you,

example to go on in sin; whether the members of Christ's body derive warmth and refreshment from their communion with and go from your presence with new views of the preciousness of their faith. Are you living as if the church to which you belong leaned upon you? Are you strenuous in your endeavors to increase its spirituality, and to multiply its energies? Can you point to a soul for whose conversion you are laboring and praying with a faith and zeal that will not tire and faint? Do you cultivate a missionary spirit, whereby in your own person or that of others, you may reach the desolate neighborhoods, the wildernesses of Zion around you? Above all do you watch with a godly jealousy over your own daily conduct and converse, determined that they shall speak with an eloquence indirect, unostentatious, inoffensive, but powerful upon all who witness them? Do you associate with men of the world, as one impelled by higher purposes, and cheered by brighter hopes, and subsisting on more celestial food? Does religion beam from your eye, does it animate your countenance, does it breathe in all your actions, like a living reality rather than a cold dead profession? My brethren, what we do must be done quickly. When we are in our graves, not we but ours shall be working. We shall be silent, but our influence will be living and speaking still. Then we cannot recall the idle word, or the sinful act, which may be moving on in its career of mischief. But now while it is called to-day, if we do but rouse ourselves, we may redeem the past, we may check the circulation of our own sins, we may wake up to the consciousness of who we are, where we are, and what we can do. God shall be glorified, and souls saved, and Zion rejoice in the efficiency of her sons. And when we reach our heavenly abode, like a long track of light and beauty shall we follow the blessed influence in its eternal work.

My friends, let us all consider how fearfully and wonderfully we are made, and that it becomes us to walk softly in a

universe, where one step to the right or the left may be fraught with consequences so stupendous. Let us lean on God, who alone can save us from incurring the awful guilt of abusing this precious talent, and ruining the souls of men.

NOTE.

"This sermon," says an intimate friend of Mr. Homer, “he regarded as a mere extemporaneous effusion, without any particular form or finish. It was esteemed by his hearers, however, as one of his most effective discourses."-He ordinarily preached it as an evening lecture. It was delivered at South Berwick, May 8, 1840; afterwards at Dover, N. H., South Boston, Portsmouth, N. H., Newmarket N. H., Danvers, Mass., Buffalo, N. Y., Rochester, N. H., and Great Falls, N. H.

SERMON VIII.

CHARACTER OF PONTIUS PILATE.

AND PILATE GAVE SENTENCE THAT IT SHOULD BE AS THEY REQUIRED. Luke 23: 24.

THERE is an air of veritable narrative about the New Testament, which distinguishes it from all other religious books. Its scenes and characters are many of them a part of general as well as sacred history. We look into the records of other religions, and we find that the beings and events they treat of are altogether of a supernatural character, and such, that as men and as historians we cannot sympathize with them. Even the Old Testament relates to a people peculiar and secluded, and as the incidents and persons it brings to our view are seldom recorded in the annals of classical literature, they often lack the breathing form of historical realities. But the New Testament marks the era of the blending of sacred with secular history, of the connection of the Jews with the civilized world, the world with which Livy and Tacitus have made us familiar; and this second revelation introduces us to the society of common life; we recognize as old acquaintances the characters and laws and customs brought to our view; with the group of martyrs and apostles there sometimes mingle the iron features of the Roman soldier, and our faith is appealed to with a directness and intimacy, which the

purely religious narrative could never acquire. It is a mark of peculiar wisdom, that the most momentous event which the bible records, is brought home to us from the tribunal of a well known Roman Procurator, and depicted in the familiar forms of a Roman scourge and cross.

The character and history of Pontius Pilate are not fully given in the gospels. But if we examine the secular traditions in connection with the inspired narrative, they cannot fail to throw light upon each other. The accounts of the trial of Jesus seem to present the governor, as characterized by general weakness of principle rather than strongly-marked depravity. But the record of his administration in profane history is stained with every atrocity. Philo describes him as a man of obstinate temper and imperturbable arrogance, and speaks of the wantonness with which he condemned the innocent, and the cruelty with which he executed the laws. Incidents are related by the several historians of the period which confirm this description. On one occasion he shocked the religious feelings of the Jews, by introducing triumphal images of Cæsar into the holy city, and even provoked the emperor to a rebuke. At another time he appropriated the sacred treasure to defray the expenses of an aqueduct to Jerusalem, and when the people were assembled to complain of the outrage, he let loose upon them his soldiers arrayed in the common costume, like so many blood-hounds to follow up and chastise every breathing of rebellion. To those stern features which became him as the representative of the Roman government, he seems to have added a natural love for cruelty, and that intense hatred of the Jews which had already began to hunt down the persons and the customs of that ill-fated race.

Such was the man selected by the enemies of Jesus, to consummate their own infamous proceedings. His ordinary residence was at Caesarea, but he had come up to Jerusalem at this time of the Passover, to hold a criminal court, as well

as to suppress any tumult which might rise amid the vast gathering, and the religious excitements of that noted festival. There were various reasons which may at this time have induced the Sanhedrim to transfer their criminal to the Roman judicatory. The power of inflicting capital punishment had been already removed from their hands, and although they need not have feared a strict enforcement of the regulation, they wished the punishment to be more ignominious and cruel than it was their own custom to inflict. They felt moreover secret misgivings of the flagrancy of their conduct, and they wished to throw off the responsibility of the final issue upon one whose hardened conscience could bear the weight. And they may have feared, that the fickle populace would frustrate their designs by some premature change of opinion, or that, after the victim had fallen, the buried affections of the multitude would rise up and call for vengeance on the persecutors. Agitated by a consciousness of wrong and terrified by a foreboding of judgment, they gladly sought refuge and aid in the very power which was their dread and hatred; and they felt safe in the coöperation of a government proverbial for its recklessness of human life, swift and savage enough to gratify their own insatiate cruelty, strong enough to silence every whisper of opposition, and wicked enough to make this outrage appear like a small drop in an ocean of crime.

It was at about five o'clock on Friday morning, soon after the hour of sunrise, when they hurried away from the scene of their own nefarious trial in the high-priest's court yard to the palace of Herod, where Pilate was then residing. They were a group of strongly marked figures. They wore the despairing aspect of the last men of a noble race. The dignity of the old prophet was not there, neither did the faithful waiting for the promises light up those features with the smiles of hope. They walked along that dolorous path like the ghosts of ancient greatness. The ruins of the Mosaic