With a fair and false shew of candour we may bring forward such excuses in behalf of the prophet of Judah. But such excuses are not so lightly accepted before God, who weigheth our deeds in a balance, who trieth the very heart and reins, and who seeth our inmost thoughts afar off. To him every latent and apparent motive, every adventitious and aggravating circumstance, every near and every remote effect of our actions must be fully known; and in reference to these motives, circumstances, and effects collectively, our moral governor directs his commands and proportions his judgments.

After these endeavours to satisfy your inquisitiveness, to check your rashness, to soothe your uneasiness, I will now put the case home to that sympathy to which the ultimate appeal must always lie in moral discussions. Had you been told by a prophet that an angel from God authorized you to eat bread, might you not eat it? Yes, certainly; if no previous circumstances had existed, or none similar to those which existed here. But what are they? An indisputable and peremptory revelation of God's will, immediately and supernaturally conveyed into the mind of the prophet, that he should not eat-a prediction delivered, and in part accomplished two miracles performed openly on the person of Jeroboam-in this state of things, which I minutely explained in this and a former discourse, I say in this state of things, where marks of an extraordinary interposition crowd fast upon your minds, would you not have been staggered at the bare mention of a contrary revelation? would you not have inquired

most scrupulously into the evidence of the permission to eat, and the motives and character and credentials of him who announced it? But the prophet from Judah was not staggered; he did not inquire; he believed without a pause; he consented without a struggle; he disobeyed and he perished.

I have no pleasure, believe me, my hearers, in trampling upon the ashes of the dead, or in dragging to light the frailties of the wise and good. But I am most happy in shewing you that the words and works of God can, in any one disputed instance, be clearly and entirely vindicated. I am most anxious to prevent you from indulging pity at the expence of justice and piety. I am most confident in saying, that no argument can be drawn against the truth of this history from any circumstances in it which really clash with the holiness of God. I have defended the scriptures, in opposition perhaps to the honest, but mistaken prejudices even of those by whom those scriptures are believed and reverenced. I have placed before you a most striking example of the sin and misery to which the best of men are liable. I permit you to commisserate the misfortunes of the prophet. I forbid you to explain away his offence. I exhort you to take heed unto your own ways from the serious remembrance of both.

But whatever defence we may be disposed ourselves to allege, whether from the perverseness of our judgment, or even from the benevolence of our tempers, the man of God does not appear either to have doubted the reality of his own guilt, or to have

arraigned the equity of his sentence. He did not resort to the clamorous language of accusation upon his accuser and betrayer. He did not found any excuse upon his own crime compared with that of the old prophet who dwelt at Beth-el. In silence and in sorrow he began to return home; and while he was returning he was met by a lion and slain. Here the narrative closes in respect to the fate of the prophet from Judah; and here too ought our condemnation to be at an end. Of the destiny reserved for him in a future life we have no account; but as his sufferings on this side of the grave were so exemplary, we are permitted to hope that the justice of the deity was satisfied.

But I must now proceed to contend with a misconception which too generally pervades our feelings, and our reasonings upon this subject; I say, then, that no extenuation of the prophet's misconduct can be fairly deduced from any comparison of his crime with that of the prophet who dwelt at Beth-el; and I further say that it is generally, but not universally true, that the turpitude of the tempter is greater than the turpitude of him who is tempted. The person tempted may distinctly perceive and strongly feel many reasons for obedience, which he who would tempt him feels not, knows not, and therefore cannot attempt to counteract. Accidental or personal advantages, more access to information, more conscious dignity of character, more natural or acquired vigour of understanding may be on the side of the one, and to such a degree too that they ought to place him beyond the reach of any wile, however crafty, and any

solicitation however importunate, that may be employed by the other. This assertion is not vague or paradoxical, and why? The importance of a duty may be so apparent, the obligation to it so cogent, and the discharge of it so difficult, that failure is altogether inexcusable. But inattention and irresolution in such parts of our trial border upon infatuation. They imply a secret unwillingness to do our duty, or a secret carelessness whether it be done properly, and under either of these suppositions that action, which in the eye of men is but a momentary weakness, may in reality be, and in the eye of God appear to be, an impious mockery.

These considerations, be assured, are not trifling or fallacious, and they are evidently most applicable to the case of the prophet. I think it, however, a wretched waste of time to enquire which of the prophets was most criminal; and I confess myself unfurnished with materials to determine the question as such a question should be determined, clearly upon the strength of proof, and consistently with the reverence which is due to an omniscient and all-righteous God. But convinced I am, that, if we could even demonstrate the sin of the prophet of Beth-el to be upon the whole greater, we should still be compelled to acknowledge that the sin of the prophet of Judah, when measured by the circumstances of his character and his commission, was very great. No vague and declamatory invective against perfidy-no smooth and shewy pleas for credulity and inconstancy-no abstruse and theoretical researches into the comparative malignity of

their principles-no precarious and intricate calculations of the magnitude of their consequences, which after all must vary indefinitely, in various circumstances of time and place, and manners and religion-none, I say, of these easy and trite and popular topics can be of the least use in determining so peculiar and complex a question as that before us. It may be allowable for you to stigmatize the action of one prophet with the ignominous appellation of treachery, but upon me it is not incumbent to affix any term of specific accusation to the behaviour of the other. The general charge of disobedience to the will of God is sufficient to stamp his demerit; and, whatever be your hesitation about the choice of words, you must be unqualified for any sound judgment on facts, if you deny that disobedience, in this case, was accompanied by many particular and high aggravations.

If indeed you were as ready to trace back the causes of your first impressions as to follow them implicitly in a wild career of error and perhaps impiety-if you felt a steady purpose to preserve impartiality by balancing probable aggravations against ideal palliatives -if, instead of choosing some scattered part, you viewed it in connexion with the whole-or, to address you in a strain of bolder expostulation, if, daring to start a doubt on the divine justice, you weighed again and again the apparent or possible force of those circumstances which did not escape the divine wisdom, and which incurred the divine displeasurethen only should I think you authorized to pronounce in this delicate and arduous case, and then