This, however, did not appease the mob. They were deter. mined on taking his life, and frightened the Court into submission. Had he not a right to complain? Where is the man who would not have complained? He did not. His friends appeared in arms to rescue him, but instead of permitting it, he went forward in person and dissuaded them from the attempt. In the face of all the laws of the Roman empire, he was led out to execution the very day he had been publicly acquitted. His deportment on the occasion was entirely tranquil. Had he been an impostor, he would at least have remonstrated against the cruelty of his sentence; or had he been an enthusiast, he would have betrayed that high-wrought excitement which sets danger and death at defiance. But he did neither. I know not that in his whole life he evinced more composure, than during the hour which finally closed it. After arriving on the ground, he seems to have been extremely exhausted, and to have said but little. That little, however, was not in his own defence. It was chiefly in bidding farewell to his family and friends, and in pardoning one of the criminals who was nailed by his side. Just before he expired, he cast a look of tender. ness on the crowd, and instead of reproving them for their cruelty, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." O, my hearers, what a sentiment on the quivering lips of an inno. cent and murdered man! How do the fashionable ideas of honor, and the popular tribunal of pistols and balls, and the bleeding and frenzied bosom of premature widowhood and orphanage, how do they appear at the foot of Mount Cal. vary! What must we think of him, so cool in enthusiasm, or so godlike in imposture, as to be the first to inculcate the forgiveness of injuries, and the first to exemplify his own lesson while bathed in the blood of the Cross! With such a scene before me, I can no longer wonder that infidelity it. self, in one of its lucid intervals, should have burst into that impressive exclamation, " If Socrates died like a philosopher, Jesus Christ died like a God!"

And now, my hearers, let me repeat the inquiry, "What think ye of Christ?" Was he what he claimed to be? or was he a victim to the rottenness and corruption of his own heart? There is no middle ground. To use his own words in another case, "Those who are not for him must be against him." Either Jesus Christ must be the King of Heaven, or he must be, I tremble to say what. Look at his life-his character-his death; and if your minds can be goaded up to pronounce him the abominable panderer of imposture and falsehood, if they can, I have one favor to ask, which those surely who are too wise to believe the New Testament, can have no apology for refusing: I wish to be informed who wrote the biography of our Saviour. We have often wondered that the authors of the Letters of Junius, and of the Poems of Ossian, could have resisted the temptation of declaring their names. But to have composed out of raw materials such a production as the Life of Christ; to have combined so faultless and original a system of morals; to have delineated a perfect character so completely that enmity itself can discover no defect; and all this 1800 years ago, when the greatest philosophers of the age had been unsuccessful in similar attempts; that any mere man should have done this, and especially that he should have concealed his name, and not only so, but should have palmed the whole' upon another, is one of those logical probabilities that I confess myself unable to comprehend. But, my hearers, I will not insult your understandings by pushing the argument further. Let me rather ask another question, conveyed by the text, What do we think of Christ, as our Saviour and Judge? How far are we conformed to the holy example which he has bequeathed for our imitation? Take, for in. stance, his humility: Have we lived like him, above the world, unmoved by its praise, and unambitious of its splendor? Have we resisted the approach of pride, and filled our proper place in the dust, and sought in our closets, and on our kness, that spirit of meekness which our great Exemplar evinced? Look, also, at the judicious and sober consistency of his life. Have we any corresponding indications in our own? Is our piety, like his, the pure and steady flame which enlightens, and animates, and warms our hearts; or is it the tremulous blaze of feeling kindled by sympathy, and kept alive by enthusiasm and animal excitement? Inquire once more, and see what practical effects our religion produces. Do we imitate our Saviour in his unwearied solicitude to instruct the ignorance, relieve the necessities, and console the trials of our fellow-men? Do our purses confirm what our profession supposes? Will the records of poverty find our names, in the day of judgment, enrolled as the trustees of its wants? Ah, my hearers, that hollowhearted Christianity which makes long prayers, and wears long faces, but puts off practical things with a convenient "Be ye warmed, be ye clothed," is literally less than nothing, and vanity. Never, till hypocrisy is numbered among the cardinal virtues, will such a wretched pretext pass for the genuine currency of the Bible. In the disclosure of the final day, the inquiry of our text will be put to us again; and if we should then be found to have contradicted in our lives what we professed with our lips, the effrontery of our pretensions will only aggravate our guilt, and lend a fresh sting to the despair of Eternity.

Γ

SERMON II.

"And as he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come, Felix trembled."

Acts xxiv., 25.

THERE is something in truth, my hearers, which renders it awfully commanding and impressive. Such are the relations which the Eternal God has made it to sustain towards the moral sense, that no scepticism, however daring, and no hostility, however malignant, are proof against the Herculean power of its grasp. Were it not for this, on what principle are we to account for the prodigious success which attended the preaching of the Apostle Paul? It is true, he had the advantage of talents, and of a liberal and accomplished education. But we should suppose his public performances were by no means extraordinary. He is said to have been a man of inferior personal appearance, of infirm health, and of a very unpleasant hesitancy of enunciation. Yet, we find him, in spite of the unpopular enterprise in which he was embarked, commanding respect from every audience, and in every circle. Infidelity withered under his eye; wit shrunk from the dignity of his frown; the decorated insolence of office trembled before him even while he stood a criminal at its bar; and if the relations of history may be credited, the charge which finally brought him to the stake, was no other than the uneasiness he had awakened in the mind of Nero, and the restraints which his preaching was likely to impose upon that debauched and abandoned emperor.

The attitude in which we are called to contemplate this wonderful apostle to-day, is not at all judicial, although he is standing before the chief magistrate of the country. Several weeks previous to this period, he had been put on trial, but owing to a pretended absence of testimony, on the part of the Government, it was adjourned. During the interval, while he was awaiting the result in prison, Felix came into town, with his wife Drusilla, and actuated by a curiosity more natural than it was delicate, they sent for St. Paul, to hear him explain and defend his principles. Now, my hearers, remark two or three historical facts connected with these transactions. When the Jewish nation became tributary to the Roman Empire, the government was entrusted to procurators, appointed by the crown. One of these offi. cers you behold in the person of Claudius Felix, who, by taking advantage of imperial imbecility, contrived to insinuate himself into public life. He is depicted by his biographers as exceedingly avaricious, trampling alike upon every dictate of justice, and every suggestion of humanity, when his own interest was at stake; and it appears, from the account, that he retained the apostle in confinement merely in the expectation that his friends would purchase his release. In regard to Drusilla, his conduct had been stamped with indelible infamy. When the procurator first saw this woman, she was the wife of a neighboring prince, and the solemn obligations of marriage were resting on her soul. But he persuaded her to violate her fidelity, -to abandon her engagements, and to sacrifice to an illegitimate union with himself, all the claims of her former husband. all the responsibility of her own vows, and all the chastity and sacredness of conjugal love; and this, too, when he was Governor of Judea-when the people were looking to him for an example-and when he knew, as every body knows, that practises which receive the impress of fashion and of rank, are seized and circulated with redoubled eagerness through all the subordinate classes of society.