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SERMON XXXII.*

ON THE LOVE OF WORLDLY PRAISE.

COLOSSIANS iii. 23.

Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as to the Lord, and not unto men.

ST. PAUL originally addressed this exhortation, in an Epistle written some time about the year 62, to converts, the slaves of heathen masters, who resided at Colossæ, the metropolis of Phrygia. Probable it is, that comparing the reasonableness and purity of the doctrines in which they had recently been instructed with the absurd tenets and superstititious worship of their employers, they became secretly inclined to throw off the yoke of servitude, or to withdraw some portion at least of their wonted obedience. The Apostle, therefore, instructs them to distinguish between their social and their religious relations. The liberty which they had lately acquired under the Gospel was freedom from the tyranny of sinful habits, and the bondage of the Jewish ritual-not exemption from those good offices, which, by the customs and institutions of their country, were due to their domestic superiors. On the contrary, the law of God now called upon them more strongly to do that which, by the *July 1817.

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law of man, had been previously required to be done. As believers in Jesus, they were under the strictest obligations to be more respectful to the persons, and more faithful to the interests, of their masters than were other slaves hitherto unconverted. While the heathen male domestic looked to the eye of his master, and the heathen maiden to the eye her mistress with feigned smiles and stifled moans -while day after day, and year after year they toiled from compulsion rather than choice-while their general aim was to escape the gloomy dungeon, the galling fetter, and the uplifted scourge, and their occasional lot to receive a scanty and precarious pittance of praise; the Christian slave was bound to execute the work assigned to him heartily, and to consider himself as serving under the view, and as responsible to the authority of a far mightier Master.

Now without offensive violence to language, and upon the clearest grounds of analogy, the words of the text will admit a wider application. In truth, the principle contained in them related to every station in society, whether high or low-to every degree of intellect, whether more or less cultivatedto every moral agent who, as such, oweth homage to his Maker and Preserver; and therefore the import of the words of the text thus extended, may be stated in a paraphrase similar to the following.

It is the distinguishing characteristic of your religion, that it enjoins not only the external performance of our duty, but that inward rectitude of intention which invigorates every motive, and dignifies

every action. In order to be Christians, you must not rest satisfied with appearing to be devout, or just, or charitable; you must join in the public worship of the Supreme Being, not to impress others with an exalted idea of your piety, but to thank Almighty God for his mercies, to implore his forgiveness, and to obtain his protection-you must be inflexibly upright in your dealings, not merely because the laws of your country will punish secret fraud and outrageous rapine, or because ignominy overtakes those misdeeds of which the magistrate cannot take cognizance, but because he whose eyes are too pure to behold iniquity will ultimately destroy the unjust and reward the just. In the same manner must you give your bread to the poor, and comfort the afflicted; not solely that your characters may stand fair with the world, but in compliance with the dictates of that sympathy which is interwoven in your very nature, and by which the Almighty has taught your hearts to melt on viewing the distresses of your fellow-creatures. In familiar or grave conversation upon literature, science, and even the ordinary events of life-amidst the bustle of secular business, the gaiety of convivial intercourse, and other social enjoyments, which exhilirate the mind without corrupting ityou must not make a show of superior sanctity by expatiating upon the awful subjects of religion, and exclaiming with a pharisaical air of singularity and solemnity, "Lord, Lord;" but when you retire into the closet, or kneel in the sanctuary, reverently should you meditate upon the works, and the Word

of God, and in every transaction, secret or open, which is really connected with duty, diligently should you strive to adapt your resolutions and measures to his holy will-you must not shrink from any difficulty however stubborn, or any peril however formidable in the service of your Creator. Whatsoever indeed you do must be done heartily, and being thus done will be acceptable and praiseworthy not only in the sight of men, who may sometimes overlook and sometimes depreciate it, but in the sight of God, who hath wisdom to discern, and goodness to recompense it, according to its actual and inherent merit.

So plain, yet so important is the lesson which you are taught by the Holy Scriptures in general, as well as by the passage which we are now considering; for surely if the slave was to act towards his earthly master, not as looking to men, but unto the Lord, by parity of reasoning you, through the whole extent of your obedience to your Heavenly Master, must perform his will directly and steadily, for the purpose of deserving his favour. On the practice of that lesson, all that is efficient in faith, and all that is laudable in morality, must depend; for unless you act heartily as conscious of being seen by the Deity, and desirous of being approved by him, your conduct, even as it regards men, will often be debased by inconsistency, and often contaminated by guilt.

The text, you see, forbids you to act as appealing to the judgments of men, exclusively, and even chiefly; it directs you to act with that firmness, and

that zeal, which are the happy effects of our deep conviction, that in the practice of every virtue, and the avoidance of every vice, our aim is to perform the service which is due to our Master who is in heaven.

Keeping therefore in view what the Apostle interdicts and what he enjoins, I shall first consider the love of worldly praise as it constitutes an exclusive principle of action; secondly, I shall endeavour to show, that by weakening those motives which ought to be most powerful, and strengthening those which ought to be subordinate, it eventually obstructs the discharge of many noble duties. When these two points have been discussed, we can with greater propriety attend to the exact degree of influence which a regard to the opinion of the world may justifiably and even meritoriously have on our behaviour. I shall in the conclusion, both in this and a subsequent discourse, introduce such practical remarks as may be suggested by the various topics which come before us.

Now in the concerns of religion there may be often seen an earnestness and a perseverance which certainly do not coincide with St. Paul's injunction for us to act heartily. That earnestness, indeed, should be called precipitation, and that perseverance, obstinacy, when the object we have in view is not to fulfil the commands of God, but to gratify some wayward and inordinate passion of our own. Of this kind was the eagerness which, as we read in the Epistle to the Galatians, some opponents of St. Paul manifested in contending for the absolute and