and yet a few only out of many enter in at the narrow gate: these are great matters, and too high for any, except in such measure as their souls are purified by a holy and divine life. On these things, therefore, more especially, if we will be humble, that is, if we will be wise and safe, we shall reverently and thankfully accept the teaching of the Church, instead of endeavouring to make out things for ourselves: and it is the neglect of this rule which has made so many heretics and schismatics, and torn CHRIST's Body, contrary to His dying prayer, into so many sects and parties. People having just got a little way in goodness, just beginning to taste the sincere milk of the word, have thought themselves full-grown in CHRIST, spiritual, capable of judging all things: even as those others whom St. Paul to the Hebrews finds fault with, have grown slothful, and never weaned themselves from the milk, that is, have never got beyond the first beginnings of Christianity.

What then is to be done? Why, in this as in all other things, we must keep away from both sides of the danger; we must neither be slothful nor presumptuous: remembering our sins, and feeling unworthy to look into the great things of God, we must turn our thoughts rather to thorough exactness in our daily walk with HIM; we must watch, deny, punish ourselves in all our foolish and corrupt ways, little and great; we must refrain our souls and keep them low, we must fall down and yield ourselves humbly up to God's gracious and blessed influences. And then, as growing healthy children come by degrees to understand this world which we see, and which was at first so great a mystery to them; so we, without knowing how, shall have our eyes gradually opened to the glories of that other, that unseen world, which is round us on every side, if we did but know it. Our humble obedience, not our self-willed speculations, will prepare us for the revelation of "the mystery of God and the FATHER, and of CHRIST; in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."

To Whom, with the Blessed SPIRIT of GOD, even to the Most Holy and Glorious Trinity, be all honour and glory, all praise and adoration, all love and obedience, now and for evermore. Amen.

SERMON CCLXV.

THE DOWNFALL OF PRIDE.

FOR THE NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

DANIEL iv. 37.

"Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven all whose works are truth, and His ways judgment: and those that walk in pride HE is able to abase."

THIS is the confession of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, the greatest king of the first and greatest empire among those, which at sundry times the enemies of GOD have been allowed to set up. It is a very remarkable confession, considering it only as the acknowledgment of a mighty and proud king, thoroughly and sincerely humbled before his GOD.

But a few years before, this same Nebuchadnezzar had been so lifted up with pride and self-sufficiency, that he did not scruple to require of all men, on pain of being burned alive, to worship an image of himself. And even when GoD by miracle had cured him of that extreme of impious delusion, he was yet open to feelings of irreligious vanity: as he walked in his palace of Babylon, he said to himself, admiring his own work, without any thought of the GOD who gave him power to do it, "Is not this great Babylon, which I have built for the house of the kingdom, by the might of my power, and for the honour of my majesty?' While the word was yet in the king's mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, which when he heard he lost his reason, and for a certain time roamed about among the beasts of the field, eating grass as one of them. At the end of that time his reason returning unto him, and his subjects again putting themselves

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under his dominion, he made the confession in the text; a noble confession in the mouth of a heathen king, and containing that which is the foundation of all piety, whether in heathen, Jew, or Christian: That GOD, the King of heaven, is alone to be praised and honoured; that all His works are just, and His ways righteousness; and that the end of all pride must be to abase itself before HIM.

The humiliation of so great a monarch as Nebuchadnezzar, in the sight of the whole world,-both of the Jews, whom he had brought low, and of the Babylonians, who were inclined to make him an idol,—was in itself a great example of God's power over the hearts of men, and a powerful witness before the heathen to the name and honour of the true and only GOD.

But the case is still more remarkable, full of deeper and diviner meaning, when we regard Nebuchadnezzar, king as he was of Babylon, and chief leader of the enemies of the people of GOD, as the type and pattern of the great Antichristian power, the power of this world, opposed from the beginning to the kingdom of the saints of the MOST HIGH, and the power of His CHRIST. Looking at Nebuchadnezzar in this light, we see that his humiliation was also a type and pattern of the complete victory, one day to be attained, by the Christian Church, over all opposing forces. And we know from our SAVIOUR'S Own lips, that this is a warfare in which we must take part. We cannot stand idly by, helping neither CHRIST nor Antichrist. Whether we think of it or no, we are either with our LORD or against HIM; either gathering His Church and fold with HIM, or scattering it abroad. We see that this history of the proud king of Babel brought low does immediately concern us all: either we are on CHRIST's side, and then our faith and hope is strengthened by seeing His proudest enemy thus confess His Name; or we are yet disposed to take part with the world, CHRIST'S enemy and then it must be good for us to have before our eyes so awful a token of the ruin, the shame, and misery, which human souls bring upon themselves, when they think of doing without GOD; though they be the wisest and greatest of all, according to this world's judgment of wisdom and great

ness.

Now that Nebuchadnezzar was indeed a type or pattern of

the great Antichristian power, we may well discern from the following considerations :

First, Babylon, of which he was king, is every where named in Scripture as opposed to Jerusalem; it is the proper name of the city of the world, as opposed to the city of God. For Babylon is the same as Babel, the city of confusion, as Isaiah calls it. And Babel, we know, was the place where first the great Antichristian power began to set itself openly and professedly against the will of GOD. At Babel the whole earth was gathered together, being of one language and of one speech, and trying with one accord what they could accomplish in defiance of the MOST HIGH GOD. And as in this case Nebuchadnezzar was humbled by a sudden stroke depriving him of reason, on which he had proudly trusted, as self-sufficient to guide the world, and subdue it entirely to himself without GOD; so were the builders of Babel ashamed and confounded, when God by miracle came down and confused their language, so that they could not understand one another to carry on their work. In both cases, it was by their proud feelings themselves, that the punishment of their pride came upon them.

We may easily imagine some part of the shame and vexation, when those who were employed about the Tower of Babel found that it was in vain for them to speak one to another; that their wise and skilful plans were all at a stand, for want of ways to make known their meaning to their companions. And when Nebuchadnezzar awaked from his madness, we may be sure he felt most deeply, how he had exposed himself, how the great God, in whose sight he had boasted himself, had found out a way to fill him with shame, instead of the glory which he was dreaming of. Thus we see, that both in his pride and in his punishment, Nebuchadnezzar was but one instance of what Babel has been from the beginning; its sin, self-sufficiency; its punishment, shame and confusion.

It is true, the seat of the great Antichristian empire was not at first Babel, but rather Nineveh-that great city, of which so much is said in the earlier Prophets of the Jews; Nineveh, to which those kings of Assyria belonged, who first carried away captive the Ten Tribes, or kingdom of Israel, from Samaria, and afterwards, in the time of Hezekiah, were only prevented from destroying Jerusalem by an angel slaying 184,000 at once. But

yet we are given to understand, that Babylon, rather than Nineveh or any other place, was chosen to be the head-quarters, if one may so say-the mother city-of the enemies of GOD and His people: not only because, as was just now said, it was there that the city of confusion was first set up, but also because not Nineveh, but Babylon after the destruction of Nineveh, was permitted to prevail against Judah and Jerusalem itself, the very chosen tribe and city of JEHOVAH, where the temple and the ark were; waited on by the true priests, the sons of Aaron, and protected by the highly-favoured family of David. In a word, Babylon was that heathen empire which at that time was brought into closest enmity with God's true though fallen Church, and that in the reign and person of Nebuchadnezzar. For in his time were carried captive, one after another, three kings of Judah, the temple was burned, and the walls of Jerusalem quite levelled with the ground; and the land for seventy years was left in comparison desolate.

Again, it appears from many occasional hints in the Prophecies, especially Daniel, and it is known from heathen historians, that Babylon in the time of Nebuchadnezzar was especially beautiful and glorious, and looked as if it would last for ever. Also, that Nebuchadnezzar himself was a king of extraordinary valour, wisdom, and spirit: a thorough sample or specimen of what this world entitles " a great man."

For these reasons, as it should seem, it pleased the ALMIGHTY to choose out Nebuchadnezzar as the one hero of the ancient heathen world, in whom He would most effectually prove to mankind His thorough command of the Antichristian power every where, and His way of dealing with those who walk in pride. Thus in the very beginning of the slavery and trouble which His Church was to experience from the great ones of the earth, it pleased HIM graciously to provide her with a clear and sure token, in a most remarkable and public way, of what the end of all this should be, and how vainly those earthly potentates, which are but rods and scourges in the hand of the LORD, should ever raise themselves up against HIM who wields them.

There are three chapters in the book of Daniel, which give us some account of Nebuchadnezzar, and very remarkable is the difference between the three; how they show, one after another,