loved this present world;"" At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge'."

Yet even in these instances, particularly the last, how unlike is the manner of speaking to that of Jesus Christ upon such occasions! "Do ye now believe? Behold, the hour cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave Me alone." "Wilt thou lay down thy life for My sake? Verily I say unto thee, The cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied Me thrice"." The one speaks as an Omniscient Being, to whom nothing was wonderful. other as a poor frail man, liable to be deceived, from time to time, in his best hopes and surest reckonings.

The

Upon this subject, of what St. Paul anticipated, I cannot forbear citing one passage, as associating itself, more immediately, with the occasion of the present solemnity. Some of the Corinthians, it seems, being at variance one with another, had brought their cause before the customary judicature of the city. St. Paul denounces this as unchristian, and this is the remonstrance which he addressed to them". "Dare any of you, having a matter against another, go to law before the unjust," i. e. the heathens, " and not before the

› 1 Tim. i. 19. vi. 10. v. 15. coll. 2 Tim. i. 15. iv. 10, 16. St. John xvi. 31, 32. xiii. 38.

1 Cor. vi. 1—9.

saints? Do ye not know, that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters? Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life? I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren? But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers! Now, therefore, there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? Nay, ye do wrong and defraud, and that your brethren. Know ye not, that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God?" He who writes in this strain, could he possibly have anticipated, in a country where Christianity has been long established, and in which it is an affront, to suppose a man an unbeliever-could he, I say, have anticipated such a state of things, as that of which we are witnesses? prisons so crowded, suits so numerous and various, statutes so rapidly multiplying, a large profession constantly and laboriously employed, courts almost incessantly sitting, assizes twice a year? It is plain, that no such thing ever entered into his thoughts: and if he had been to frame prophecies for himself, this was of all pictures the least likely for him to have drawn, of the times in which the Gospel should be very generally received.

One observation more, and the argument, as far as concerns the New Testament, may be regarded as tolerably complete. Let it be examined, which of all its human authors appear to have had the deepest sense of the universal degeneracy, which was to be looked for among Christians. They will appear to have been the very persons, who from birth or other causes were likely to have imbibed most of the sentiments of Jesus Christ Himself: St. James and St. Jude, who are called in Scripture His brethren; and St. John His beloved disciple. These, when they speak of approaching apostasy, speak calmly and decisively, as of a familiar, though very sorrowful, thought. When they recommend moral duties, they do it as men who are aware that the great majority of their hearers will devise how to slight or evade them. Every where they assume, that those to whom they address themselves know the truth, and that it is but the plain common sense of doing their duty, in which they are deficient. They, therefore, lay their danger before them, not as though they reckoned upon doing much good by it, but as if it were their best and only chance of doing any. This, though not without exception, is the prevailing tone of the three brethren of our Lord. But it is, I think, uniformly and without

b 1 S. John ii. 18. iv. 3, 5. 2 S. John 7, 8. S. Jude 4, 17, 18. e. g. S. Janes i. 13, 22. ii. 12, 14. 1 S. John ii. 29. iii. 7, 18. iv. 20. v. 18-21. 2 S. John 5, 6. 3 S. John 11. S. Jude

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3, 20, 21.

H

exception, the tone of our Blessed Lord Himself, in His public ministrations.

The falsehood, then, of our religion-the fraud or enthusiasm of its Author-is the very last conclusion, to which a reasonable man would be led, upon considering the abundance of iniquity in the Christian world. On the contrary, things have been so ordered, that the very degeneracy of the Church is bearing, at this moment, the strongest possible testimony to the divine authority of Jesus Christ. For in it a prophecy is accomplishing before our eyes, so unlike what could have been expected when it was first delivered, that His own friends and apostles, as we have now seen, could hardly bring themselves to receive it; and do not seem to have apprehended its full import, even when they repeated it themselves.

To find fault, therefore, with the Gospel, as many do, for not having made men better than they are, is to find fault with it for not having done that, which its Founder never expected it would do: nay, that in which He expressly predicted its failure.

If men will go on to ask, How these things should be? how we can possibly reconcile it to infinite wisdom and goodness, that so large a portion of the world should be in that strange and frightful condition, which is implied in the words, "immoral Christian ;”—with a God, a Saviour, and a judgment to come, known and believed by almost

all in theory, and, almost as universally, slighted in practice :—the same account may be given of this, as of the permission of moral evil in general: that we cannot possibly be competent judges, how far it may conduce towards carrying on some greater scheme of Divine Wisdom, of which we, and all our concerns, form only a subordinate part. And we may apply, particularly, to the present subject, what Bishop Butler has remarked on this whole class of difficulties: "It is not impossible, that men's shewing and making manifest, what is in their heart, what their real character is, may have respect to a future life, in ways and manners which we are not acquainted with: particularly it may be a means (for the Author of Nature does not appear to do any thing without means) of their being disposed of suitably to their characters; and of its being known to the creation, by way of example, that they are thus disposed of."

But whether this, or any other, be accepted, as a probable, though imperfect, solution of present appearances, (and surely any thing is more probable than Atheism): it is clear that the difficulty, as far as it respects the Scripture, is entirely done away with, when it is seen, that the Scriptures themselves recognise and imply the very same state of things, which seems so unaccountable at first. There are some passages, which appear to represent it in this particular point of view: viz. as a Anal. p. i. c. 5. Works, Oxford, 1807. vol. ii. p. 145.