In his gospel we behold as in a glass the nature and perfections of God, and have revealed to us the mystery of his will, in our redemption through him whom he appointed as "the way, the truth, and the life," to reconcile sinners to himself, and to bring life and immortality to light by the gospel.

It were needless to expatiate on the moral depravity of the civilized world at the time of our Lord's entrance into it: nothing indeed can be added to the dismal picture given of it by St. Paul, in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans. The heathens themselves confessed, so gross and so universal was the depravity, that justice had quitted her residence on earth to seek an asylum in the heavens. Deplorable also was the state of morals amidst the Jewish nation, who knew no other righteousness than the works of the law; that is, whose virtues were reduced to mere ceremonial observances, under the direction of perverse teachers, substituting the traditions of men for the commands of God, blind leaders of the blind, who strained at a gnat and swallowed a camel, tithed mint and rue, and passed over judgment, and the love of God and man. Thus dark was Judæa, like the world around it, when the Sun of Righteousness arose

upon them with healing in his wings. A striking and beautiful light has been thrown upon this part of the text, by the accounts of travellers that in that quarter of the world where Malachi delivered his prophecy, every morning about sun-rise a fresh breeze of air blows from the sea across the land, and from its wholesomeness and utility in clearing the infected air, this wind is always called the physician. To this circumstance it is probable the prophet makes an allu

sion.

"The wings of the wind" is an expression of the Psalmist, and this salubrious breeze which attends the rising of the sun, may properly be considered as the wings of the sun, which contain such healing influences. How aptly then may this natural phenomenon be applied to figure the ministry of the heavenly physician, "who went about doing good," dispensing health and ease and comfort to the bodies and the souls of men! Diseases and infirmities he healed with a word, and even as many as touched him, believing, were made whole. Overflowing with tenderness and compassion to the miseries and infirmities of our nature, he delighted in exercising his unlimited power to relieve them. Thus emphatically, as the prophet foretold of him, did he "bear our griefs and carry our sorrows." But

his miraculous cure of bodily diseases was designed as a signal demonstration of his power to remove the cause of those diseases, which was sin. When he went about "healing all manner of sickness and disease among the people," he evidenced at the same time his sovereign prerogative to work the inward cure of spiritual and moral disorders; to remove the fever of anger, the dropsy of covetousness, the leprosy of uncleanness, the madness of pride and ambition, the paralytic numbness of the unregenerate soul. By the supreme control he exercised over the bodies of men, the Redeemer wrought to produce such faith in his heavenly commission, so cordial an acceptance of him in his character of a Saviour, as might induce sinners to seek to him for deliverance from those vices and passions which are the worst disorders of human nature, and the source of all its woes, the gangrene that corrodes, the poison that agonizes and destroys the soul. And how did the Sun of Righteousness produce this wonderful revolution in the heart of man? By dispersing the mists of former ignorance, of earthly prejudices and passions, by softening and meliorating the heart, by dispossessing it of envy, hatred, and malice, and filling and warming it with the evangelical charity, the fruits of which

are sweet and salutary, blessed and blessing, altogether lovely, friendly, and beneficial to man. From this love of our brethren, Christ trains and exalts his disciples to the love of God, which is the love of goodness, purity, and rectitude. This ascendant governing principle triumphs over the love of the world, over every criminal attachment and licentious passion, and produces a conduct as God-like as human infirmity can admit. For true love will imitate the object of its affections; and the very essence and criterion of this love of God is, that "it keeps his commandments."

Such is man, when regenerated and cured of his moral disorders by the healing influences of the Sun of Righteousness. But to whom are these influences imparted? The text declares "to you that fear my name." This fear of the name of God implies a tenderness of conscience or feeling of rectitude, a teachable and humble spirit receiving readily the doctrines of salvation without prejudice and without guile. This disposition is the honest and good heart which receives the seed of his word upon good ground. Thus prepared for the reception of divine truth, man may be a sinner, not from the love of sin, but from ignorance, or want of necessary assistance

and instruction: he may be enslaved to his passions, but he groans under his bondage and longs to be delivered from it, saying "Wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death." Let us hear the according declaration of our Lord himself: "I am not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." The righteous here intended are the self-righteous, the presumptuous, who like the Pharisee in the gospel, “thank God that they are not as other men are," aggravating thus their sins by their arrogant and abominable pride and uncharitableness. The sinners whom our Lord came to save are not the obstinately wicked, but those who, like the Publican, feeling the weight of their guilt and misery, prostrate themselves at the footstool of divine mercy and humbly and ardently implore the succours of divine grace. To them the Lord speaks comfortably by the mouth of the evangelical prophet: "To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word." But how should the Saviour's call to repentance and confession of sins be obeyed by those who imagine themselves saints of the first order? How can they recover their spiritual health, who have no feeling of their disorders and who reject the remedies? Sinners