stration of his celestial mission.

of

Yet was he despised and rejected of men. The stupendous miracles which he wrought amongst the people proved, beyond all controversy, that he came from God; yet were even these slanderously and diabolically misinterpreted. They said concerning him, "He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of devils." His doctrine was such as no one could have delivered but he who had been in the bosom of the Father; yet did those to whom it was addressed cry out, "He is mad; wherefore hear ye him ?" Thus "did they strip him of his coat-the coat many colours which was on him." And in all this they acted at once impiously towards God, and cruelly towards the Son of Man. Impiously towards God, for those were HIS gifts, and it was HIS pleasure that in Jesus all fulness should dwell. Ungraciously towards the Son of Man, for he had every claim upon their compassion and love which benignity could impose. Had they reverenced God, they would have received, with every mark of homage, the Messenger who came in his great name. Had they not been filled with all malice and unrighteousness, they would have deemed their obligation to him inexpressibly urgent; but, destitute alike of piety and of charity, they poured contempt on every mark of approbation which his Father set upon him.

May we not here ask ourselves whether we are not partakers of this sin. To Christ himself we cannot now offer any personal indignity; for He is exalted to the highest honour in his Father's house, and a name has been given him which is above every name. let us remember, that an inspired Apostle has taught us, that to sin wilfully, after we have received the

But

knowledge of the truth, is to tread under foot the Son of God, and to count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing. Be it ours, then, to pray earnestly that we may be kept from every appearance of this evil, and enabled both in word and deed to honour Him whom God hath honoured. May we never forget that he who honoureth not the Son, honoureth not the Father that hath sent him. There are those, it is well known, in the so-styled Christian world, who, while they acknowledge him to be a perfect man, raised up of Almighty God to instruct and enlighten our race, deny his original divinity and the consequent doctrine of his atoning merits; and this they do, with a view, they say, to simplify the Christian theology, and render it of more easy credence to the sceptical. We question not the sincerity of their own belief, nor dare we attack the integrity of the motives by which they profess themselves to be guided; but, even with this admission, we must hold that, to expunge these articles from the Christian system, is nothing less than to rob the High Priest of our profession of that glory which essentially belongs to him. The plain sense of Scripture is to be taken in all points of doctrine, rather than the most ingenious construction which sophistry can put upon it. And as the Bible was designed for the rude and the simple, as well as for men of erudition and accomplishment, it would be to charge God with foolishness, or rather with something worse than foolishness, to assert that its obvious statements are not to be understood but in a qualified or limited import. Unless we are to suppose that the God of all Truth designed to mislead us, we must of necessity admit that the numerous assertions of Christ's divinity are to

be taken as they stand that God, who has solemnly declared that he will not give his glory to another, has also, in the most distinct terms, commanded us to worship Him whom he has set at his own right hand on the throne of the universe. Let us not, then, be ashamed to call Jesus, Lord. If we are, he will be ashamed of us at his coming in great glory.

2. They took him, and cast him into a pit; and they sat down to eat bread. The sacred narrative has told us nothing of the behaviour of Joseph under these cruel circumstances. A single expression, however, which afterwards occurs, lets us in some measure into the secret. We read that he besought them in the anguish of his soul. So they said one to another, when, without as yet knowing it, they stood before him in the land of Egypt. (Genesis xlii. 21.) And surely there is no one of my readers so ignorant of human nature as to wonder what the arguments might be by which he would expostulate with them. He would plead, no doubt, the nearness and dearness of their relationship to him-represent to them the atrocity of the crime which they meditated-appeal to heaven in vindication of his own brotherly affection and bid them pause to think how the tidings of his death would vex the heart of the good old man whose life was bound up in his own. It might have melted the soul of a stranger to hear such moving remonstrances. But the beseeching tones of Joseph's voice are, in the hearing of his own brethren, lifted up in vain; their tender mercies are cruel; neither his cries nor his tears affect them in the slightest; the springs of humanity appear to have been dried up in their bosoms; and thirsty, as by reason of his long

journey he must needs be, they cast him into a pit where no water is; yea, more than this, as if they had done some praiseworthy or meritorious deed, they sit down by themselves to eat bread, while he, their brother, is ready to perish with hunger!

Barbarous and hard-hearted men! Could they solicit a blessing on that meal which they were about to partake of, or ask the God of Mercy to render it nutritious? Perhaps they did; for the formalist and the hypocrite can go thus far. Yes, there are those who, although the sighing of the needy is heard throughout their borders, and the widow and the fatherless mourn for lack of bread, can sit down at their richly furnished tables, without a feeling of compassion in their breasts, and, without a blush upon their faces, can go through the ceremony (for with them it can be nothing more than a ceremony), of asking the Deity, to whom mercy is dearer than sacrifice, to bless their luxurious fare. Yea, worse than this, there are some even whose wealth has been acquired not by the labours of their own honest industry, nor by the legitimate "inheritance of fathers," but by the sweat of other men's brows, and who, by oppression, fraud, and chicanery, have attained to opulence, that yet cannot allow themselves to dispense with a form, than which, were the claims of justice and mercy observed, nothing could be more decent. With what face or consistency they can address the God who has revealed himself as the special guardian of the poor, we pretend not to explain. They must forget that the prayer of the wicked is to him an abomination, and that the offering of unrighteousness is odious in his sight. Let them first undo the heavy

burdens and let the oppressed go free-let them break every galling yoke, and restore what they have taken wrongfully away, before they ask a God of mercy and justice to make their food nourishing, or their social intercourse comfortable. It is, indeed, of all mockeries the most profane, that of men thanking Heaven for what they have themselves acquired unrighteously, and rendering the easy homage of the lip for the corn, the wine, and the oil, which the needy have prepared without adequate remuneration. It is painful to a generous-hearted man to think that, while in his own house, the necessaries, or even the luxuries of life abound, there are others in the land who know not whither to look for even a morsel of bread. And this consideration, while it renders him thankful for what he has, disposes him to help to the uttermost of his ability those who are not so blessed. But it is base almost beyond endurance, when, from the exertions of the honest and upright man, unjust profit is extorted, and the sons of affluence not only shed no tears over the sorrows of the poor, but eat even with a merry heart the superfluous delicacies which, but for the illrequited labours of the poor, would never have been served up to them at all. To be altogether forgetful of the destitute is bad enough; but to know that they are hard by, and yet not aid them, argues a disposition of heart almost as selfish and inhuman as that manifested by the brethren of Joseph under the circumstances above described. May all such consider ere it be too late, that their prayers are impious and their thanksgivings abominable. Let them learn to break off their sins by righteousness, and their transgressions by showing mercy to the poor. Then may