unfolded to you in the course of these Lec tures, and to form them into principles, of action, and rules of conduct, for the regulation and direction of the remaining part of your lives.

walodz

In the history of our Lord, as given by St, Matthew, of which I have detailed the most essential parts, such a scene has been presented to your observation, as cannot but have excited sensations of a very serious and very awful nature in minds. You cannot your but have seen that the divine Author of our religion is, beyond comparison, the most extraordinary and most important personage, that ever appeared on this habitable globe. His birth, his life, his doctrines, his precepts, his miracles, his sufferings, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, are all without a parallel in the history of mankind. He called himself the Son of God, the Messiah predicted in the prophets, the great Redeemer and Deliverer of mankind, promised in the sacred writings, through successive ages, almost from the foundation of the world. He supported these great characters with uniformity, with consistence, and with dignity, throughout the whole course of his ministry. The work he undertook

undertook was the greatest and most astonishing that can be conceived, and such as before never entered into the imagination of man. It was nothing less than the conversion of a whole world from the grossest ignorance, the most abandoned wickedness, and the most sottish idolatry, to the knowledge of the true God, to a pure and holy religion, and to faith in him, who was THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE. He proved himself to have a commission from heaven, for those great purposes, by such demonstrations of divine wisdom, power, and goodness, as it is impossible for any fair and ingenuous, and unprejudiced mind, to resist. Of all this you have seen abundant instances in the course of these Lectures: and when all these circumstances are collected into one point of view, they present such a body of evidence, as must overpower by its weight all the trivial difficulties and objections that the wit of man can raise against the divine authority of the Gospel.

Consider in the first place, the transcendent excellence of our Lord's character, so infinitely beyond that of every other moral teacher; the gentleness, the calmness, the composure, the

dignity,

dignity, the integrity, the spotless sanctity of his manners, so utterly inconsistent with every idea of enthusiasm or imposture; the compassion, the kindness, the tenderness he expressed for the whole human race, even for the worst of sinners, and the bitterest of his enemies; the perfect command he had over his own passions; the temper he preserved under the severest provocations; the patience, the meekness with which he endured the cruellest insults, and the grossest indignities; the fortitude he displayed under the most excruciating torments; the sublimity and importance of his doctrines; the consummate wisdom and purity of his moral precepts, far exceeding the natural powers of a man born in the humblest situation, and in a remote and obscure corner of the world, without learning, education, languages, or books. Consider further the minute description of all the most material circumstances of his birth, life, sufferings, death, and resurrection, given by the ancient prophets many hundred years before he was born, and exactly fulfilled in him, and him only; the many astonishing miracles wrought by him in the open face of day, before thousands of spectators, the reality of

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which

which is proved by multitudes of the most un exceptionable witnesses, who sealed their testimony with their blood, and was even acknowledged by the earliest and most inveterate enemies of the Gospel. Above all, consider those two most remarkable occurrences in the history of our Lord, which have been particularly enlarged upon in these Lectures, and are alone sufficient to establish the divinity of his person and of his religion; I mean his wonderful prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, with every minute, circumstance attending it; and that astonishing and well authenticated miracle of his resurrection from the grave, which was in the last Lecture set before you: and when you lay all these things together, and weigh them deliberately and impartially, your minds must be formed in a very peculiar manner indeed, if they are not most thoroughly impressed with faith in the Son of God, and the Gospel which he taught.

i. Taking it then for granted that you firmly believe the Scriptures to be the Word of God: that of course they contain those heavenly

VOL. II.

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doctrines

doctrines and rules of life by which you are, to be guided here and saved hereafter; that the present scene is nothing more than a state of trial and probation for another world; that all mankind must rise from the grave, and stand before the judgment seat of Christ, to receive from his lips their final doom; and that there is NO OTHER NAME GIVEN UNDER HEAVEN BY WHICH YOU CAN BE SAVED? BUT THAT OF JESUS ONLY; no other possible way of escaping the punishments, or obtaining the rewards of the Christian covenant, but faith in Christ, reliance on his merits, and an earnest endeavour to practise every virtue, and fulfil every duty prescribed in his Gospel; taking it for granted that you believe all these things to be true, let me then ask you, what is the course of life which every wise man, which every man of common sense, must feel himself: irresistibly called upon to pursue? Is it possible, that with such awful, such divine truths as these, deeply impressed upon your souls, you can allow yourselves to be so entirely occupied with the various pursuits of this life, as to exclude, I will not say all thought (for that is impossible),

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