mortal opposition could withstand. It is accordingly in this singular moment, when his divine commission was most fully manifested, and when we may suppose all the vulgar passions of hope and ambition were working in the minds of the multitude," that he sends them away;" to shew them that his kingdom was a spiritual kingdom;"-that there were greater interests which he came to serve, than those of time;-and that the reign of power was to commence in a sublimer being, when the shadows of mortality were passed, and when time itself was no 66 his more. 2. If the words of the text have this instruction to us, with regard to the character of our Lord, they have a second instruction with regard to the character of his religion. When you examine the systems of pretended revelation which have prevailed, or which are still prevail ing in the world, you will find, that if their origin betrays the ambition of their authors, their character betrays equally the weakness and imperfection of human nature. To one or other of the fundamental errors in religion;-to the encouragement either of superstition or of enthusiasm, and, by these means, to the fatal separation of piety from moral virtue, they have uniformly led. They have either drawn men from the sphere of social duty, to assemble them, under the influence of superstition, in impure and sanguinary ceremonies, and persuaded them, that guilt could be expiated by the ritual of an unmeaning devotion; or they have driven them from all the most sacred relations of life, into solitudes and deserts, and taught them, that the Deity was to be propitiated by the tears of unproductive repentance, or the dreams of visionary illumination. The conduct of our Lord, and the spirit of His religion, are very different.-He assembles the multitude, indeed, around him, in the desert of human life, that he may teach them the end of that journey upon which they are going;-that he may recal the wandering, and animate the desponding, and invigorate the " weary and the heavy "laden;"—and he points out to them, with no mortal hand, that continuing city to which they travel, where there are mansions for all the holy and the good, and where there "dwelleth knowledge, " and wisdom, and joy." But when these mighty lessons are taught, he sends them away to their usual abodes and their usual occupations.--He sends them back again to their own homes,-to that sacred though sequestered scene, where all their duties meet them on their return,—where every virtue and every vice of their nature takes its origin, and where they can best display both the strength of their faith and the purity of their obedience. It is thus that the religion of Jesus blends the great interests of piety and of morality, that it lets down the golden chain which unites Earth with Heaven, and forms, even under the "tabernacles "of clay," the minds that are afterwards "to be made perfect," and to be made citizens of a kingdom" which passeth not 66 away, but which is eternal as the "Heavens." Such are the general instructions, both with regard to the character of our Lord and the character of his religion, which the words of the text may convey to us. 3. There is, however, another and a nearer instruction which they contain. Distant as the period is, when the event we are considering took place, it has yet a relation to us; and there is not one of us who, from the consideration of it, may not derive some personal improve ment. We are the multitude described in this passage of the Gospel-we have heard from our infant days, that there 66 - was a great prophet come into the "world ;" and every time that we assemble within these walls, for the great purposes of spiritual improvement, and of public example, and every time, still more, when we ascend to the altar of our Lord, and profess our faith in his name, and our confidence in his mercy, we profess, at the same time, like the multitude of old, to take him for our guide and our instructor. As of old, also, he deigns to receive us; to teach and to console us by the same words with which he formerly taught or consoled them; to employ to us the same accents of grace, and set before us the same hopes of immortality; and to spread for us, in the wilderness of human life, that greater feast, of spirit and of mind, |