whatever they list, and we think little of interfering with them. We thus, unawares, grow inordinately attached to time and sense, to the world and the things that are in it, if we do not fall into open, positive, ruinous vice. It is in vain then, that Sabbath time and Sabbath truth address us. The hearing ear may be present; the perceptive understanding may be present; but the believing soul, the feeling heart, is absent. And thus, behold we go forward, but God is not there, and backward, but we cannot perceive him; on the left hand, but we cannot behold him, and he hideth himself on the right hand, that we cannot see him.' (Job. xxiii. 8, 9.) Now if, instead of this, we would adopt the opposite course; if we would regard religion not as something to be gotten abroad, but to grow up within us; not as something to burst upon us in its completeness, but to dawn gradually upon us, as the morning upon the night; if we would persuade ourselves of the absolute necessity of always and vigilantly guarding our loves from becoming fixed on what is merely earthly, sensual, and sinful; and if, in furtherance of this suasion, we would simply put forth that strength of will which we can and do exert for the accomplishment of our temporal ends; if we would do this, God and religion would not, could not, be strangers to us. To walk in this path is to draw nigh to God,' and thus to lay hold on the promise, he will draw nigh to you.' per Let me repeat, then, that the love of God is the essence and perfection of religion. And let me mention, too, what can scarce have failed to suggest itself, that the love of God is not a simple, insulated feeling, but a compound of a thousand different loves. The love of all sublime and beautiful things; the love of all high thoughts; the love of all lofty purposes; the love of all noble feelings; the love of all elevated principles; the love of all pure and holy and generous affections; the love of all magnanimous deeds; it is such loves as these that united, and rallying around God, their centre and source, constitute the genuine love of God. He, then, that has added to his permanent possessions one image of beauty and nobleness, one sound principle, one just thought, one generous sentiment, one pure aspiration, one holy feeling, one right act, one unclouded gleam of truth, has taken no inconsiderable step towards the attainment of that love of God, which, while it is the perfection of religion, is also the perfection of humanity. And now let me ask, if there be not, in these views, something practical? Do they not point out something for us to do? Are not truth and beauty shining everywhere about us? Are not incitements to goodness and holiness urging us from within, and pressing upon us from without? Must our souls squander their sumless wealth of love on their foes and destroyers? May we not wrench our affections from objects so unworthy, and give them to him, so ready to receive them, so ready to requite them with his own? What is—what can be so full of bliss, as the love that is set on God? Is it not invincible? Is it not eternal ? It is full of bliss. It is invincible. It is eternal. 'For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God.' (Rom. viii 38-39.) SERMON VII. BY REV. N. L. FROTHINGHAM, BOSTON. BARABBAS PREFERRED. JOHN XVIII. 39, 40. BUT YE HAVE A CUSTOM THAT I SHOULD RELEASE UNTO YOU ONE AT THE PASSOVER : WILL YE THEREFORE THAT I RELEASE UNTO Not only was Jesus Christ numbered among the transgressors, but before a public tribunal, and in the presence of a vast multitude, he had a malefactor preferred to him; preferred to him by his own people, preferred to him with the solemn choice set distinctly before them, preferred with a shout of savage violence. This was the greatest and most cruel reproach that could have been cast on him who knew no sin. It has been recorded by all the evangelists; and in the book of Acts Peter is represented as upbraiding the Jewish people on that very account; 'ye denied the holy one and the just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you, and killed the prince of life.' What had he done to deserve that from them? There was neither guile in his mouth nor injustice in his hand, He had taught them in their sacred places and healed them in their streets. He had fed them in their crowds and comforted them in their private dwellings. He had brought the insane among them to their right mind, and restored their lost ones from the grave. The whole object of his life had been to do good in word and in deed. What could have provoked against him so merciless a return? What could have converted the natural sentiments of gratitude toward one so beneficent, of admiration for one so godlike, into that unrelenting hate? What could have produced such a fearful reversal of what seem to be laws of the human mind in regard to the guides and deliverers and friends of man? This question we can scarcely avoid asking; and we ask it because the fact seems so strange. It seems easier to feel the difficulty, than fully to solve it. But let us examine the subject for a moment. It may be the more instructive for being so melancholy and humiliating. We need not suppose that the Jewish people of that day were worse than others, or that they were essentially different from those who dwell at the present time upon the earth. The nature of man continues radically the same, through his successive generations, and among his varying circumstances. He is modified by the institutions under which he lives, and by innumerable influences from without; but the elements of which he is made up abide, and when exposed to a similar pressure have always thrown themselves out in similar forms. It may well be doubted whether any atrocious deed was ever committed by a crowd of men, that might not find its match and counterpart now, in the most refined societies of the earth. If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have been par takers with them in the blood of the prophets,' said the populace to Jesus Christ. But they forgot who they were, and they knew not what they said. They were just about to fill to the overflow that very measure of cruelty and injustice of which they complained. They were going to reject and kill him of whom all the prophets did write. They were going to put to the utmost scorn and torture him who had never spoken but in good will, and never moved but to bless. They were going to prefer with acclamations a thief to the disinterested one who sought not even his own-a public disturber to the prince of peace-a common stabber to the life-giving Redeemer of the world. If this seems to any one wholly inexplicable, let him reflect that it was done by the multitude; and that the multitude, when disappointed, irritated, and misled by its chiefs, has always been a monster; without judgment, without feeling, without the principle of moral control, a blind, brute mass. Such was that which was raving round the palace of the Roman governor. These men-for individually they were men, though collectively but a wild sea,—were disappointed. Jesus was not They the Christ they looked for. He would not be what they would have him; and he was urging upon them a spiritual faith which they were unwilling to embrace. were irritated by the reproving presence of so divine a teacher, by his repeated refusals to gratify either their curiosity or their ambition, and by his pointed rebukes of their hard and impenitent hearts. They were misled by the priests and religious agitators, who saw in Jesus the enemy of their ill-used power, the fearless exposer of their hypocrisy and superstition. They knew |