finished in my next speculation. Meanwhile, let my readers be satisfied with a profile of the versatile powers, and wait, "till a more convenient season," for a full length picture.

2

ON VERSATILITY.

"For though I be free from all men, yet have I made myself servant unto all, that I might gain the more. To the weak, became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men.”—1 Cor. ix. 19. 22.

RESTRICTED by the narrowness of my page, and opulent in the variety of my topics, I could only, in my last sermon, accomplish half my purpose. Those of my patient readers, who are willing to follow me, pursuing one subject for a fortnight, may find my design completed in the following speculation.

Without much attention to chronological order, a few examples of the pleasures and uses, flowing from versatility, have been already cited. It would have been more methodical, to have illustrated the subject by an early description of the character of that amiable apostle, whose conduct was the brightest commentary

upon the doctrine, so perspicuously detailed in my text. It is not too late to be accurate, and to be just; and on the short strip of paper that is allowed me, I will strive to combine such particulars of the pupil of Gamaliel, as will exemplify and strengthen my subject.

Among the earlier assertors of the dignity and purity of the christian faith, none equalled St. Paul, in combining, with the most erect piety, the most pliant politeness. His courtesy and his christianity went hand in hand; and, during the infancy of a persecuted sect, harassed by the intolerance of paganism, and the tyranny of provincial governors, the gentleness of his demeanor, was the surest mode to render his doctrine palatable to the frowning Roman, the supercilious Jew, and the fastidious Greek. A religious reformer, at a moment, so unpropitious to innovation, would have retarded the cause, dearest to his heart, if it could be said of him, as of the hypocritical deputy in Shakspeare,

"Lord Angelo is precise,

Stands as a guard with envy, scarce confesses
That his blood flows, or that his appetite
Is more to bread than stone."

Had Paul been thus rigid, he would have half strangled christianity in its cradle, and an earlier martyrdom would have attested the weak judgment of the saint. He was too much a man of the world, to affect such austerity. With a generous frankness, he avows his frailty, his "weakness and wanderings." We also are men of like passions with you, is his honest language; and whether we find him with pharisees or sadducees, in the areopagus of Athens, or before the judgment seat of Agrippa, he is equally the courtier; willing to comply with the modes of fashion, willing to yield to trivial prejudices, for the sake of reconciling obstinacy and incredulity to his momentous schemes. At Thessalonica, in a Jewish synagogue, he reasoned, from scripture premises, in so candid and polite a manner, that many, even of that bigoted nation, consorted with Paul, and none, but "the baser sort," as they are emphatically called; men, upon whom the smiles of civility beam in vain; none, but those " lewd" and despicably low "fellows," rejected his salutary proffers. At Berea, both men and ladies of quality were allured to the christian scheme, no less by the address of the apostle, than by a

conviction of the truths he preached. Even in the market-place at Athens, among philosophers and other rabble, such was the adroitness of this polished denizen of Tarsus, that some, even of the superficial, sceptical, and volatile Athenians were willing to "hear again," when he urged the mysterious doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. At Corinth, we read, that he" persuaded both Jews and Greeks." To effect this, strikingly exemplifies the flexibility of his temper, and the variety of his talents; he must have possessed both the recondite lore of the first, and the tongues of the second, to have conciliated such intractable characters. His valedictory oration to the elders of Ephesus, is a perfect model of the polite style; by his bland and insinuating accents, he twice softened the ruggedness of soldiers, and procured some remission of the punishment, arbitrarily inflicted by biassed or corrupt tribunals. When the saint perceived, that the ecclesiastical court of Ananias, was torn into schism, by the sectaries of the day, by artfully applying to the prejudices of the sadducees and the pharisees, and exciting a controversy among them, respecting the verity of their peculiar tenets, he escaped