refuse her even the name? You that court that fortune which engrosses you, to which you devote all your cares, all your exertions, all your movements, in short, your whole soul, mind, will, and life, that is your idol; and what criminal homage do you refuse from the moment that it is exacted of you, and that it may become the price of its favour? You, that shameful intemperance, which debases your name and birth; which no longer accords even with our manners; which has drowned and besotted all your talents in the excesses of wine and debauchery; which, by rendering you callous to every thing else, leaves you neither relish nor feeling but for the brutal pleasures of the table, that is your idol: you think that you live only in those moments given to it: and your heart renders more homage to that infamous and abject god than your despicable and profane songs. The passions formerly made the gods; and Jesus Christ hath destroyed these idols only by destroying the passions which had raised them up; you exalt them again, by reviving all the passions which had rendered the whole world idolatrous. And what matters it to know a single god, if you elsewhere bestow your homages? Worship is in the heart; and if the true God be not the God of your heart, you place, like the pagans, vile creatures in his place, and you render not to him that glory which is his due.
Thus, Jesus Christ doth not confine himself to manifesting the name of his Father to men, and to establishing, on the ruins of idols, the knowledge of the true God. He raiseth up worshippers, who reckon external homages as nothing, unless animated and sanctified by love; and who shall consider mercy, justice, and holiness, as the offerings most worthy of God, and the most shining attendants of their worship. — Second blessing from the birth of Jesus Christ, and second sort of glory which he renders to his Father.
In effect, God was known, says the prophet, in Judea; Jerusalem beheld no idols in the public places, usurping the homages due to the God of Abraham; " There was neither iniquity in Jacob, nor perverseness in Israel:" that single portion of the earth was free from the general contagion. But the magnificence of its temple, the pomp of its sacrifices, the splendour of its solemnities, the exactitude of its lawful observances, constituted the whole merit of its worship; all religion was confined to these external duties. Its morals were not less criminal. Injustice, fraud, falsehood, adultery, every vice subsisted, and was even countenanced by these vain appearances of worship. God was honoured from the lips; but the heart of that ungrateful people was ever distant from him.
Jesus Christ comes to open the eyes of Judea on an error so gross, so ancient, and so injurious to his Father. He comes to inform them, that man may be satisfied with externals alone, but that God regards only the heart; that every outward homage which withholds it from him, is an insult and a hypocrisy rather than a true worship; that it matters little to purify the external, if the
