He said, with a voice loud enough to be heard through the storm, though at a distance not to be sufficiently recognized, yet sweet and gracious, "It is I— be not afraid."

Shall we take this for an emblem? Most of our Lord's acts were emblems: parallels to spiritual acts and cases. We are in greater distress than this vessel. We need help of a higher kind. He is at hand. Let us make application for help, and be not afraid.

Peter's temerity deserves reprehension. He trusted to his own faith, and ventured on a performance to which he was not called, and for which he was not fit. He should have remained in the vessel, to witness his Master's miraculous power, and not have wished to rival him. He had no miraculous power. Beware of

venturing on untried difficulties uncalled; or else expect, like Peter, to sink.

Christ permitted worship-sincere, devout, and unaffected, it must have been. If wrong, he would have repelled it. Jealousy for the rights of God would have made him eager in doing this. Not, surely, less so than the angel to John in Patmos. He would have calmly pointed out its impropriety-yet he received and welcomed it!

Let us get right impressions from these scenes. The faculty of imagination is an important one: it stops not with mere words—an unfeatured scene—a maplike view. But it brings the things reported close to the soul-pictures them-lets in a light upon them; and it should be cultivated. We only want to take an interest in these things. What numerous speculations are now going on in a distant country-South America! Those who are interested there, how often do their thoughts go thither: the first exercise of them in the morning, and often in the day. They can tell the boundaries of the territories which have been marked to them. They see the dull earth brought out of the mine in masses, and observe it cleared and purified till it takes the tincture and the shine of gold. In a moment they thus transport themselves across

the Atlantic.

If we bad the same interest in these

things, we should thus realise them.

Why will not my mind do in its present state? Why chide it for inattention, and produce a painful feeling? And why excite it and exert it? Why will it not do as it is? Why! because it has not enough of love to God, of adoration, of admiration, of reverence, of faith! And this is why you should put its faculties in requisition.

Others have had the life that we have. We see that they have lost it. They have left the world. They are now somewhere else. We shall be there. What a state! We could not, without raised and strengthened faculties, endure and enjoy the excited energy of that uninterrupted condition for ever. What is yonder, will soon be not yonder to us. We shall say, It is here! May we familiarise it now by frequent contemplation!

III.

EMINENT PIETY.

BY THE LATE REV. JOSEPH HUGHES.

NEHEMIAH vii. 2.

"He feared God above many."

SUCH was the honourable testimony, borne by the writer of this book, to the character of Hananiah, an officer of state in the court of Artaxerxes, a Persian monarch. Nehemiah, who seems to have acted as Viceroy, was induced by the high opinion he here expressed concerning Hananiah, to associate him with Hanani, his own brother, in the government of Jerusalem, which was then subject to the Persian empire. "I gave my brother Hanani, and Hananiah, the ruler of the palace,

charge over Jerusalem: for he was a faithful man, and feared God above many." He was, therefore, so far, well adapted to the important trust, and the choice of him displayed the prudence, the patriotism, and the piety of Nehemiah.

But my design in placing before you the excellence attributed in the text to Nehemiah's friend, is not so much to excite on his behalf the language of encomium, as to urge to an imitation of him, and so, with the divine blessing, to produce in this assembly a thirst for the attainment of eminent piety.

By

For this purpose, I would now attend to the two following inquiries:-What is eminent piety? what considerations may we best enforce it? The first inquiry regards—

I. The nature of eminent piety.

And here the text enables you to anticipate my answer, which is, that eminent piety consists in "fearing God above many."

You must have remarked, that "to fear God" is a phrase, which, in scripture usage, often means to be pious in general. For while there is a fear, which denotes bondage and alarm, there is also a fear connected with freedom and confidence; a solemn, but elevating sentiment, felt in the presence of what is holy, grand, and boundless. This is a sentiment, which a just view of the Supreme Being cannot fail to impress, and, productive as it is of every other becoming sentiment, it is with unquestionable fitness employed as another name for piety, in which we include all that is intended by holiness, godliness, religion.

Hananiah feared God above many, i. e. he was eminently pious. For piety may exist in various degrees; the same divine source supplies it to all who have it, but one receives less and another more. Here we see

the babe, there the youth, yonder the full-grown man; or, to vary the metaphor, piety, according to its various. degrees, exhibits the blade, the ear, and the ripe corn.

Eminent piety involves a habit of serious reflection.

It fills the mind with God, impelling it to meditation and fervent prayer, and, so to speak, consecrating every scene with which it is conversant. "I am," says a man of eminent piety, "continually with thee." "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?"

May we not suppose our Lord's method of instruction by parables, was adopted in order to promote such feelings, and to assist us, in whatever we hear or see, still to maintain a holy familiarity with God?

Eminent piety is consistent and comprehensive; implying an impartial regard to the whole of the divine will.

The man who exemplifies it, believes the doctrines of revelation, is awed by its threatenings, animated by its promises, and controlled by its laws. He does not select favorite parts, and slight the rest. He supports the christian character throughout. He is confident yet cautious, generous yet prudent, faithful yet candid; he is at once sober, righteous, and godly; and, as you trace him through all his connexions and pursuits, you accompany him still with esteem and approbation.

Eminent piety endures severe tests. It resembles a robust constitution, which can pass through all varieties of climate, while a sickly constitution demands careful restriction to one. A man of eminent piety does not affect singularity, but neither does he dread the reproach of it; he is neither frowned nor flattered out of the right course; in adversity, he gives thanks, in prosperity he offers anxious supplication. Do the pleasures of sin invite? Moses chooses rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than dwell in the tents of wickedness. Do the flames burst forth from Nebuchadnezzar's furnace? Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, encounter their rage, sooner than worship that monarch's idol. Do the people, the priests, and the prophets prove treacherous? Elijah retains his

NO. I.

C

integrity and his zeal, while he imagines himself left to plead the cause of God with his own solitary voice. Eminent piety is active and laborious; "always abounding in the work of the Lord."

I wish not to flatter the age, yet I cannot help observing that this symptom of eminent piety is strongly marked. More children are instructed, more Bibles and religious tracts circulated, more villages at home, and more countries abroad, visited by British Christians, for the purpose of evangelizing them, than ever were, perhaps, since Britain received the light of the gospel. I am far from insinuating that patronizing these plans infallibly indicates a high degree, or any degree, either of piety or benevolence, but surely it is what piety and benevolence most strongly urge.

Eminent piety is piety that grows.-May we not affirm this of piety in its lowest degree, and maintain that to grow in grace is essential to a state of grace?

But if there is a doubt whether real piety is not necessarily progressive, eminent piety must surely be so. This is its language, "I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Indeed, all those exercises, a due regard to which constitutes the Christian, tend to make him, who is already holy, still holier, and we know that the prospects, which originally awakened his hope and his exertions, retaining all their richness, are nearer than when he first felt a wish to realize them.

II. By what considerations may we enforce eminent piety?

By such as are derived from its effects. First, on those who exemplify, and, secondly, on those who witness it.

1. Eminent piety recommends itself by its effects on those who exemplify it.-They ascertain to such, an in