that they would put forth any activity of mind in quest of that which they nauseated, and of that which, if ever they had found, they would have found to be utterly revolting to all their habits of impiety. They are the very last men we should expect to meet with at the work of a pains-taking search after the interpretation of these parables. Nay, they would gladly fasten upon the obscurity of them both as a circumstance of reproach against the prophet, and as an apology for their own indifference. And thus it is, that to be a teacher of parables might at length become a scoff and a by-word; and the prophet seems to have felt the force of it as an opprobrious designation, seems to be looking forward to the mixture of disdain and impatience with which he would be listened to, when God charged him with an allegorical communication to his countrymen, and he answered, "Ah, Lord God! they say of me, Doth he not speak parables ?"

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Now the question we have to put is-Is there no similar plea of resistance ever preferred against the faithful messengers of God in the present day? It is true, that in our time there is no such thing as a man coming amongst you, charged with the utterance of a direct and sonal inspiration. But it is the business of every minister truly to expound the record of inspiration; and is it not very possible that in so doing he may be reproached, not for preaching parabolically, but for preaching mysteriously? Have you never heard of a sermon being called mystical; and what shall we think of it, if, in point of fact, this imputation falls most

readily and most abundantly on the sermon that is most pervaded by the spirit, and most overrun with the phraseology of the New Testament? In that composition there are certain terms which recur incessantly, and which would therefore appear to represent certain very leading and prominent ideas. Now, whether are these ideas clearly and promptly suggested to your mind, by the utterance of the terms? What are the general character and effect which in your eye is imparted to a sermon, when, throughout the whole of it, the words of the apostolic vocabulary are ever and anon obtruded upon your hearing-and the whole stress of the argument is made to lie on such matters as sanctification; and the atonement; and the blood of the everlasting covenant; and the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, who takes up his habitation in the soul of the believer; and salvation by grace; and the spirit of adoption poured forth on the heart, and filling it with all the peace and joy of a confident reconciliation; and the exercise of fellowship with the Father, and the Son; and the process of growing up unto Christ; and the habit of receiving out of his fulness, and of beholding with open face his glory, so as to be changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. We are not at present asking, if you feel the disgust with which unsubdued nature ever listens to these representations; or in what degree they are offensive to your taste, and painfully uncongenial with the whole style and habit of your literature. But we ask, if such terms and such phrases as

have now been specified, do not spread before the eye of your mind an aspect of exceeding dimness over the preacher's demonstration? Does he not appear to you as if he wrapped himself up in the obscurity of a technical language, which you are utterly at a loss to comprehend? When the sermon in question is put by the side of some lesson of obvious morality, or some exposition of those principles which are recognised and acted upon in ordinary life, does it not look to you as if it was shrouded from common observation altogether; and that ere you could be initiated into the mystery of such language and of such doctrine, you would need to describe a mighty and still untrodden interval from all your present habits of conception? And yet, what if it be indeed the very language and the very doctrine of the New Testament?-if all the jargon that is charged on the interpretation of the word be the actual word itself?-and if the preacher be faithfully conveying the message of the Bible, at the very time that the hearer is shielding himself from the impression of it, by the saying, that he preacheth mysteries?

But to keep the two parties at a still more hopeless distance from each other, the message of such a preacher, incomprehensible as many of its terms and many of its particulars may be, evidently bears a something upon it that is fitted to alarm the fears, and utterly to thwart the strongest tendencies of nature. Let him be just a faithful expounder of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and let the blindness of the natural man be what it may, still there is

scarcely a hearer who can fail to perceive, that, anterior to the reception of this Gospel, the preacher looks upon him as the enemy of God, and strongly points at such a controversy between him and his Maker, as can only be made up through an appointed Mediator— and requires of him such a faith as will transform his character, and as will shift the whole currency of his affections and desires and affirms the necessity of such a regeneration, as that all old things shall be done away, and all things shall become new ;-and lets him know, that to be a Christian indeed he must die unto sense, he must be crucified unto the world, and, renouncing its charms and its predilections, must learn to have his conversation in heaven, and to choose God as the strength of his heart and his portion for evermore. All this flashes plainly and significantly enough, through that veil of mysticism which appears to overspread the general doctrine of the preacher; and imparts a forbidding character to it in the eyes of those to whom we are alluding; and they will be glad of any pretence to shun a painful and a revolting contemplation; and they will complain of him on the very ground on which the Jews of old complained of Ezekiel, as a dealer in parables-and while much of their antipathy is founded upon his being so strict and so spiritual, and so unaccommodating to the general tone of society, one of the charges which will be most frequently and most loudly preferred against him, is that he is so very mysterious.

In the prosecution of the following discourse,

we shall endeavour in the first place to state shortly the ground on which the religion of the New Testament looks so mysterious a thing to the men of the world, and then conclude with a short practical remonstrance upon this subject.

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I. There are certain experiences of human life so oft repeated, and so familiar to all our recollections, that when we perceive, or think we perceive, an analogy between them and the matters of religion, then religion does not appear to us to be mysterious. There is not a more familiar exhibition in society than that of a servant who performs his allotted work, and who obtains his stipulated reward -and we are all servants, and one is our master, even God. There is nothing more mon than that a son should acquit himself to the satisfaction of his parents, and we are all the children of an universal parent, whom it is our part to please in all things. Even when that son falls under displeasure, and is either visited with compunction or made to receive the chastisement of his disobedience, there is nothing more common than to witness the relentings of an earthly father, and the readiness with which forgiveness is awarded on the repentance and sorrow of the offender,-and we, in like manner, liable to err from the pure law of heaven, have surely a kind and indulgent Father to deal with. And, lastly, there is nothing more common than that the loyalty of a zealous and patriotic subject should be rewarded by the patronage, or, at least, by the