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the Gospel to be true, all these things ought to be; he is not, therefore, truly a believer who does not study thus to acknowledge these truths, not only with his lips, but in his life. Thomas's faith would not have been accepted if he had merely said, My Lord and my God," and had not felt and acted as was due to his Lord and his God. But Christ knew his heart; he, accordingly, as well as the rest of the Apostles, passed his life, as he was bound by his office, in the dangerous and toilsome task of preaching the Gospel among the obstinate and hard-hearted; and ended it, as ancient histories inform us, by suffering martyrdom in the cause of his Master. His Master is likewise ours; and, at the last day, He will stand before us, and before all mankind, who will then become, whether they will or no, witnesses, together with the Apostles, of His resurrection. Behold, He cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him: and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of Him."

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But why should they wail because of Him? Why will not men rather "love his appearing?" Because there are such numbers, unhappily,

who confess Jesus with their lips, but in their lives deny Him; who (as Paul expresses it) have "counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith we are sanctified, an unholy thing, and have done despite unto the Spirit of grace, ," by disobeying and neglecting Him. Whether you will be of the number of those that will then bewail, or that will rejoice at his appearing, is left now to your own choice. Imagine, therefore, that He now stands before you, as He then will be before you, and as He stood before the Apostle Thomas. Contemplate with the eye of faith those precious wounds impressed on His blessed body for our sakes imagine that you hear Him inviting you, as He does by His holy word, and by us, the ministers of that word, to believe in Him, while there is time to believe in Him profitably, and to implant that faith in your affections, and display it in your life. And may his Holy Spirit bring you to be partakers of the blessing He promised to those who having "not seen, have yet believed," and "that believing, ye may have life through his Name!"

* Heb. x. 29.

NOTE TO PAGE 179.

This accordingly, and several other passages which could not but convey, to men of plain understanding, in the times when they were written, the idea of our Lord's divine character, (which however is still more strongly implied in the general tenour of the New Testament than in any particular passage,) such passages, I say, some persons find it so difficult to explain away, though predetermined not to admit the doctrine, that they are driven to declare that the Apostles themselves were mistaken as to the true character of their Master; or at least expressed themselves in a manner which could not fail to lead their readers into a mistake.

Now that Jesus should knowingly leave his Apostles under a mistake, which must lead to idolatry, is inconsistent with his being a person of moral perfection, or even of common honesty; and his doing so unknowingly, is equally inconsistent, not only with superhuman wisdom, but even with ordinary good sense. So that, on either supposition, it will follow that Jesus must have been not only no heaven-sent prophet, but not even a wise and good man. So difficult is it to stop short of a rejection of Scripture, if we once begin, by making our own conjectures the standard by which to try Scripture, instead of taking Scripture as the standard for ourselves.

It is quite otherwise with the works of Aristotle, or Cicero, or Bacon, or any other writers who do not pretend to divine revelation. We may hold such books in great esteem, without believing what we find in them any further than our own reason approves and even if we reject, without sufficient reason, some part of what these authors teach, and thus lose a part of the truths they inculcate, we may yet profit by another part, and be in no danger of continually rejecting more and more.

But it is not so with a writer who professes (as the Apostles do) to be communicating a divine revelation, imparted to him through the means of miracles. In matters indeed unconnected with religion, such as points of history, or natural philosophy, he may be as liable to error as other men, without any disparagement to his pretensions; but if we reject as false any part of the Religion which he professes himself divinely sent to teach, we cannot, consistently, believe but that his pretensions are either an imposture or a delusion, and that he is wholly unworthy of credit.

SERMON VIII.

JOHN XIV. 23.

If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.

THESE words plainly have a reference to the promise which our Lord had, just before, in the same discourse, made to his disciples; that He would "send them a Comforter, even the Spirit of Truth, that He may abide with you for ever for He dwelleth with you; and shall be in you."

This promise had its first and most openlystriking fulfilment in the extraordinary gifts poured out on the disciples on the day of Pentecost. That event was (as I observed in a