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strong enough at the same time to prompt and put them upon active exertions.

Therefore, I would rather apply myself to that part of the case which is more common, active exertions of benevolence, accompanied with looseness of private morals. It is a very common character: but I say, in the first place, it is an inconsistent character: it is doing and undoing: killing and curing: doing good by our charity, and mischief by our licentiousness: voluntarily relieving misery with one hand, and voluntarily producing and spreading it with the other. No real advance is made in human happiness by this contradiction ; no real betterness or improvement promoted.

But, then, may not the harm a man does by his personal vices be much less than the good he does by his active virtues? This is a point in which there is large room for delusion and mistake. Positive charity and acts of humanity are often of a conspicuous nature, naturally and deservedly engaging the praises of mankind, which are followed by our own. No one does, no one ought to, speak against them, or attempt to disparage them; but the effect of vice and licentiousness, not only in their immediate consequences, but in their remote and ultimate tendencies, which ought all to be included in the account, the mischief which is done by the example as well as by the act, is seldom honestly computed by the sinner himself; but I do not dwell farther upon this comparison, because I insist that no man has a right to make it; no man has a right, whilst he is doing occasional good, and yet indulging his vices and his passions, to strike a balance, as it were, between the good and the harm. This is not Christianity; this is not pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father, let the balance lie on which side it will; for

our text declares (and our text declares no more than what the Scriptures testify from one end to the other) that religion demands both. It demands active virtue and it demands innocence of life. I mean it demands sincere and vigorous endeavours in the pursuit of active virtue, and endeavours equally sincere and firm in the preservation of personal innocence. It makes no calculation which is better, but it requires both.

Shall it be extraordinary that there should be men forward in active charity and in positive benificence who yet put little or no constraint upon their personal vices? I have said that the character is common, and I will tell you why it is common. The reason is (and there is no other reason), that it is usually an easier thing to perform acts of beneficence, even of expensive and troublesome beneficence, than it is to command and control our passions; to give up and discard our vices; to burst the bonds of the habits which enslave us. This is the very truth of the case: so that the matter comes precisely to this point. Men of active benevolence, but of loose morals, are men who are for performing the duties which are easy to them, and omitting those which are hard. They only place their own character to themselves in what view they please but this is the truth of the case, and let any one say whether this be religion; whether this be sufficient. The truly religious man, when he has once decided a thing to be a duty, has no farther question to ask; whether it be easy to be done, or whether it be hard to be done, it is equally a duty; it then becomes a question of fortitude, of resolution, of firmness, of self-command, and self-government; but not of duty or obligation; these are already decided upon.

But least of all (and this is the inference from the

text which I wish most to press upon your attention), least of all does he conceive the hope of reaching heaven by that sort of compromise, which would make easy, nay, perhaps pleasant, duties an excuse for duties which are irksome and severe. To recur, for the last time, to the instance mentioned in our text, I can very well believe that a man of humane temper shall have pleasure in visiting, when by visiting he can succour the fatherless and the widow in their affliction: but, if he believe Saint James, he will find that this must be joined to and accompanied with another thing, which is neither easy nor pleasant; nay, must always almost be effected with pain and struggle and mortification and difficulty, the " keeping himself unspotted from the world."

XXII.

THE AGENCY OF JESUS CHRIST SINCE HIS ASCENSION.

HEBREWS, xiii. 8.

Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, THE assertion of the text might be supported by the consideration, that the mission and preaching of Christ have lost nothing of their truth and importance by the lapse of ages which has taken place since his appearance in the world. If they seem of less magnitude, reality, and concern to us at this present day, than they did to those who lived in the days in which they were carried on, it is only in the same manner as a mountain or a tower appears to be less when seen at a distance. It is a delusion in both cases. In natural objects we have commonly strength enough of judgment to prevent our being imposed upon by these false appearances; and it is not so much a want or defect of, as it is a neglecting to exact and use, our judgment, if we suffer ourselves to be deceived by them in religion.-Distance of space in one case, and distance of time in the other, make no difference in the real nature of the object; and it is a great weakness to allow them to make any difference in our estimate and apprehensions. The death of Jesus Christ is, in truth, as interesting to us as it was to those who stood by his cross: his resurrection from the grave is a pledge and assurance of our future resurrection, no less than it was of theirs who

conversed, who ate, who drank with him after his return to life.

But there is another sense, in which it is still more materially true, that "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." He is personally living and acting in the same manner; has been so all along, and will be so to the end of the world. He is the same in his person, in his power, in his office.

First, I say, that he is the same individual person, and is at this present time existing, living, acting. He is gone up on high.-The clouds at his ascension received him out of human sight. But whither did he go? to sit for ever at the right hand of God. This is expressly declared concerning him. It is also declared of him, that death hath no more dominion over him, that he is no more to return to corruption. So that, since his ascension, he hath continued in heaven to live and act. His human body, we are likewise given to believe, was changed upon his ascension, that is, was glorified, whereby it became fitted for heaven and fitted for immortality, no longer liable to decay or age, but thenceforward remaining literally and strictly the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. This change in the human person of Christ is in effect asserted, or rather is referred to, as a thing already known in that text of 'Saint Paul's Epistle to the Philipians' wherein we are assured that hereafter Christ shall change our vile body, that it may be like his glorious body. Now the natural body of Christ, before his resurrection at least, was like the natural body of other men, was not a glorious body. At this time, therefore, when Saint Paul calls it his glorious body (for it was after his ascension that Saint Paul wrote these words), it must have undergone a great change. In this exalted and glorified state our Lord

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