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Solomon," he the greatest of your princes, he that built your first famous temple, even Solomon himself " in all his glory," glorious as he was, "was: not arrayed like one of these." "Wherefore if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" This reasoning is so plain and obvious, that it requires no illustration; "therefore, take no thought saying, what shall we eat, or what shall we drink, or wherewithal shall we be clothed? (for after all these things do the Gentiles seek)." The word Gentile denoted every one who was not a Jew; it may be pointed here at the luxury of the Romans, which, though far from having reached the pitch of excess it afterwards attained, was sufficiently notorious to attract attention, even in the remote and impoverished district of Judea" For your heavenly Father

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knoweth that ye have need of all these things, but," here we arrive at the grand drift of the argument,-"seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." We are commanded to seek the kingdom of God. Where, it may be asked, is this kingdom to be found? Lies it in some lone and desert spot? Are its paths beset with dangers and alarms? Do mists and darkness brood upon it? How apparelled must we set forward on our road? Must we strip ourselves of all those tender and generous emotions which, fallen as we are from our high estate, cling around us, the wreck of the innocency we have lost? Must we wrap about us the mantle of a sullen and disguising moroseness? Must we take our staff in our hand, and our sandals on our feet, and bidding a last farewell to all that once had power to interest and engage us, must we, like

the pilgrims of old, silent and sorrowing, commence our toilsome journey? They who paint the land of promise in colours such as these, have scarcely trod aright the path, they would thus minutely describe; their own gloomy thoughts, their own misgiving minds, their own kindly, we doubt not, but distempered imaginations, have conjured up the frightful apparition that alike appals and distracts them. Would you behold the kingdom of God in its true and natural light, look not at it, I beseech you, as for these few moments the servant of your ministry, look not at it through the medium they would present to you; look at it through the medium of the scripture. Seek by this way the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; follow along this plain, straight, beaten, homely path: "The righteousness, which is of faith, speaketh on this wise, say not in thine heart, who shall ascend into heaven?

(that is to bring Christ down from above), or, who shall descend into the deep? (that is, to bring up Christ again from the dead;) but what saith it? The word. is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which we preach, that, if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him up from the dead, thou shalt be saved." Deficiency of faith was the leading error into which the early disciples of our Lord fell; but if deficiency of faith admits of palliation in any case, it certainly, in a remarkable degree, admitted of palliation in theirs. Consider who and what they were; illiterate men, scarcely subsisting on the precarious returns of their own personal labour; perhaps without the capacity, certainly without the leisure, for deep and continued reflexion. An important truth was placed before their eyes, sup

ported by arguments, not drawn from natural reason, for they had been inconclusive; but such as were immediately addressed to the senses. The conse

quences followed which might have been expected; they were convinced, they believed believed what? believed in the reality of a mission which went to overturn all the notions which they had entertained from their youth; all they had been taught to consider as immediately grounded on the written word of God. Hence arose the mighty struggle, which every day becoming more and more feeble, nevertheless, had not spent all its force, as we may observe in the instance of St. Peter, whom another apostle withstood face to face, till long after our Lord's résurrection from the dead, had supplied the last link to the chain of wonders by which his mission was authenticated; but, as the first generations passed away, passed away also

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