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joyment. All the kingdoms of this world, and the glories of mighty conquerors, are trifles light as air, when compared with the smallest possible happiness, the duration of which is eternal. Your eager pursuit of worldly objects cannot secure to you a long life; but it will aggravate your sorrow and regret, when between you and them an impassable gulf is fixed. Let the great business of your lives, therefore, be to lay up treasure in heaven.Religion alone is worthy of your care. Nothing else deserves one anxious thought or desire. "Secure this, and you have secured every thing; lose this, and all is lost.”

102

SERMON V.

PART I.

On the atonement: its nature and the purposes which are effected by it, in exalting the glory of God, and securing the happiness of man.

1 COR. CHAP. 1, VER. 18.

"For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness; but unto us which are saved, it is the power of God."

THE doctrine of the cross was to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness; but to you, my friends, I hope it is the wisdom and the power of God. The Jews had read the prophecies, which their own writings contained, concerning that great personage who was to come into the world; they had studied the descriptions of the glory of the latter days; and, in their minds high expectations were raised concerning the Redeemer of Israel.

But they mistook the true nature and

interpretation of these predictions; and feeling as they did the severity of Roman oppression, they wished and hoped and believed that the Messiah, who was foretold to their fathers, would appear in all the splendour of majesty and power, would go forth conquering and to conquer, would subdue all the nations of the earth to himself, and would drag the subjugated nations captive at the wheels of his chariot. How much, then, must they have been disappointed in Jesus, who, instead of being born of a great and powerful family, appeared in the humble character of a carpenter's son, and who, instead of laying claim to the throne of his fathers, plainly declared that his kingdom was not of this world. The proud, fastidious, and self-conceited Jews, hid their faces from one who pretended to be their deliverer, but whom they saw to be without form or comeliness, and whom they beheld in poverty and distress, wandering about from place to place, without habitation, or having where to lay his head. But what still more offended their foolish vain-glory, was the last scene of his life; when he was dragged as a malefactor before the tribunal of a foreign governor, and at length put to death on the igno

minious tree. On their national pride they made shipwreck of their faith. It was contra ry to their pre-conceived notions, it was degrading to their country to believe, that, one who had been considered as unworthy to live, and who had been crucified between two thieves, was the Saviour of the world.

Prejudices of a different kind operated on the minds of the Greeks. They were a learned, refined, luxurious and corrupted people. They expected, that, their Saviour should, at least, possess superiour wisdom and learning, and display superiour taste and politeness.

What, then, must they have thought of Jesus, when they perceived the plainness and simplicity of his discourses and instructions, which, in their opinion, bordered on foolishness; which were so unlike those "words of man's "wisdom," and so different from that ostentatious display of knowledge, that sophistry and science, falsely so called, to which they had been accustomed in the schools of their philosophers? They could not relish his meek and unaffected manners; they could not admire his discourses, which, plainly and simply, explained the truth without study or ornament; they despised his moral instructions

which wanted the air and the abstraction of science, and which were suggested in the most natural and easy manner by the objects around him, by the lilies of the field which grew under his feet, and by the fowls of heaven which flew over his head. Among the heathens, it must also be observed, crucifixion was a punishment inflicted only on the vilest criminals; and, consequently, they could scarcely be brought to give a hearing to men who began with declaring that their Master died

cross.

upon a

Innumerable, then, were the prejudices and obstacles which were to be surmounted by the christian religion, in which the doctrine of the cross was the fundamental article. But notwithstanding these difficulties, it soon overthrew all opposition: wherever the Apostles preached Christ crucified, they met with a success which plainly showed that their religion was from God, and not from man. At the appearance of the gospel, the Pagan religions every where fell into contempt; and the religion of that humble personage who had suffered so ignominious a death was, in a few years, known and believed throughout all the regions of the civilized world.

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