er in casting out the evil spirits, would have been, to all appearance, a very needless expedient; because the immediate removal of a natural disease (if it was one) would have been an equal proof of his divine power. But besides this, there is every where a plain distinction made between common diseases and demoniacal possessions; which shows that they were totally different things. In the fourth chapter of this Gospel, where the very first mention is made of these possessions, it is said, that our Lord's fame went throughout all Syria, and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and he healed them. Here you see those that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those possessed with devils, are mentioned as distinct and separate persons; a plain proof that the demoniacal possessions were not natural diseases; and the very same distinction is made in several other passages of holy writ.

There can be no doubt, therefore, that the demoniacs were persons really possessed with evil spirits; and although it may seem strange to us, yet we find from Josephus, and other historians, that it was in those times no uncommon case. In fact, it appears that about the time of our Lord's ministry, that tremendous spirit, Satan, or, as he is sometimes called in scripture, the Prince of this world, had obtained an extraordinary degree of power over the human race, inflicting upon them the cruellest pains and torments, depriving them of their senses, rendering them wretched in themselves, and terrible to all around them. To subdue this formidable and wicked being, and to destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, was one great object of our Saviour's divine mission; and it seems to have been indispensably necessary for accomplishing the redemption of mankind, that the kingdom of Satan should in the first place be destroyed, and that the sons of men should be rescued from that horrible and disgraceful state of slavery in which he had long held them enthralled. One of the first steps, therefore, that our Lord took before he entered on his ministry was, to establish his superiority over this great enemy of mankind: which he did in that memorable scene of the temptation in the wilderness; and among the earliest of his miracles recorded, is that of casting out devils from those who were possessed by them. And perhaps one reason why these possessions were permitted, might be to afford our Lord an opportunity of giving the Jews a visible and ocular demonstration of his decided superiority and sovereignty over the prince of the devils, and all his agents, and of his

power to subdue this great adversary of the human species. He appears indeed to have been in a state of constant hostility and warfare with this wicked spirit; and in this very passage Satan is described by our Saviour under the image of a strong man, whom it was necessary to bind before you could spoil his house, and exterminate him and his coadjutors, as Jesus was then doing. Yet so little were the Jews sensible of this enmity between Christ and Beelzebub, that on the contrary they charged them with being friends and confederates. They said, "This fellow doth not cast out devils but by Beelzebub the prince of the devils." The answer of our Lord to this was decisive and satisfactory to every reasonable mind. "Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand. And if Satan cast out Satan, he is divided against himself, how shall then his kingdom stand?" His argument is this: How absurd and preposterous is it to suppose that Satan will act against himself, by expelling his own ministers and agents whom he has sent to take possession of the minds and bodies of men, and by assisting me to establish my religion, and thereby dif fuse virtue and happiness throughout the world, which it is his great object to destroy, and to introduce vice and misery in This must clearly end in his ruim, and the overthrow of his empire over mankind. It is evident then that it is not by his assistance, but by the power of God, that I cast out devils; and if so, it is clear to demonstration that I am commissioned by heaven to teach true religion to mankind.

their room.

I cannot quit this subject of miracles without observing, what a remarkable difference there is between the sentiments of modern infidels and those of the first enemies of the Gospel respecting the miracles of Christ. The former assert, that our Saviour wrought no real miracles; that miracles are in their own nature incredible and impossible; and that no human testimony whatever can give credit to events so contrary to experience, and so repugnant to the ordinary course of nature. But go to those unbelievers who lived in the earliest ages of the Gospel, and even to those who were eye-witnesses to our Lord's miracles, and they will tell you a very different story. They assert, that Jesus did work miracles; they acknowledge that he did expel evil spirits out of those that were possessed. They ascribed the miracle, indeed, to the power of Beelzebub, not of God. But this we know to be absurdity and nonsense. The fact of the miraculous cure they did not dispute; and this at once establishes the divine mission of our Lord. To which then of these two descriptions of infidels shall we give most

credit, to those who lived near eighteen hundred years after the miracles were performed, or to those who saw them wrought with their own eyes: and though they detested the author of them, admitted the reality of his wonderful works?

Our Lord then, continuing his conversation with the Pharisees, addresses to them, in the 31st verse, these remarkable words:

"Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come."

Our Lord's meaning in this obscure and alarming passage seems to be this; there is no other sin or blasphemy which argues such a total depravation of mind, but that it may be repented of and forgiven. Even he that speaks against me, the Son of God, and is not convinced by my preaching, may yet be afterwards converted by the power of the Holy Ghost, by the miracles which he enables me and my disciples to work, and may obtain remission of his sin. But he that shall obstinately resist this last method of conviction (that of miracles wrought before his eyes) and shall maliciously revile these most evident operations of the spirit of God, contrary to the reason of his own mind and the dictates of his own conscience, such an one has no further means left by which he may be convinced and brought to repentance, and therefore can never be forgiven.

From this interpretation, which is, I believe, generally admitted to be the true one, it appears that there is no just ground for the apprehensions sometimes entertained by pious and scrupulous minds, that they may themselves be guilty of the sin here declared to be unpardonable, the sin against the Holy Ghost; for we see that it is confined solely and exclusively to the case before us, that is to the crime of which the Pharisees had just been guilty, the crime of attributing those miracles to the agency of evil spirits, which were plainly wrought by the spirit of God, and which they saw with their own eyes.

What confirms this interpretation is, that this crime is here called, not as is generally supposed, the sin against the Holy Ghost, but blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which evidently refers not to actions but to words; not to any thing done but to something said against the Holy Ghost. This being the case, it is clear that as miracles have long since ceased, and

this blasphemy against the Holy Ghost relates solely to those who saw miracles performed with their own eyes, it is impossible for any one in these times to be literally guilty of this impious and unpardonable kind of blasphemy in its full extent.

Our Lord then addresses himself more directly to the authors of this spiteful calumny: "Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or else make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt; for the tree is known by its fruit:" that is, be uniform and consistent with yourselves. If you pretend to holiness and sincerity of heart, suffer not your mouths to utter these blasphemies; or if you persist in such behaviour, lay aside all claim to religion, with which this obstinate malice is as inconsistent, as it is for a tree not to discover its nature by the quality of the fruit it produces. He then adds, "O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things; for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. A good man, out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good things; and an evil man, out of the evil treasure of his heart, bringeth forth evil things." The import of which words is this: But it is impossible that you should speak otherwise than evil. You are a perverse and malicious generation, and the thoughts of men's hearts will of course show themselves by their words. They arise immediately from the fund within, and will necessarily discover whether it be good or bad.

Then follows another very remarkable declaration of our Lord's in the 36th verse: "I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment." From hence some have imagined, that at the day of judgment we shall be called to an account, and punished for every idle and unprofitable, every trifling and ludicrous word that we have ever uttered in the gaiety of the If this be the heart during the whole course of our lives.

case, how hard is it, will the enemies of the Gospel say, in the Author of your religion, to exact from you what is utterly inconsistent with the infirmities of human nature, and which must completely destroy all the freedom, all the ease, all the cheerfulness, all the comforts of social converse, and render it necessary for every man that hopes to be saved to seclude himself from society, and like the once celebrated fathers of the order of La Trappe, impose upon themselves an everlasting silence! That this must be the consequence of the sentence here pronounced by our Lord, if it is to be understood in that strict, literal, and rigorous sense which has just been stated, and which at the first view the words seem to import,

cannot be denied; and therefore we may fairly conclude, that it is not the true meaning of the passage in question; because we know that we do not serve a hard master, who requires more from us than our strength will bear; but one who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and who has declared, that "his yoke is easy, and his burden light.'

In order then to set this text of Scripture in its true light, we must look back to what had just passed; we must remember that the Pharisees had a little before reproached our Lord with having cast out devils through Beelzebub the prince of the devils; and it is this calumny that he alludes to in the words before us; for they are a continuation of that very same conversation which he was holding with the Jews. Now the words made use of by the Pharisees in the above mentioned charge are not merely idle, or foolish, or trifling words, they are in the highest degree malevolent, false, and wicked; they constitute one of the grossest, most detestable, and most infamous calumnies that ever was uttered by man. Consequently by idle words our Saviour plainly meant, false, lying, and malicious words, such as those which the Pharisees had a few minutes before applied to him.

In confirmation of this it should be observed, that the language then spoken by the Jews was not their primitive tongue, but one mixed and made up of the dialects and idioms of the several nations that surrounded them, particularly of the Chaldeans, Syrians, and Arabians. In this our Saviour delivered all his instructions, and held all his discourses. In this (as some learned men think) St. Matthew originally wrote his Gospel for the use of the Jewish converts; and it has been remarked, that in almost all the languages of which this miscellaneous one is made up, by idle or unprofitable words are meant, false, lying, malicious, and scandalous calumnies.

But though in the passage before us the phrase of idle words refers more immediately to the malignant calumny of the Pharisees against Jesus; yet it certainly includes all false, slanderous, and vindictive accusations of our neighbour; all discourse which is in any respect injurious to God or man, which is contrary to truth, to decency, and evangelical purity of heart. All conversation of this sort is plainly inconsistent with the sanctity of our religion, and must of course subject us to God's displeasure here, and his judgments hereafter. And even in the literal and most obvious sense of idle words, though we are not excluded from the innocent cheerfulness of social converse, yet we must beware of giving way too much to trifling, foolish, unprofitable and unmeaning talk. Even this, when carried M