5. He who thus possesses patience is at liberty to reach the promises of God to open his mind to the consolations of the gospel. He can reason with his soul-"Why art thou so cast down, Ŏ my soul?” 6. While in patience we possess our souls, we can expatiate in the views of future blessedness.

XXXII

ON CANDOUR AND LIBERALITY, AS EVINCED IN PROMOTING THE ERECTION OF PLACES OF WORSHIP.

LUKE Vii. 5.—He loveth our nation, and he hath built us a synagogue.

It is pleasing and instructive to behold in the narratives of Scripture frequent instances of the triumphs of divine grace over obstacles utterly insurmountable to any inferior power, and even striking examples of transcendent piety, where, considering the actual state of human nature, it was least to be expected. In these instances is verified the truth of our Lord's observation, "What is impossible with men is possible with God."

We learn that no combination of external circumstances, no profession or situation in life, however beset with temptation, no education, however unfavourable to the production of piety, ought to make us despair of attaining salvation.

Are the habits of military life peculiarly hostile to piety, and is it difficult, in connexion with these, to maintain that humility, sobriety, and heavenly-mindedness, which are so essential to religion? Our text exhibits, notwithstanding, a most eminent saint in the person of a centurion. Is a neglected or, what is still worse, a perverted education a great obstacle in the way of salvation,—an education from which religion has been entirely excluded, or religious principles inculcated, the most fatal and erroneous? Behold an instance of unparalleled

*The sermon of which the brief notes are here presented was the last, except one, that Mr. Hall preached; though the notes seem to have been prepared for a former occasion. It was delivered on the morning of February 27, 1831, the Sunday previous to the attack which terminated in death. The students in the Bristol Education Society (an institution devoted to the preparation of young men for the ministry in the Baptist persuasion) had long been in the habit of preaching in various very small places, in the more populous and wretched quarters of the city of Bristol; and their labours being found productive of much good, it was judged expedient to erect a place of worship, which might not only contain the several small companies thus assembled, but accommodate others that might be induced to attend. A considerable sum of money was accordingly raised for this purpose: the building was commenced; and in order to contribute towards the remainder of the expense, it was proposed to make a collec ion in Broadmead chapel. Mr. Hall very warmly seconded the project, and recommended it, with great earnestness, after his morning sermon. In the evening he preached a very impressive and splendid discourse on the text"Take heed, and beware of covetousness," of which he does not appear to have prepared any notes. This subject he meant to apply to the case of the new place of worship; but an exceedingly heavy rain occasioning a comparatively small congregation, he stated, towards the conclusion of the sermon, that it would not be doing justice to a cause in which he felt so lively an interest, to make the collection while so few persons were present; and proposed to defer it, therefore, to a future occasion. But, alas! this was the close of his public services: and they who had so often seen his countenance beaming with intellect, benevolence, and piety, and listened to his voice with inex pressible delight, and many of them with permanent benefit, saw and heard him no more!-ED.

devotion and faith in a Roman centurion, a heathen by birth, and, as there is every reason to conclude, trained up in the practice of idolatry from his earliest infancy. Is the possession of authority apt to intoxicate man with pride, and especially in proportion as that authority is arbitrary and despotic? We have here, in a Roman officer, a pattern of the deepest humility. Having occasion to apply to our Lord for the cure of his servant, he would not admit of his giving himself the trouble of coming in person, from a conviction that it was unnecessary, and that he was undeserving of such honour. Finally, are mankind apt to be ill affected to each other on account of difference of national character, and the opposition which [exists in their religion?] The opposition, in this respect, between the Romans and the Jews was as great as can well be imagined. The Romans were devoted to idolatry, and looked upon the Jews, who refused to join in the worship of idols, as a sort of atheists; they hated them for their singularity and their supposed unnatural antipathy to all other nations; and, at this time, despised them as a conquered people. The centurion, though he had been nursed in these prejudices, and was now, by very profession, employed in maintaining the Roman authority over Judea, yet “loved the Jewish nation, built them a synagogue," and sought an interest in the affections of that people; so that the Jewish elders, sympathizing with him under his distress, are the bearers of his message to our Lord. Let us attend to the hints of instruction suggested by the character which they here give of the centurion.

I. "He loveth our nation."

We have already remarked the superiority to prejudice which this trait in his character implies. We now observe, his attachment to the Jewish nation rested on solid grounds; it was such an attachment that it was next to impossible for a good man not to feel. The Jews were the only people in the world, before the coming of Christ, who were taken into an express covenant with God. To them he stood in a relation different from that which he sustained towards any other people. He was their proper national head and king. The covenant on which he became so was entered into at Mount Sinai, when Jehovah descended in a visible manner, uttered his laws in an audible voice, and, by the express consent of the people, communicated to Moses those statutes and ordinances which were ever after to form the basis of their polity, civil and religious, and a perpetual barrier of separation between them and other nations. Conducted by a train of the most astonishing miracles to the land of Canaan, God was pleased to dwell among them by a miraculous symbol, and to make them the depositaries of true religion. Thus the will of God was known and his worship celebrated, while surrounding nations were sunk in the deepest ignorance. A succession of prophets was raised up at different periods; a body of inspired truths was communicated; a peculiar system of providence established, as far as their affairs were concerned; and a series of predictions preserved, by which an expectation was excited of the appearance of a divine person of their race, who was to be the "light of the gentiles," "the glory of Israel," the person in whom

"all the nations of the earth were to be blessed." These high privileges and prerogatives are thus enumerated by St. Paul: "Who am an Israelite, of whom is the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is God over all blessed for evermore."

As the centurion derived his knowledge of the Supreme Being from the Jews, either by conversing with them or attending [their worship,] he necessarily felt himself attached to that nation.

Religious benefits, as they are incomparably superior to all others, lay a foundation for the strongest attachment among men. If we are taught rightly to appreciate spiritual favours, we shall feel veneration and respect for those who, under God, have been the instruments of conveying them to us, far superior to what we feel towards any other persons.

To love the Jewish nation is still a natural dictate of piety. To that nation we are indebted for the records of inspiration, and the light of the gospel; for the men who, under the direction of the Spirit, composed the former and published the latter among the pagans were all Jews. Moses and the prophets, Christ and his apostles, let it be remembered, were Jews; and though the Israelitish race are for the present suffering the vengeance of the Almighty for rejecting the Messiah, the blessings yet in reserve for them, to be bestowed at a future season, are great and signal. Separated for a time from the church of God for their unbelief, the period of their exaltation is deferred, but their glory is not extinguished: "As concerning the gospel, they are enemies for your sakes; but as touching the election, they are beloved for their fathers' sakes. For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance." They are the seed of a glorious church, the stock of which remains in the earth; but which, at a future time, will revive and flourish in the beauty of holiness, and send forth its branches to the end of the earth. Though they have long lain "in the valley of vision till their bones are become very dry," yet the Lord in his own time, and that not a remote one, will" call to the four winds, the Spirit of God will revive them, their sinews will come upon their flesh, will cover them, and they shall live." As the Jews were the first instruments in converting the nations to the faith of Jesus, so, we doubt not, it is to them the honour is reserved of the final and universal propagation of the gospel : for "if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the gentiles, how much more their fulness?" On this account, when we behold the miserable outcasts of the Jewish nation, it is natural and proper for us to feel in a manner similar to what we are accustomed to do on beholding a prince in exile and captivity, with the difference which arises from the certainty of their being restored to more than their former splendour; "when the Deliverer shall come from Sion, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob."

Was the Jewish nation an object of respect to the devout worshipper of God? How much more are the servants of Christ entitled to the same

respect! The servants of Christ are "the true circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh." They succeeded to the spiritual privileges of the Jewish church, and enjoy them in a still higher degree. They are the salt of the earth; they are, through the illuminations of the Sun of Righteousness, the "light of the world," the "city set on a hill, which cannot be hid."

The love of God will never fail to manifest itself, by saving those, in every sect and denomination, who appear to be partakers of his holiness. "Every one that loveth him that begat, loveth him also that is begotten of him." With all their imperfections, true Christians will invariably be esteemed by a good man as the excellent of the earth. Having contemplated the attachment which the centurion displayed to the people of God, let us next consider in what manner his attachment was evinced. It was not an empty profession, productive of no fruit.

II. He "hath built us a synagogue." The original words are more emphatic : "It is he who built us a synagogue." Synagogues were places of worship, where the Jews were wont to assemble on their Sabbath, to hear the law and the prophets read and interpreted, accompanied with suitable exhortations to the people, and to present prayer and praise to God. Wherever ten Jews resided who were at leisure to attend the worship of God at ordinary times, as well as on the Sabbath, it was the opinion of the Jewish rabbies a Synagogue ought to be erected. Thither the people resorted, not only to hear the law, but also to offer up their supplications; the times of prayer, which were at nine in the morning, at noon, and at three o'clock in the evening, corresponding to the times of presenting the morning and evening incense. These buildings for public worship were very much multiplied at Jerusalem there were many hundreds of them; at Alexandria they were also prodigiously numerous; and there was scarcely a town where any number of Jews resided where there was not one or more. They were governed by a council of elders, over whom presided an officer called the angel of the synagogue, whence the title of angel is supposed to be given in the Revelation to the presiding elder or bishop in the Christian church.

In each synagogue a discipline was established for the support of purity of manners: and punishments were sometimes inflicted on notorious transgressors of the law. Thus we read of Saul, afterward named Paul, scourging men and women in the synagogues.

These places of worship are supposed to have taken rise among the Jews after the return from the Babylonish captivity; at least, we find no distinct traces of them before, though it was customary, even in the days of Elisha, to resort for instruction to the prophets, on the new moons and the Sabbaths.

They were a most important appendage to the temple-worship, and a principal cause of preventing the Israelites from relapsing into idolatry to which they were before so strongly addicted. Instead of assembling at Jerusalem three times a year, where no public instruction was

delivered, but sacrifices and offerings only presented by the priest, the people, by means of synagogues, had an opportunity of listening to the writings of Moses and the prophets every Sabbath-day, the officiating ministers publicly harangued the people, and the persons who frequented the synagogue were united in religious society. While the temple-service was admirably adapted to preserve the union of the nation, and to prevent innovations in the public solemnities of religion, the synagogues were equally calculated for an increase of personal piety and to perpetuate in the minds of the people the knowledge of revealed truth. After these were established, degenerate as the sons of Israel became, we never read of their relapsing into idolatry. The denunciations of the law were so often thundered in their ears, the calamities which their fathers had suffered for this offence were too familiar to their recollection, ever to allow them thus "to tempt the Lord to jealousy."

There is undoubtedly a great resemblance between the edifices erected for public worship among us and those of the Jews. They appear to me to bear a much greater analogy to the synagogues than to the temple. The temple was a single building, which the Israelites were forbidden to multiply, it being designed to be a centre of union to the whole nation, as well as the immediate seat of the Divine presence, which was confined to that spot: synagogues might be built at pleasure, and were spread over the whole land. The very idea of a temple is that of an immediate habitation of the Deity, who manifests himself there in a supernatural manner, or, at least, is believed so to do by his votaries. In the heathen temples, after they were duly consecrated, the gods in whose honour they were erected were supposed to take an immediate and preternatural possession of them. What was mere pretence or delusion among the heathen was at the temple of Jerusalem an awful reality: the Lord visibly "dwelt between the cherubim." In places set apart for Christian worship, there were no such visible tokens of the presence of God. The manner of his presence is spiritual, not local; he dwells in the hearts of his worshippers. St. Stephen taught the Jewish nation, that it was one of the distinctions of the Christian dispensation that the Highest no longer "dwelleth in temples made with hands." An altar, a sacrifice, and a priest were the necessary appendages of the temple. But, among Christians, we have no altar so called but the cross; no priest but the Son of God, who remaineth "a priest for ever;" and no sacrifice but the sacrifice "once offered for the sins of the world." The priestly office of Christ put an end to the typical priesthood of the sons of Aaron. It is an everlasting priesthood, and admits of no rival or substitute. In popular language, indeed, we give the appellation to that order of men who are set apart to minister in sacred things; and it is of no consequence, providing we recollect that it is but figurative language, not designed to be rigorously exact for the apostolic definition of a priest, in the strict sense of the word, is one "taken from among men, and ordained for men in things pertaining to God, that may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins." In the temple-service no provision was made for the regular instruction VOL. III.-L