an ungrateful people? You have refused to believe in me, said he to them a few days before his death; you have shut your eyes against the light; you have had ears, yet you heard not; I go, and you shall die in you blindness. If you were still blind, and if you had never known the truth, your sin would be more excuseable; but at present, you see, I have announced to you the truths which my Father had taught me, and therefore your sin is without excuse: your obstinacy is consummate; you have rejected that salvation which shall be offered to you no more, and the guilt of the truth despised must for ever be upon your head.
Great God! should this then be the price of my toils, and the whole fruit of my ministry? Could the unworthiness of the instrument, which thou hast employed to announce thy word, have destroyed its efficacy, and placed a fatal impediment to the progress of the gospel? No, my dear brethren, the virtue of the word of the cross is not attached to that of the minister who announces it. In the hands of the Lord, clay can give sight to the blind; and, when he pleaseth, the walls of Jericho fall at the sound of the weakest trumpets. I trust then in the Lord for you, my brethren, that having received his word with gladness, as Paul formerly said to the believers of Corinth, that, having received it, not as the word of man, but as the word of God, it shall fructify in you; and that, on the awful day of judgment, when account shall be demanded from me of my ministry, and from you of the fruit which you have reaped from it, I shall be your defence and your Justification, and you my glory and my crown. So do I ardently wish it.
SERMON XIX.
ON THE VICES AND VIRTUES OF THE GREAT.
"And the devil showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them: and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me."— Matthew iv. 8, 9.
Human prosperities have always been one of the most dangerous wiles employed by the devil to entrap men. He knows that the love of fame and of distinction is so natural to us, that, in general, nothing is considered as too much for their attainment; and that the use of them is so seducing, and so apt to lead astray, that nothing is more rare than piety surrounded with pomp and power.
Nevertheless, it is God alone who raiseth up the great and the powerful; who placeth you above the rest, in order to be the fathers of the people, the comforters of the afflicted, the refuge of the helpless, the supports of the church, the protector of virtue, and the models of all believers.
Suffer then, my brethren, that, entering into the spirit of our gospel, I here lay before you the dangers, as well as the advantages of your state; and that I point out to you the obstacles and the
