thorns that twist themselves round every fibre of our hearts, which impede the growth and destroy the fruitfulness of every good principle that has been implanted there, and form that third and most numerous class of hearers described in the parable of the sower, who, though not professed infidels, are yet practical unbelievers, and who, though they retain the form, have lost all the substance, all the power, all the life and soul of religion.

It is then against these most dangerous corrupters of our fidelity and allegiance to our Heavenly Master, that we must principally be upon our guard; it is against these we must arm and prepare our souls, by summoning all our fortitude and resolution, and calling in to our aid all those spiritual succours which the power of prayer can draw down upon us from above. It was to assist us in this arduous conflict that the compilers of our liturgy appointed the season of Lent, and more particularly the offices of the concluding week, which, from the sufferings of our Saviour at that time, we call Passion week. It was thought, and surely it was wisely thought, by our ancestors, that to fortify ourselves against the attractions of the world, and the seductions of sin, it was necessary to withdraw ourselves sometimes from the tumultuous and intoxicating scenes of business and of pleasure, which, in the daily commerce of life, press so close on every side of us; and to strengthen and confirm our minds against their fatal influence, by retirement, by recollection, by self-communion, by self-examination, by meditating on the word of God, and, above all, by frequent and fervent prayer. To give us time for these sacred occupations, a small portion of every year has been judiciously set apart for them by our church; and what time could be so proper for those holy purposes, as that in which our blessed Lord was suffering so much for our sakes? I allude more particularly to that solemn week which is now approaching, and to which I must beg to call the most serious attention of every one here present.

In that week all public diversions are, as you well know, wisely prohibited by public authority; and in conformity to the spirit of such prohibition, we should, even in our own families and in our own private amusements, be temperate, modest, decorous, and discreet. Think not, however, that I am here recommending gloom and melancholy, and a seclusion from all society; far from it. This could answer no other purpose but to sour your minds and deaden your devotions. The cheerfulness of social converse and friendly intercourse is by no means inconsistent with the duties of the week; but all those

tumultuous assemblies, which are too strongly marked with an air of levity, gaiety, and dissipation, and may in fact be ranked with the number of public diversions, are plainly repugnant to that scriousness and tenderness of mind, which the awful and interesting events of that week must naturally inspire. Let me only request you to read over, when you return home, that plain, simple, unaffected, yet touching narrative of our Saviour's sufferings, which is selected from the Gospels, in the daily offices of the next week; and then ask your own hearts whether, at the very time when your Redeemer is supposed to have passed through all those dreadful scenes for your sakes and for your salvation, from his first agony in the garden, to his last expiring groan upon the cross, whether at this very time you can bring yourselves to pursue the pleasures, the vanities, and the follies of the world, with the same unqualified eagerness and unabated ardour as if nothing had happened which had given him the slightest pain, or in which you had the smallest interest or concern. Your hearts, I am sure, will revolt at the very idea, and your own feelings will preserve you from thus wantonly sporting with the cross of Christ. if from a prudent abstinence from these things you were to add a careful inquiry into your past conduct, and the present state of your souls, if you were to extend your views to another world, and consider what your condition there is likely to be; what reasonable grounds you have to hope for a favourable sentence from the Almighty Judge; how far you have conformed to the commands of your Maker, and what degree of affection and gratitude you have manifested for the inexpressible kindness of your Redeemer; this surely would be an employment not inconsistent with your necessary occupations, and not unsuitable to humble candidates for pardon, acceptance, and immortal happiness.

And

Is this too great a burden to be imposed upon us for a few days; is it too great a sacrifice of our time, our thoughts and our amusements to an invisible world and a reversionary inheritance of inestimable value? It certainly is if the gospel be all a fabricated tale. But if it contain the words of soberness and truth; if its divine authority is established by such an accumulation of evidence of various kinds as never before concurred to prove any other facts or events in the history of the world, by evidences springing from different sources, yet all centering in the same point, and converging to the same conclusion; if even the few incidental proofs that have been offered to your consideration in the course of these Lectures have produced that conviction in your minds which they seem

to have done, what then is the consequence? Is it not that truths of such infinite importance well deserve all that consideration for which I am now contending; and that we ought to embrace with eagerness every appointed means and every favourable opportunity that is thrown in our way, of demonstrating our attachment and our gratitude to a crucified Saviour, who died for our sins and rose again for our justification, and will come once more in glory to judge the world in righteousness, and to distribute his rewards and punishments to all the nations of the earth assembled before him? At that awful tribunal may we all appear with a humble confidence in the merits of our Redeemer, and a trembling hope of that mercy which he has promised to every sincere believer, every truly contrite and penitent offender!

LECTURE XIII.

MATTH. xiii. continued.

THE lectures of the last year concluded with an explanation of the parable of the sower; and immediately after this follows in the Gospel the parable of the tares, which will be the subject of our present consideration.*

The parable is as follows: "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field; but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst thou not sow good seed in thy field; from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, an enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up. But he said nay, lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together unto the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, gather ye together first the tares, and bind them up in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn."

After our Lord had delivered this parable, and one or two more very short ones, we are told that he sent the multitude away, and went into the house; and his disciples came unto him, saying, "Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He answered and said unto them, he that soweth the good seed is the Son of man. The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one. The enemy that sowed them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire,

*Matt. xiii. 24.

there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father who hath ears to hear let him hear."

This parable well deserves our most serious consideration, as it gives an answer to two questions of great curiosity and great importance, which have exercised the ingenuity and agitated the minds of thinking men from the earliest times to the present, and perhaps were never, at any period of the world, more interesting than at this hour.

The first of these questions is, how came moral evil into the world?

The next is, why it is suffered to remain a single moment; and why is not every wicked man immediately punished as he deserves?

The first of these questions has, we know, in almost all ages, and in all countries, been a constant subject of investigation and controversy among metaphysicians and theologians, and has given birth to an infinity of fanciful theories and systems, to one more particularly in our own times, by a man of very distinguished talents;* all which however have failed of solving the difficulty, and have proved nothing more than this mortifying and humiliating truth, namely, the extreme weakness of the human intellect, when applied to subjects so far above its reach, and the utter inability of man to fathom the counsels of the Most High, and to develope the mysterious ways of his providence, by the sole strength of unassisted rcason. That those who were never favoured with the light of revelation should indulge themselves in such abstruse speculations, can be no great wonder, but that they who have access to the original fountain of truth, and can draw from that sacred source the most authentic information on this point, should have recourse to the fallible conjectures of human ingenuity, and should hew out to themselves "cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water," is a most unaccountable error of judgment, and a strange misapplication of talents, and waste of labour and of time. We are told in the very begin

*Soame Jenyns.

+ Among the dissertations of Plutarch (which go by the name of his morals,) there is a very curious and ingenious one, entitled peri ton upo tou theiou bradeos timoroumenon, concerning those whom the Deity is slow in punishing. In this, among other just remarks, he observes, "that many things which great generals, and legislators, and statesmen do, are to common observers incomprehensible. What wonder is it then," says he, "if we cannot understand why the gods inflict punishment on the wicked, sometimes at an earlier, sometimes at a later period?" Plut. Ed. Xyland. v. 2. p. 549. F.