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with that argument is listened to, which goes to set forth the efficacy of Christian doctrine, or to magnify the office of him who delivers it.

much such attentions as these, kept up, and made to play in busy and constant recurrence upon one local neighbourhood; it is not yet known how much and how powerfully they tell in drawing the hearts of the people to- We can offer no computation that will wards him who faithfully and with honest satisfy such antagonists as these, of the imfriendship, discharges them. They will portance of Christianity even to the civil make the pulpit which he fills a common and the temporal well-being of our species; centre of attraction to the whole territory and we shall, therefore, plead the authority over which he expatiates; and we need not, of our text, for extending its lessons to every that we may see exemplified in human so-creature-for going forth with it to every ciety the worth and importance of the pas-haunt and every habitation where immortal toral relationship, we need not go alone beings are to be found-for not merely caramong the sequestered vales, or the far and rying it beyond the limits of Christendom, upland retreats of our country parishes. It but for filling up with instruction the many is not a local phenomenon dependent on blank, and vacant, and still unoccupied geography. It is a general one, dependent places, teeming with population, that, even on the nature of man; on those laws of the within these limits have not been overtaken. heart, which no change of place or of cir- What! shall we be told, that if there is a cumstances can obliterate. To gain the man under heaven, whom the Gospel has moral ascendency of which we speak, it is not yet reached, it is but obedience to a last enough if the upright and laborious clergy- and solemn commandment, when the misman have human feelings and human fami- sionary travels even to the farthest verge of lies on every side of him. It signifies not our horizon, that he may bear it to his door where. Give him Christian kindness, and-shall we be told of the thousands who this will pioneer a way for him amongst all are beside us, that, though their souls are the varieties of place and of population. perishing for lack of knowledge, we might, Beside the smoke, and the din, and the diz- without one care or one effort abandon zying wheel of crowded manufactories, will them? Are we to give up as desperate, the he find as ready an introduction for himself Christian reformation of our land, when we and for his office, as if his only walk had read of those mighty achievements, and been among peaceful hamlets, and with those heavenly outpourings, by which even nought but the romance and the rusticity the veriest wilds of heathenism have been of nature spread out before him. It is ut- fertilized-or, with such an instrument to terly a wrong imagination, and in the face work by as that of the Gospel of Jesus both of experience and of prophecy, that in Christ, which in the hands of the Spirit of towns there is an impracticable barrier God, hath wrought its miracles on the men against the capabilities and the triumphs of of all ages, shall we forbear, as a hopeless the Gospel-that in towns the cause of hu- enterprise, the evangelizing of our own man amelioration must be abandoned in homes, the eternal salvation of our own fadespair--that in towns it is not by the archi-milies? "Be of good cheer," says the Spirit tecture of chapels, but by the architecture to the apostle, "I have much people for of prisons, and of barracks, and of bride- thee in this city;" and that, a city, too, the wells, we are alone to seek for the protection of society-that elsewhere a moralizing charm may go forth among the people, from village schools and Sabbath services, but that there is a hardihood and a ferocity in towns, which must be dealt with in another way, and against which all the artillery of the pulpit is feeble as infancy-that a foul and feverish depravity has settled there, which no spiritual application will ever extinguish for amid all the devisings for the peace and order of our community, do we find it to be the shrewd and sturdy apprehension of many, that all which can be achieved in our overgrown cities, is by the strength of the secular arm; that a stern and vigorous police will do more for public morals, than a whole band of ecclesiastics; that a periodical execution will strike a more salutary terror into the hearts of the multitude, than do the dreadest fulminations of the preacher's voice; and this will explain the derision and the distrust where

most profligate and abandoned that ever flourished on the face of our world. And still the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save. Neither is his ear heavy, that it cannot hear. It is open as ever to the cry of your intercessions—and on these, we would devolve our cause. We entreat the fellowship of your prayers. We know, that all human exertion, and eloquence, and wisdom, are vain without them-that, lacking that influence, which is gotten down by supplications from on high, sermons are but high-sounding cymbals, and churches but naked architecture-that mere pains are of no avail, and that it only lies within the compass of pains and prayers, to do any thing.

And we, indeed, have great reason for encouragement, when we think of the subject of our message. When we are bidden in the text to preach, it is to preach the Gospel-it is to proclaim good news in the hearing of the people-it is to sound forth the glad tidings of great joy-it is to tell

even the chief of sinners, that God is now | toil, and his unwearied perseverance-then, willing to treat him as a sinner no longer; such is the power of the divine testimony, that he invites him to all the honours of when urged out of the fulness of a believer's righteousness; and that in virtue of a blood heart, and made to fall with the impression which cleanseth from all sin, and of an obe- of his undoubted sincerity on those whom dience, to the rewards of which he is freely he addresses; that for ourselves we shall and fully invited, there is not a guilty crea- have no fear of a good and a glorious issue ture in our world, who may not draw nigh. to this undertaking; and, therefore, as Paul Should he who preaches within these walls, often cast the success of his labours on the turn out the faithful and the energetic ex- prayers of them for whom he laboured, pounder of this word of salvation-should would I again entreat that your supplicathe blessing of God be upon his ways, and tions do ascend to the throne of grace for that demonstration which cometh from on him who is to minister amongst you in high, accompany his words--should he, filled word and in doctrine-that he may, indeed, with zeal in the high cause of your immor- be a pastor according to God's own heart, tality, be instant among you in season, and who shall feed a people here with knowout of season—and devoted to the work of ledge and with spiritual understandinghis sacred ministry, he make it his single that the travail of his soul may be blest to aim to gather in a harvest of unperishable the conversion of many sons and daughters spirits, that by him as an instrument of unto righteousness-that he may prove a grace, have been rescued from hell, and comfort to all your hearts, and a great pubraised to a blissful eternity-should this be lic benefit to all your families. indeed the high walk of his unremitting

SERMON XV.

On the Distinction between Knowledge and Consideration.

"The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider."-Isaiah 1. 3.

It would appear, from this verse, that the children of Israel neither knew nor considered-but still there is a distinction suggested by it between these two things. And in the book of the prophet Malachi, we have a similar distinction, when the Lord says to the priests, "If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart." It is, in fact, possible for a man to do one of these things, and not to do the other. He may know the truth, and yet he may not consider it. He may hear, and yet not lay to heart. Nay, he may have heard of a particular doctrine so often as to have got it by heart, without ever laying it to heart. And this, we hold, to be the just and the applicable complaint that may be uttered of many professing Christians in our day.

great want of comfort in a family; and what stands in fine and beautiful contrast with this, you may have witnessed the union of very humble means, with such a skill and consideration in the guidance of them, as to have yielded a respectable appearance, and a decent hospitality, and the sufficiency of a full and regular provision. And so, with the treasures of intellect, the acquisitions of the mind, whereof one may be rich, being possessed of most ample materials in all knowledge and information, and yet have an ill-conditioned mind notwithstanding; and another destitute of all but the most common and elementary truths, may yet, by a wise application of them, have attained to the true light and harmony of the soul, and be in sound preparation both for the duties of time, and for the delights of eternity.

And thus it is, that we may gather the difference which there is between knowledge and wisdom. The one is a specu- All have so learned to number their days lative acquirement. The other is a practi-as to know the extreme limit of human cal faculty or habit. By the latter, we turn life upon earth; yet all have not so learnto its right and profitable use the former.ed to number their days as to apply their Thus it is, that there may be great folly hearts unto wisdom. They are aware of along with great scholarship; and, on the their latter end, but they consider not their other hand, may an unlettered mind be il-latter end.

lustrious in wisdom. You have, perhaps, I. This distinction between knowledge seen when there was great wealth, and yet, and wisdom, is abundantly realized even from the want of judicious management, on the field of earthly and of sensible ex

perience. The man of dissipation may inquiring neighbourhood, when the word have his eyes open to the ruin of character spreads that some one of their friends is and of fortune that awaits him, yet the dying; and the frequency of those funeral tyranny of his evil desires constrains him processions that pass along our streets, and to a perseverance in the ways of wretched- so mingle the business of death with the ness. The man of indolence may foresee moving throng of the people and the carthe coming bankruptcy that will ensue on riages, which the business of life has pressthe slovenly management of his affairs, yet ed into its service; these are the rememthere is a lethargy within that weighs him brances that ever and anon hold up the down to fatal inactivity. The man of lesson of our mortality, and one might prone and headlong irritation, may be think, should effectually keep it from sinkable to discern the accumulating mischiefing for a single hour into oblivion. But that he raises against himself in the hos- how is it truly and experimentally? That tility of those who are around him, and death of which we all know so well, is scarcemay even look forward to the time when,ly ever in our thoughts. The momentary deserted by the friendship of all, he shall touch of grief, and of seriousness, wherelive a neglected outcast from all human com- with we are at times visited, speedily goeth panionship, yet continue as before to be into utter dissipation. With as cheerful and hurried away by the onward violence that assured footsteps, do we tread the face of seizes him. In all these instances, there is this world, as if it were the scene of our no want of knowledge in possession. But immortality; and the latter end of life is there is a want of knowledge in use, or totally unseen in the obscure and undefined knowledge in application. The unhappy distance at which we have placed it, on the man has the truth of the matter in his head. field of our contemplations. It argues for But he does not lay it with the authority of the strength of that recoil with which nature a commander upon his practice. The pre-shrinks from the thought of its own dissolusent urgency carries it over all thought of the tion, that all these loud and repeated defuture consequences. He has received the monstrations pass so unheeded by-and truth, but he does not give heed unto the that walking though we be, over the accutruth. He does not charge it upon his at-mulated ruins of so many generations, we tention, or give effectual warning of it to his fears, or to his sense of prudence and of interest. It is not of his ignorance that we complain, but of his inconsideration. And thus, apart from the things of spiritual contemplation altogether, and on the mere ground of every day life, with its passions and pursuits in this world, may the distinction to which we now advert, be abundantly exemplified.

nevertheless will talk as merrily, and lift up our heads as securely, as though beings who were to live for ever. It seems not to work the slightest abatement in the eagerness of man after this world's interests, that a few years will sweep them utterly away; and when we look to the busy engrossment of all his faculties with the plans and the pursuits of earthliness, it is but too manifest, that it is one thing to know of death, and another to consider of it.

II. But what we have now affirmed, even of those events and consequences that take place along the journey of this world, is This heedlessness of our latter end, is of still more strikingly apparent of that great a character still more obstinate and incuraevent which marks its termination. There ble than any such heedlessness as we have is not a human creature of most ordinary already quoted, of reputation or fortune in mind, and who hath overstepped the limits the world. It needs no impetuous appetite of infancy, that does not know of death, to overbear the thought of death; for in and with whom it does not rank among the calm equanimity of many a sober and the most undoubted of the certainties that aged citizen, you will find him as proawait him. And it is not only that of which foundly asleep to the feeling of his own he is most thoroughly assured; but it is mortality, as he is to any of the feelings that of which, in the course of observation or instigations of licentiousness. It needs and history, he is most constantly remind-no overweighing indolence of temperaed. And many are the aids and the accom- ment to be all listless and unmoved by the paniments which might serve to deepen his fears of our coming death-bed ; for many impression of it. The horror of every death are to be found, who consume every hour that he witnesses; and the pathos of every in the activities of business and of daring death which he deplores; and the distress, adventure, without one emotion of seriouseven unto the measure of tragic sensibility, ness on the awful catastrophe that awaits which is felt when some tie of near and them. affecting relationship is broken; and every act of attendance on those last obsequies, when acquaintances meet to carry one of their number to his grave; and the aspect of seriousness that gathers upon every

It needs no imprudence, or unguarded violence, to betray a man into the forgetfulness of death: for many is the cool and practised calculator, and many is the sage of tranquil philosophy, and many is the

crafty politician, who can look far into con- does he not seek to grave upon your softsequences, and is skilled in all the expe- ened heart the lesson of mortality in chadients of his vocation; and of whom it may racters of deeper remembrance? Has he not be said, that the mind of each is steeped in tried to find access for the truth, through the oblivion of death. We are heedless of the varied avenues of feeling, and of obsermuch that is before us, even in this world; vation, and of conscience? And living, as but as to its last and closing scene, there is you do, in the land of dying men, have you a peculiar inveteracy of heedlessness that not seen enough of this world's changes to we do not have as to any of the other futu- make the history of your life one continued rities of our earthly existence. Death is the sermon upon the grave? God has not been stepping-stone between the two worlds; and wanting in those demonstrations of Proviso it somewhat combines the palpable of dence, which should have riveted a seriousmatter, with the shadowy and the evanescent ness upon your hearts, and transformed you of spirit. It is the gateway to a land of out of the careless, and gay, and worldly mystery and of silence, and seems to gather creature that you still are. We protest, by upon it something of the visionary charac- the many sick-beds over which you have ter which the things of faith have to the hung, and by the deaths which you have eye of the senses. It is not a thing unseen; witnessed, and by the tears which you but being an outlet to the region of invisi- have shed over them, that you have long bles, there settles upon it a degree of that ago had enough to loosen your hold upon faintness and obscurity wherewith the car-earth, and to break that accursed spell by nal eye regards all that is told of the matters of eternity. And so, amid all the varieties of temperament in our species, there is a universal heedlessness of death. It seems against the tendency of nature to think of it. There is an opposite bias that ever inclines us away from this dark con- There is no topic on which the distinction templation, towards the warm and living that there is between knowledge and consirealities of the peopled world around us.deration stands more palpably before us The mind refuses to dwell on that dreary abode of skulls and of sepulchres, and makes its willing escape from all this hideous imagery, to society, and to business, and to the whole interest and variety of life. Instead of some mighty impulse being required to dispossess us of the thought, it costs an effort of unnatural violence to uphold it in our bosoms. The thing is known, but it is not considered: and the giddy dance of life is carried onwards, as if there were no de-it are the matters of experience. On the stroyer upon the way-the tide of human existence is borne as restlessly along, as if there were no grave to absorb it.

which you are so bound to its lying vanities. You have enough to dislodge from your bosom the spirit of the god of this world; and O! therefore, that you were wise, that you understood these things, that you considered your latter end.

than that of death. All are assured of its coming, yet how few so bethink, or so bestir themselves, as to be prepared for its coming. The position which this event occupies in the line of our existence, gives to it a peculiar advantage for illustrating the distinction in question. It stands on the extreme horizon of what is sensible, and beyond it lie the dimness and the mys tery of an untrodden land. On this side of

other side of it are the matters of faith. Now, it partakes with the one in the certainty wherewith all must regard it ; and it This might serve to convince us, how partakes with the other in the nullity of its unavailing is the mere knowledge, even of practical influence, over the vast majority important truth, if not accompanied by the of our species. As an object of knowledge, feeling, or the practical remembrance of it. there belongeth to it the assurance of a most The knowledge, in this case, only serves to unquestioned truth; as an object of consiaggravate our folly, and to bring, on the deration, there belongeth to it the airy lightutter heedlessness of our lives, a more fullness of a vain and visionary fable. It is and emphatic condemnation. And on the believed, but it is not minded; and while, subject of death, we would ask, how is it on the one hand, it ranks among those expethat your fatal insensibility can be justified? rimental realities which are most assuredly Has God left this matter without a witness? known, it, on the other hand, ranks among Has he not strewed the whole path of your those illusions of the fancy which are pracexistence in the world with the mementos tically and habitually disregarded. It stands of its affecting termination? Has he not forth to the eye in all the plainness of ocupointed the eye of your experience to the lar demonstration, and yet with as little agonies of many a death-bed, and brought power as if it were a tale of necromancy. it irresistibly down upon your convictions, It is quite obvious, that in the things of that these are the very agonies through faith, there is a want of ascendant power which you have to pass? In every death over the life of man; and, to justify man, of an acquaintance does he not lift a voice this has been ascribed to their want of eviof warning unto yourselves; and when dence. But where is the want of evidence that acquaintance is a relative or a friend, in death? This is not a thing of faith, but

that region, and which man hath not seen by his eye, or heard by his ear-to the awful realities that will abide in deep and mysterious concealment from us, so long as we are in the body, and which not till the body is dissolved, will stand in direct manifestation before us. This character of unseen and spiritual, is not confined to things future. There are things present which are spiritual also. There is a present Deity, who dwelleth in light, it is true, but it is light inaccessible

glory which we, in the body, cannot approach unto-who stands revealed to angels and adoring spirits; but whom no man hath seen, neither can see. He is the King eternal and immortal, but he is also the King invisible-who, though not far from any one of us, is remote as infinity itself, from the ken of our earthly senses-and shrouded in the obscurity of his own unfathomable nature, is he so veiled and darkened from all human contemplation, that we cannot behold him.

a thing of observation; and makes it as clear as day, that even when the evidence is complete and irresistible, the effect may be as utterly unsubstantial, as if it were a thing of nought. This ought to alarm us. It should lead us to apprehend, that there was enough of argument, on the side even of what is spiritual and unseen, to condemn our indifference to it. If the certainty of death do not move us, it may not be the uncertainty of what is on the other side of death, that can account for the sluggish--who is encompassed with glory, but it is ness of our obstinate and unmoved carnality. One thing is certain, that we can see an acquaintance fall into his grave, and yet continue to live here, as if this were our eternity. And does not this make it probable,that though that acquaintance were to rise again, and to tell us of the world of spirits upon which he had entered, we should be unaffected as before by the real eternity that is awaiting us? Christ says to us himself, that if we believe not Moses and the prophets, neither should we believe though one rose from the dead. This is And yet, even of this great Spirit we may the way in which we meet the demand of be said, in one sense, to know, however litinfidelity, for more of proof, and more of tle it is that we may consider him. There information. The fact is that thousands are averments about God which we have have died before us, and are still dying long recognised, and ranked among our adaround us, and yet the heart of man re-mitted propositions, though we seldom remains unvisited by any practical sense of cur to them in thought, and are never adehis mortality. And the presumption, there-quately impressed by them. We know, or fore, is, that though one of these thousands think we know, that God is; and that all were to revive, and to re-appear amongst us, fraught with the tidings of heaven's glory, and hell's unutterable despair, we should still keep our ground against him, and the heart of man be unvisited as before by any practical sense of his immortality. It is not more of evidence that we want. There is as much as ought to convince us now--and if not convinced, there is as much as will condemn us afterwards. The cause of our irreligion is not that we could not know, but that we do not, and will not consider.

This is a great practical use to which our insensibility about death is capable of being turned. It proves, that our insensibility about eternal things, may be due to something else than to the defect of that evidence by which they are accompanied. It causes us to perceive, that a truth may be surely known, and yet not be pondered, or not be proceeded upon. Surely to know it is one thing-seriously to reflect upon it is another; and thus it may be, that the irreligion of the world is due not to the want of a satisfying demonstration on God's part, for this might have excused us; but, to the want of right consideration on ours, and this is inexcusable.

III. Let us now pass onwards, then, to the invisibles of faith-to those things which do not, like death, stand upon the confines of the spiritual region, but are wholly within

other existence is suspended upon his will; and that, were it not for his upholding arm, the whole of Nature would go into dissolution; and that while he sits in high authority over all worlds, there is not one individual member of his vast family, that is overlooked by him; and, more particularly, that he looks with the eye of a wise and a watchful judge, into every heart, and every conscience; and that he claims a right and a property in the services of all his creatures; and that he is more absolutely the owner and the master of them all, than is man of the machine that he hath made, and to whose touch all its movements are subordinate; and that he is a God of august and inviolable sacredness, in whose presence evil cannot dwell, and between the sanctity of whose nature and sin, there is a wide and implacable enmity; and that he does not sit in lofty and remote indifference to the characters of his children, but takes deep, and perpetual, and most vigilant concern in them all-loving their righteousness, hating their iniquity, treasuring their thoughts, and their purposes, and their doing, in the book of his remembrance; and that, with a view to the manifestation of them, on that day, when time shall be no more, and each of his accountable offspring shall have their condition awarded to them through eternitywhen the mystery of God shall be finished, and the glory of his attributes shall be made

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