them an affection which, in its spontaneousness, and warmth, and steadiness, and active influence, resembles the affection of brother to brother; and they are to do all this that their conversation may be "honest among the Gentiles," and that thus they may adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour. I conclude this part of the discourse with the prayer, that the Good Spirit would write these golden maxims on our hearts, and enable us to exhibit a fair copy of his writing on these fleshly tablets in our habitual temper and behaviour: "Be of one mind: be of one heart: love as brethren." And "now may the God of patience and consolation grant us to be like-minded one towards another, according to Christ Jesus, that we may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there be no division among us, but that we be perfectly joined together in the same mind, and in the same judgment;" so that the unbelieving world, beholding the effects of our union of mind and heart, in our common hearty efforts in the cause of our common Lord, and in bearing one another's infirmities, and relieving one another's wants, may be constrained to say, as of old, "Behold how these Christians love one another;" and that we ourselves, feeling the holy delights of such union and communion, may sing in our hearts, making melody to the Lord: "Behold how good and how pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. It is as the dew of Hermon, the dew that descended on the mountains of Zion; for there the Lord commands the blessing, even life for evermore."

II. DUTIES OF CHRISTIANS TO MANKIND GENERALLY.

Let us now consider those injunctions respecting disposition and conduct, which refer, not only to the Christian brotherhood, but to all mankind. "Be pitiful, be courteous." Let us attend to these two injunctions in their order.

1 Rom. xv. 5, 6. 1 Cor. i. 10.

§ 1. To" be pitiful.”

The first injunction is, "Be pitiful." The command contained in these words is substantially the same as that of our Lord: "Be ye merciful, as your Father in Heaven is merciful;" and those of his holy apostle Paul, "Be kindly affectioned; be kind, tender-hearted; put on bowels of mercies, kindness, meekness, long suffering."1

Mercy, properly speaking, is kindness to the miserable, benignity as manifested towards the suffering. To be merciful or pitiful is to cherish and manifest kind feeling towards those who are in distress. The mercy or pitifulness, which is the subject of injunction, is something very different from a naturally kindly temper. That is a mere instinctive feeling, and though amiable and useful, is no proper object of moral approbation. Some very bad men have a large portion of it; while some very good men, if not destitute of it altogether, are by no means distinguished for it. In its movements there is no reference to divine authority; and it is often, as we have just remarked, found in conjunction with principles and habits most decidedly condemned by the divine law.

The mercy here enjoined has no doubt its basis, as all emotions have, in that part of our physical mental constitution, which we call the affections. Had we no affections we could not be subjects of Christian mercy. But Christian mercy is the result of the truth as it is in Jesus, understood and believed, acting on that part of our constitution. It is the feeling, which in man, a being capable of affection, is naturally and necessarily developed when he believes that truth, and in the degree in which he believes it. It is the feeling which a man, who knows and believes that in the exercise of sovereign kindness on the part of God, he is delivered, through the mediation of Jesus Christ, who, under the influence of divine pity, took and bore all his responsi

Luko vi. 36. Rom. xii. 10. Eph. iv. 32.

bilities to divine justice, from evils infinite in their number, immense in their magnitude, eternal in their duration; evils to which he had rendered himself liable, by his unprovoked and innumerable violations of a law most holy, just, and good; it is the feeling which such a conscious debtor to divine mercy naturally cherishes towards men who are involved in suffering, especially in that worst species of suffering from which he, through divine goodness and pity, has obtained security. This is a feeling which can be awakened in the human heart only by the Divine Spirit, leading the individual to believe the great love wherewith God hath loved us, and which he has commended to us, in not sparing his Son for our sakes, and in sparing and blessing us for his sake. Till there is this faith, there cannot be this feeling; and where this feeling is not, the very soul of Christian mercy is absent.

The essence of the disposition required, is kind feeling towards the miserable, and its natural manifestation is the use of the means in our power to prevent and to relieve misery. It is the direct opposite, not merely of cruelty, but of insensibility; a compassionate tenderness of heart, which makes us weep with them who weep; or who, though ignorant of, or insensible to, their wretchedness, they do not weep, have on that ground the greater cause to weep.

This Christian pity has a wide range. It looks at man in both the constituent parts of his nature. It regards both the souls and the bodies of men. It is drawn out, both by their spiritual and their bodily miseries: by evils feared as well as felt: by evils not feared, but sure to be felt if not feared: by the evils of eternity as well as of time. It ought to be exercised to all men who are in misery, though connected with us by no tie but that of a common nature; and the limits of its practical manifestation are to be prescribed by our means of preventing and relieving misery, and a wise judgment as to how those means can be most effectually employed in gaining the end in view, the prevention, the relief, the extinction of suffering.

The regard which Christian pity shows in reference to the miseries of man, as connected with God and destined to immortality, is one of the features by which it is chiefly distinguished from that instinctive kindness to which I have been adverting. The good-natured, generous man of the world, pities and relieves the wants and miseries of his fellow men of a temporal nature; but he thinks not of their spiritual state, their everlasting prospects. He has a tender sympathy, he exerts a generous activity, in reference to disease and destitution, and such varieties of ignorance and vice, as produce misery and disorder to the individual and society, but he has no pity for a soul dead in sin, far from God, destitute of hope, doomed to destruction. Indeed, this could not reasonably be expected. How should he feel for others in reference to such subjects, who has no feeling for himself? The foundation of such feelings is wanting in him, in a just abiding conviction of the realities of the unseen and eternal world; though professing, as many such persons do, to hold the views Scripture presents on these subjects, there does appear a monstrous absurdity in being so exceedingly concerned about the alleviation or removal of the sufferings of a few short years, and altogether careless about the prevention of the intolerable miseries of eternity. The pitifulness which the Apostle enjoins is not thus inconsistent. The Christian looks on mankind chiefly in their relation to God and eternity. In his estimation, he is poor who is not rich towards God; he is blind who is ignorant of the way of salvation; he is naked who is destitute of the robe of righteousness; he is diseased who is covered with the leprosy of sin. No loss appears to him worthy of being compared with the loss of the soul; no death deserving the name but the second death; no agonies like the pangs of remorse and the torments of hell.

In this respect, Christian pitifulness resembles the Divine mercy, in the faith of which it originates. The God, whose nature as well as name is love, pities all the miseries of man ; but it is immortal man, the sinner, who is emphatically the object of Divine mercy. He thought of us in our low estate

of guilt, and condemnation, and depravity, for his mercy endureth for ever. It stretches onwards to eternity, and manifests its greatness in delivering from "the lowest hell." In like manner the Christian should and will regard with peculiar pity his fellow-men, viewed as immortal beings; labouring under spiritual disease; in danger of eternal death.

It has been justly said, "the sins of men, and the danger of their everlasting ruin by them, will awaken a lively concern and grief in every Christian mind," in every heart in which the love of God shed abroad by the Holy Ghost has produced genuine love to man. "He has the truest and justest compassion for his neighbour, who cannot without a tender sorrow, see him provoking the great God to jealousy, throwing away his immortal soul, living under the power of a fell mortal distemper, and laying up in store for a dreadful account, heaping up wrath for the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God.' Whoever believes that religion is a reality must be more deeply, if not more sensibly, affected with such a melancholy sight, than with seeing the bodily wants or consuming diseases of men, or with hearing their most dismal groans and mournful complaints, occasioned by worldly loss or corporeal suffering, for he knows the soul is more valuable than the body, hell is worse than death, and time is shorter than eternity." In a world full of suffering, "the transgressor" is the fittest object of the deepest commiseration. "I beheld the transgressors, and was grieved;" "Rivers of waters," the tears of pity for self-destroying man, as well as of regret for injury done to the holy character and law of God, "Rivers of water run down mine eyes, because the wicked keep not thy law."1

But while chiefly affected by the miseries of men, as sinners, by their ignorance, and error, and guilt, and obduracy, and depravity, in their endlessly varied forms, and by the fearful, unavoidable, remediless state of wretchedness,

1 Psal. cxix. 158, 136.

VOL. II.

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