through the instrumentality of your own eye-sight, which beholds the visible symbols of "living bread "and living water"-" Come unto me all ye "that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Are Are you afraid to come, because of sin? But listen, " if any man sin, we have an "advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the

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righteous, and he is the propitiation for our "sins." Therefore, if you refuse, is it not just the wilful obstinacy of a guilty prisoner, who will not ask for mercy, when the judge offers to be the advocate? Are you afraid to come, because of some scruple? But you have heard, that "the Man "Christ Jesus" was himself " touched with the

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feeling of our infirmities." The man can enter into the feelings of the fellow-man; and if you only wish for his aid, you may cast away the fear and the scruple, and approach with humble confidence. But, are you afraid to come, because of somet besetting sin, which you will not pray for help to strangle, but resolve to cherish; oh! then, we implore you, remember, that "the Man Christ "Jesus" is also the God! He dissects every thought, and he knows your reason; verily that reason is recorded and registered in the judgment book. For he who is now your advocate, will (who can say at what moment?) change into the judge, not then the judge to carry the prisoner's mercy-plea to the throne, but the judicial deity, arrayed with the fearful ministers of vengeance

THE GOD! breaking forth upon you in all the splendour, but in all the terror of his majesty. Come then, dearly beloved, whilst he yet appeals to you in accents of the most persuasive tenderness. What beautiful meekness, as well as atoning efficacy, is suggested in the title of "the Lamb of "God!" He is yet your high-priest, making intercession, and at the same time bidding you "wash, and be clean." Why should a single

reason, or a single scruple, involving your practical rejection of him, smite you with an everlasting leprosy ?

SERMON VII.

CHRIST'S MIRACLES AND PREACHING, PROOFS OF HIS MISSION.

MATTHEW XI. 5.

"The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them*."

We endeavoured to shew, in the last sermon, that the only conceivable method by which man could be brought nigh to God, must be through the

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* In the following discourse (as in that upon the "eye-witnesses of Christ's majesty") an endeavour has been made to compress the expanded arguments of many able commentators, and to shape them into a short logical form. The Author is chiefly indebted for matter to " Bloomfield's Critical Digest;” "Campbell on the Miracles;" "Paley's Evidences;" and "Horne's Introduction to the Holy Scriptures."

intervention and advocacy of SOME ONE combining the two-fold nature of God, on the one hand, and of man, on the other; so that the same person should be low enough to stoop down to the dust, and yet lofty enough and sufficiently powerful to raise up what is vile to the glory of heavenly companionship; and we argued that such a mediator, as the God-man Christ Jesus declared himself to be, though undiscoverable by reason, because beyond it, was yet, when revealed, most consistent with our understanding. For the supply was so exactly suited to the demand of man's condition, that the mind, however wonder-struck at the marvel of Deity forming a union with dust, could hardly escape from the acknowledgment of its reasonableness.

Now the same kind of credibility we are about to plead for in the case of MIRACLES. We assert, in the first place, that the actual achievement of a miracle is the only conceivable method to prove, with demonstrative certainty, the truth of a communication from God to man; and we propose to establish, in the second place, that the peculiar kind of miracles recorded in the text are precisely those, which identify Christ to be the predicted Messiah.

Your assent will be easily conceded, we think, to the following proposition, that the prodigy of a thing is no argument against the truth of a fact. If you felt, for instance, clearly and sensibly, the convulsive shock of an earthquake, or saw a burning mountain throwing up rocks into the air, as out of a furnace,

and pouring down lava like molten lead, could you be persuaded, against the testimony of your senses, that there was no such thing, simply because too wonderful and prodigious to exist? And though you may neither have felt the one, nor seen the other, you would still be quite as much convinced of the fact, as if you had, upon the joint ocular testimony of credible witnesses; and if the eyewitnesses were long ago dead, you would scarcely refuse to believe their written evidence, provided you were sure it was theirs, simply because you had never spoken with them face to face. Now an earthquake is a counteraction of the usual course of nature, and, so far, prodigious, but it is not of itself a miracle. For a miracle embraces far more than the simple fact of a suspension of the known laws of nature. It has been defined nearly in the following words: A miracle is a counteraction of nature, either by the immediate finger of Deity, or by the intermediate agency of some person commissioned by Deity; but it must be accompanied with some previous notice (in order to prove that it is the act of the person who works it), and also it must be wrought for some special purpose ; either for the proof of a person bringing a message from heaven, or for the establishment of some particular doctrine.' Now, to recur to the illustration of the earthquake, the convulsion which occurred

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* See "Horne's Introduction," Vol. I., c. 4, s. 2.