accomplish? Witness those multitudes of fanatical worshippers, who toil over the same thirsty regions, to pay their annual adoration at the shrine of another Herod, a sanguinary and crafty prophet. And to complete the climax, what will not a heavenly-inspired ardour accom. plish, a true principle of grace in the soul of man, in his passage towards the Jerusalem which is above? A spirit that is enkindled by God himself in the heart of the renewed Christian, will seek its true happiness through every opposing obstacle. The human mind, that active and restless principle, will carry a man with the same ardor towards a good and suitable object, as towards the contrary. All it requires is a true impulse, a proper direction, and a power sufficient, constant, and uniform. The soul then will pursue heaven as ardently as it now pursues earthly pleasures and vanities. It will seek its proper rest in God with the same intenseness with which it now seeks it in the world. Happiness is its object. All its amazing activities are perpetually directed to an undefined good. It has an infinite provision for enjoying happiness; and, therefore, it is of the last consequence that it should have an infinite object: and that object is God alone, an incarnate God, the great Emmanuel, made

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known to us by the spirit, dwelling in the heart by faith, and working in us by love. Until this day-star arise in the heart, all is natural chaos and confusion. The soul, in its occasional efforts, broods over the dark mass, and would fain by its own power reduce the jarring principles of nature, warring passions, and revolting appetites, into order and harmony. It seeks occasionally to extricate itself from dull sense and matter, and to fly upwards to its native seat. But it possesses not the true power. Divine grace must set the prisoner free; must disengage it from corporeal pleasures, from low-thoughted cares, from prejudices, false opinions, and illusions which dazzle and perplex the moral vision, and prevent that true light from entering which lighteth` every man that cometh into the world. Thus at the fullness of time, when our Lord stepped as it were, into the world, without noise, without observation, the pagan world lay in darkness and the shadow of death. Human knowledge indeed, had attained its greatest height; the sun of philosophy and science had passed its meridian in the schools of Greece and Rome. But moral illumination, a power sufficient to aid and conduct the mind in its search after the chief good, the author of being and happiness, there was none: it had long since been obscured by error

and depravity. Such was the condition of the world. The Jews were even in a worse condition. With the scriptures of truth in their hands, the vail was upon their hearts. They stumbled at those very prophecies which told them expressly of Christ. The key of truth they broke in the door. Possessed with worldly and carnal notions of their Messiah and his kingdom, they overlooked "the true light," and embraced in their thoughts, opinions, desires, and expectations, all that was gross, palpable, and earthly. Even the first principles of religion, "mercy and the love of God," they had entirely shaken off.

Such was the state of darkness which involved the human mind, as exemplified in the Jew and the Pagan, when Christ came down from heaven to save a lost world: to recover the divine image upon the soul which sin had effaced; to give to the moral machine a new direction and a fresh impulse.

But to return to the wise men. No sooner had they set foot upon holy ground, and had entered Jerusalem, the grand repository of divine truth, the scene of so many revelations of God's will to man, and which now, as the seat of empire, they justly apprehended to be the theatre of a grand event, the birth-place of a divine personage, than they commence their enquiries

after the object of their search" Where is He that is born king of the Jews, for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to

worship him?” We may well suppose that the arrival of these strangers from a distant country, and upon such an errand, would soon reach the ears of the jealous and suspicious Herod. In a city worn out with intestine com. motions, a people bleeding under the scourge of a sanguinary tyrant, expectation of deliverance wound up to the utmost pitch, hope (though so long deferred,) clinging closer and closer to the phantom of their sensual imagination, namely, a victorious Messiah; intense, various, and conflicting, must have been the feelings both of monarch and people. Accordingly, "when Herod the king had heard these things, he was troubled, and all Jerusalem with him." The former having waded to the throne through blood and lawless violence, justly apprehended danger for himself from this newly announced “ king of the Jews." The latter dreaded fresh bloodshed, when this lion should be again let loose against them.

Uniting to ferocity the cunning of the fox, Herod first, in order to compare the event of Christ's birth with prophecy, "gathered all the chief priests and the scribes of the people

together," those whose business it was to expound the law of Moses, and enquires of them where Christ should be born? Having learnt from them the place, namely,

Bethlehem of Judea:' he next privately sent for the wise men, and " enquired of them diligently, or with accuracy, what time the star appeared?" Having ascertained these two points, the place and time of his birth, and so formed a conjecture of his age; with detestable hypocrisy, having war in his heart, he dismisses them, "Go," said he, "to Bethlehem, and search diligently for the young child: and when ye have found him, bring me word again, that I may come and worship him also." Alas! his purpose was blood and not religion. His infernal policy was to slay the holy child Jesus, under the colour of paying him divine adoration. And yet had he but accompanied the illustrious strangers to Bethlehem, and prostrated himself at his feet in deep repentance and faith, one drop of that blood which he thirsted to spill, should have atoned for those rivers of blood he had already shed. Then, too, would have been spared the lives of the innocents, the lives of innumerable victims besides. Thus thousands perish with the word of life in their hands: thousands daily neglect to prostrate themselves by repentance and faith