NOR muft it be forgotten, that the minds of the difciples were in a state by no means fit to contribute to fuch an illufion; they had always been flow of apprehenfion and belief, and had now given up all the hopes they had fondly coneeived from mifinterpreted predictions, and from the fupernatural powers they had feen displayed by their Lord. We thought, faid two of them, it had been he who should have restored the kingdom to Ifrael. But, with his life ended every expectation of temporal grandeur, the only expectation they appear to have formed previous to his refurrection, or perhaps to his afcenfion. In this difpofition they were more likely to err on the fide of caution than of credulity: we find accor dingly, that the two difciples who have been mentioned, though they had heard the teftimony of the women, who affirmed that they had feen a vision of angels, which faid that Jefus was alive; though feveral of

to mistake and abuse in the hands of fuch imperfect creatures. And this alfo is an infirmity like the others that have been mentioned, capable of being corrected, or at least capable of being prevented by proper difcipline and more enlarged information. But let the fenfualift and the worldling recollect, that if the gloom which is fometimes spread over the minds of the best of men, should continue unbroken by any gleam of comfort to the latest evening of their lives, and their fun should even fet in clouds, quickly fhall they behold it rifing again in the morn of eternal life, to fhine with unfpotted and undiminishing fplendour.

SUCH then are the foundations of that faith which we are required to follow: fuch the obligation and inducements to follow it. It is not a cunningly devised fable which we are required to follow, but a religion supported

fupported by facts, teftified unto us by thofe who were eye witneffes of the majesty of our Lord Jefus Chrift. It is not a religion full of melancholy and unneceffary felfdenial and abstraction from the world; but it is the fource of comfort and delight, fecuring to us the best enjoyment of the nature which God has given us, and conducting us with fafety through the dangers of life. It is only offered to our choice, not forced upon us, because we are free agents and must be in fome measure the framers of our own happiness: but we must remember, that, if it be true, to reject or difregard it, through pride, through indolence, through obftinacy, through false fhame, through a love of finful indulgence and attachment to the world, is, death; to embrace and hold it faft, life eternal.

SERMON IX.

Acts, Ch. i. V. 21, 22.

66 WHEREFORE, OF THESE MEN, WHICH HAVE ACCOMPANIED WITH US ALL

THE TIME THAT THE LORD JESUS WENT IN AND OUT AMONGST US, BEGINNING FROM THE BAPTISM OF JOHN, UNTO THAT SAME DAY WHEN HE WAS TAKEN UP FROM US, MUST ONE BE ORDAINED TO BE A WITNESS, WITH US, OF HIS RESURRECTION."

IF

Christ be not rifen, (fays St. Paul in that beautiful and pathetic exhortation, towards the clofe of his first epistle to the Corinthians,) then is our preaching vain, and your faith is alfo vain. On the truth of this fact the importance of every other

recorded

recorded in the gospels, and even the exiftence of the christian religion must depend. It will therefore be no unfuitable employment of our thoughts, on a day fet apart by the church to commemorate a perfon, who was elected into the number of the Apostles, exprefly because he was an unimpeachable witnefs of this great event, to confider thofe evidences which render it, at this remote period, to the moft fcrupulous inquirers, an object of rational belief.

THAT the fcriptures of the new testament were written by the perfons whofe names they bear; that these persons lived in Judea, and at the time when the events which make the subject of their several hiftories took place, that they all of them were the Disciples and conftant companions of Chrift during his miniftry upon earth, or derived their information immediately from thofe

0 4