herodias. His notion was founded on an opinion of the Jews, who thought, that many prophets, particularly they who had sealed their doctrine with their blood, would rise again at the coming of the Messiah. Herod was glad of an opportunity of informing himself in this article. He flattered himself, that if he should not see such a singular object as a man raised from the dead, at least Jesus Christ would not refuse to conciliate his esteem, by gratifying his curiosity, and by performing some extraordinary work in his presence. But should Providence interrupt the ordinary course of nature to amuse a profane court? Jesus Christ not only would not prostitute his mi

A very little attention to the genius of the great will be sufficient to convince us, that the silence of Jesus Christ, and his refusal to condescend to the caprice of Herod, must naturally expose him to the contempt of this prince, and to that of his courtiers. Accord ingly, we are told, that they set him at nought, and mocked him, and sent him back again to Pilate.' Some have inquired a reason why Herod put on him a white garment and some learned men have thought he in tended thereby to attest his innocence; and this opinion seems to agree with what Pilate said to the Jews; Neither 'I nor Herod have found any fault in this man, touching those things whereof ye accuse him.' But they who advance this opinion, ought to prove, that the Jews, or the Romans, did put white garments on persons whom they acquitted. I own, though I have taken some pains to look for this custom in the writings of antiquity, I have not been able to find it: however, it doth not follow, that others may not discover it. Nor is it any clearer, in my opinion, that the design of those, who put this habit on Jesus Christ, was the same with that of the soldiers, who put a reed in the form of a sceptre into his hand, to insult him because he said he was a king. I would follow the rule here which seems to me the most sure; that is, I would suspend my judgment on a subject that cannot be explained.

I add but one word more, before I come to the principal object of our meditation. The evangelist remarks, that the circumstances, which he related, I mean the artful address of Pilate to Herod, in sending a culprit of his jurisdiction to his bar; and the similar arti fice of Herod to Pilate, in sending him back again, occasioned their reconciliation. What could induce them to differ? The sacred history doth not inform us; and we can only conjecture. We are told, that some subjects of Herod Antipas, who probably had made an insurrection against the Romans, had been punished at Jerusalem during the passover by Pilate, Luke xiii. 1, who had mixed their blood with that of the sacrifices, which they intended to offer to God at the feast. But

*Our author follows the reading of the French Bible, Revestu d'un vestement blanc; our translation reads it, Arrayed in a gorgeous robe; and the origi nal word μpay signifies both. A white garment and kings wore white garments. See Esther viii. 15; was a gorgeous, a splendid garment, because priests 2Chron. v. 12. The heavenly visions, which are recorded in Scripture, and which were intended for the more easy apprehension and instruction of those who their imagery between themselves and the known were honoured with them, preserve an analogy in objects of real life. Hence God, Christ, angels, and the spirits of the just, are represented as clothed in white, Dan. vii. 9; Luke ix. 29; Acts i. 10, and

Rev. iii. 4.

Herod's design in arraying Christ in white is not known; and whether we ought, with Casaubon, in the following words, to find a mystery in it, we will apud veteres, regia pariter et sacerdotalis esset; quis not pretend to say. "Cum igitur vestis candida, mysterio factum a providentia divina non agnoscat; quod verus rex, verus sacerdos, a suis irrisoribus candida veste amicitur? Fuit, quidem, istorum aniticam, neque hic, neque in crucis titulo Indebat." mus pessimus: sed hoc veritatis significationem mys Exerc. in Bar. Annal. §. 73, E. 16.

the Scripture does not say, whether this affair occasioned the difference that subsisted between the tetrarch of the Jews and the Roman governor. In general, it was natural for these two men to be at enmity. On the one hand, the yoke, which the Romans had put on all the nations of the earth, was sufficient to excite the impatience of all, except the natives of Rome; and to stir them up to perplex and to counteract the governors, whom they set over the countries which they had invaded. On the other, it must be acknowledged, that they, who are deputed to govern conquered provinces, and, for a time, to represent the sovereign there, very seldom discharge their offices with mildness and equity. They are instantly infatuated with that shadow of royalty to which they have not been accustomed; and hence come pride and insolence. They imagine, they ought to push their fortune, by making the most of a rank from which they must presently descend; and hence come injustice and extortion. The reconciliation of Herod and Pilate is more surprising than their discord.

We hasten to more important subjects. We will direct all your remaining attention to the examination of the text, 'He stirreth up the people from Galilee to this place.' The doctrine of Jesus Christ has always been accused of troubling society. They, who have preached truth and virtue, have always been accounted disturbers of the peace of society. I would inquire,

In what respects this charge is false: and in what respects it is true.

II. From the nature of those troubles which Jesus Christ, and his ministers, excite, I would derive an apology for Christianity in general, and for a gospel ministry in particular; and prove that the troubling of society ought not to be imputed to those who preach the doctrine of Christ; but to those who hear it.

III. As we are now between two days of solemn devotion, between a fast, which we have observed a few days ago, and a communion, that we shall receive a few days hence: I shall infer from the subject a few rules, by which you may know, whether you have kept the first of these solemnities, or whether you will approach the last, with suitable dispositions. Our text, you see, my brethren, will supply us with abundant matter for the remaining part of this exercise.

This was the exclamation of the heavenly host, when they appeared to the shepherds. Jesus Christ perfectly answers these descriptions.

Consider the kingdom of this divine Saviour, and you will find, all his maxims are peace, all tend to unity and concord: 'A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; by this shall all men know that, ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another,' John xiii. 34. Peace is the inheritance he left to his disciples: peace Ileave with you, my peace I give unto you,' chap. xiv. 27. Peace between God and man; being justified by faith we have peace with God,' Rom. v. 1; he has reconciled all things unto himself, having made peace through the blood of his cross,' Col. i. 20. Peace between Jews and Gentiles; for he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; and came and preached peace to you which were afar off, and to them that were nigh,' Eph. ii. 14. 17. Peace in the society of the first disciples; for 'all that believed were together, and had all things common,' Acts ii. 44. Peace in the conscience; for without Jesus Christ trouble and terror surround us. Heaven is armed with lightnings and thunderbolts, the earth under the curse, a terrible angel, with a flaming sword, forbids our access to the gate of paradise, and the stings of conscience are 'the arrows of the Almighty; the poison whereof drinketh up the spirit.' Job vi. 4. But at the approach of Jesus Christ our miseries flee, and we listen to his voice, which cries to us, 'Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and ye shall find rest unto your souls,' Matt. ix. 28, 29.

But, if religion, considered in itself, breathes only peace, it actually occasions trouble in society; through the dispositions of those to whom it is preached. According to the gene ral dispositions of mankind, the religion of Jesus Christ must necessarily disgust, and therefore disturb, schools, courts, churches, and families; stirring up one minister against another minister, a confessor against a tyrant, a pastor against a people, a father against his family.

1. Schools. There were two celebrated schools in the days of Jesus Christ, the Pagan school, and the Jewish school. The Pagan schools were fountains of errors. They taught erroneous opinions of God, whose excellence they pretended to represent by figures of men, animals, and devils. They taught erroneous opinions of man, of whose origin, obligations, and end, they were totally ignorant. They taught erroneous opinions of morality, which they had adjusted not according to the dictates of conscience, but agreeably to the suggestions of their own vicious hearts.