affections and lusts;" let us repress all the desires "which war against the soul;" let us not degrade the souls which God breathed into us, which Christ died to save, which the Holy Spirit is willing to make his dwelling-place, into slaves to those vile subordinate agents of the Prince of Darkness, which seek their destruction. Let us cherish all those desires and affections which give peace and health, and vigour and activity to the hidden man of the heart; let us war with those fleshly lusts which war against our souls; let us "not be conformed to this world," so full of, so domineered over by, "the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life;" but let us be "transformed by the renewing of our minds," and "prove what is that good and perfect and acceptable will of God ;" and, pitying a world lying in wickedness and hurrying to hell, let us do all we can to save them. If we can do little in any other way, let us at least, by a holy, consistent conduct, by exemplifying the purity and the peace of the religion of Christ, proclaim to all around us, "We are journeying towards the land, of which the Lord hath said, I will give it you: come with us, and we will do you good; for the Lord hath spoken good concerning Israel." "Let your light, then, so shine before men, that they, seeing your good works, may glorify your Father who is in heaven."1

1 Col. iii. 1-5. Num. x. 29. Matt. v. 16.

DISCOURSE X.

THE NATURE AND DESIGN OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT, AND THE CHRISTIAN'S DUTY IN REFERENCE TO IT.

1 PET. ii. 13-15.-Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.

Ir has been remarked, that the moral precepts of Christianity are highly valuable, not only when viewed in their primary and direct object, the direction and guidance of the movements of the inner and outer man, the regulation of the temper and conduct, the dispositions and actions, but also when considered in their subsidiary and indirect references, particularly in their bearing on the evidence of the Divine origin of that system of revelation of which they form so important a part. That bearing is manifold. Let us look at it in its various phases. Were a book, consisting partly of doctrinal statements and partly of moral precepts, claiming a Divine origin, put into our hands; and were we finding on perusal the moral part of it fantastic and trifling, inconsistent with the principles of man's constitution, unsuitable to the circumstances in which he is placed, and incompatible with the great laws of justice and benevolence,

we should enter on the examination of the evidence appealed to, in support of its high pretensions, under the influence of a strong and justifiable suspicion. The study, for example, of the morality of the Talmud, or of the Koran, would go far, before commencing an investigation of evidence, to satisfy an enlightened enquirer that their claims to a Divine authority could not be satisfactorily supported.

On the other hand, when, in the New Testament, we find a moral code requiring all that is, and nothing that is not, "true, and honest, and just, and pure, and lovely," we cannot but be impressed with the conviction, that the system of which this forms a constituent part is worthy of being carefully inquired into; and we enter on the inquiry not merely with excited attention, but with a disposition to weigh candidly the evidence that can be brought forward of a supernatural origin. A man well acquainted with the preceptive parts of the New Testament, cannot help, unless he is completely devoid of candour, regarding the question as a grave and interesting one. He must feel in reference to its claims, not as he would in reference to the claims of a mere stranger, far less of one whom he knows to be a fool, and suspects to be a knave, but as he would in reference to the claims of a person of whose wisdom and worth he had reason to think highly, The claims are of such a kind, and the consequences of admitting them are so momentous, that even, with all these favourable presumptions, they are not to be admitted without satisfactory evidence; but they obviously deserve to be examined, and respectfully and diligently examined.

But this is not all. A person in a great measure ignorant of what true Christianity is, as a moral as well as a doctrinal system, may, without much difficulty, be persuaded by an ingenious sceptic or unbeliever, that that religion, like so many others, has originated in imposture or delusion, or in a mixture of both. It is to ignorance of Christianity, as its principal intellectual cause, that we are disposed to trace the fearfully extensive success of infidel philosophy among the

nominal Christians of the continent of Europe, in the period immediately preceding the French Revolution. But on a person well informed as to the moral part of Christianity, all such ingenious sophistry will be thrown away. He is in possession of information which satisfies him that all those hypotheses, on one or other of which the denial of the truth and divinity of Christianity must proceed, are altogether untenable. There is a character of uniform, sober, practical good sense, belonging to the morality of the New Testament, which makes it one of the most improbable of all things, that its writers should have been the dupes either of their own imagination or of a designing impostor: and there is a sustained and apparently altogether unassumed and natural air of "simplicity and godly sincerity," which forbids us, except on the most satisfactory evidence, to admit that they who wore it were other than what they seem to be, honest men. To the question, were the men who delivered these moral maxims, fools or knaves, or a mixture of both, were they stupid dupes or wicked impostors, the only reasonable answer is, the thing is barely possible, it is in the very highest degree improbable. Evidence tenfold more strong than infidel philosophy has ever dreamed of, would be necessary to give any thing like versimilitude to any of these hypotheses, on one or other of which must be built the disproof of the claims of Christianity, on the attention, and faith, and obedience of mankind.

There is still another aspect in which the morality of Christianity may be considered, in reference to the evidence of the Divine origin of that religion. Viewed in all its bearings, it seems to be of the nature of a moral miracle. Compare the morality of the New Testament with the morality of ancient philosophy; compare Jesus with Socrates; and Paul, and Peter, and James, and John, with Epictetus, or Plato, or Seneca, or Marcus Antoninus. The difference is prodigious; the superiority is immeasurable. Now, how are we to account for this difference, this superiority? On the supposition that the writers of the New Testament were

uninspired men, we apprehend it is utterly unaccountable. Nothing but the admission, that they were men who spoke and wrote as they were moved by the Spirit of God, can enable us satisfactorily to explain the undoubted fact, that the purest and most perfect system of morality which the world has ever seen; the system that discovers the justest and widest views of the Divine character and government, and the deepest insight into the recesses of human nature, proceeded not from the philosophers of Egypt or of India, of Greece or of Rome, but from the carpenter of Nazareth and his uneducated disciples.1

Such thoughts naturally rise in the mind of every reflecting man, on reading such a passage as that of which our text forms a part, and are well fitted to strengthen our conviction, that we have not followed "cunningly devised fables," when we have yielded credence to the claims and doctrines of Jesus Christ and his apostles. It is, however, full time that we set ourselves to the consideration of the words which are to form the subject of our present discourse: "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.”

The duty here enjoined, and the motive by which it is enforced, are obviously the two topics to which our attention must be successively directed in the sequel; but to illustrate either with advantage, it will be necessary to make a few remarks, having for their object to explain something that is obscure in the phraseology, and to disentangle something that is involved in the construction of the sentence which lies before us.

A fuller illustration of these remarks on the bearing of Christian morality on Christian evidence, will be found in the author's Introductory Essay to Collins' edition of Venn's "Complete Duty of Man.”