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Each of these hunters after happiness would hastily dismiss you with, So long as you will let us do as we please, we leave the rest to you. Be satisfied, and depart."

The irritation discovered by men of the world, when pressed to embrace the genuine doctrines of the Gospel, arises, either from their resenting the interference of another person, such interference indirectly implying their error, ignorance, partiality, or want of inquiry; or, secondly and chiefly, from their perceiving, that if they embrace those doctrines, they will be required to alter their lives;-they are calculating upon the amputation of the right band, the excision of the right eye, and shrink from the idea of Heaven itself, if they are to enter it "halt and maimed." Like certain characters on record, they exclaim, "This is a hard saying, who can hear it!"

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tempted, were slain with the sword:
they wandered about, destitute, af-
flicted, tormented (of whom the
world was not worthy): they wan-
dered in deserts, and in mountains,
and in dens and caves of the earth*."

Compare now, with these vivid
pictures of the primitive martyrs,
the actual state of Christians in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries;
and let living confessors contrast their
actual freedom from personal vio-
lence, with the varied and accumu-
lated wrongs of the first ages. When
did they hunger and thirst, when
were they deprived of raiment, be-
cause they belonged to Christ? Have
they literally been scourged, and
driven from their habitations? What
individual can affirm, "I bear in my
body the marks of the Lord Jesus?"
Who has been imprisoned, stoned,
sawn asunder, or delivered over
to the pains of an ignominious
death? In what solitudes have any
persons been compelled to wander?
To what caverns and fastnesses have
they fled from the the pursuit of the
sword?-On the contrary, have not
professors of Christianity had full
liberty, if they so pleased, to eat,
drink, and be merry? Might they
not have said to their souls," Take
your ease?" Could their enemies
have prevented them from being
"clothed in fine linen, and faring
sumptuously?" If their persons were
insulted, if their houses were at-
tacked, the magistrate was their pro-
tection. Who dared to thrust them
into prison? Who could have ven-
tured even to meditate their death?

I pass on, from this digression, to the descriptions given by the early Christians of the positive sufferings, or persecutions, endured by them for their practical conformity to Je Christ. I think," says St. Paul," that God hath set forth us the Apostles last, as it were appointed to death. For we are made a spectacle to the world, and to angels, and men. We are fools for Christ's sake: weak, despised. Even bato this present hour we both hunger and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; and labour, working with our own hands; reviled, persecuted, defamed, made as the filth of the world, and are the off-scouring of all things unto this day. We are troubled on every side; perplexed, persecuted, cast down; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, always delivered unto death for Jesus's sake. In stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Others had trial of cruel mockings, and Scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were

In the case of the Apostles, the language of inspiration itself, when describing their sufferings, seems to contend with the greatness of the subject. Hear St. Paul asserting, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, then we are of all men most miserable!" His details of sorrow, a considerable part of which were ex

* This extract from the Epistle to the He

brews, particularly refers to the martyrs and confessors of the ancient church; but it may with perfect propriety be transferred to the Christians of the early centuries.

torted and uttered, in his own defence, against the reproaches of "false brethren," are impassioned, fervid, vehement. He feels and describes the full meaning of Christ's declaration, "In the world ye shall have tribulation."

will have no leisure to think about the petty opposition of some neighbour, or former associate, who has picked up and retails the commonplaces of polemics.

Now it seems incumbent on modern Christians, either fairly to parallel their distresses with those of the apostolic times, or with all humility of mind to thank God for the Jarge toleration allowed by the world. Or, rather, it is a very serious duty on their part, to implore God to preserve them from the fearful trial of living in an age and country, where there is, properly (so I plead) no persecution." In all times "In all times of our wealth, good Lord, deliver us." Every species of prosperity is spiritually noxious; and when the powers of darkness and of this world appear to suspend an active warfare against believers, the enemy's quiet is perhaps more destructive than his activity.

Non per sylvas, sed per castra,
Nobis iter est ad astra.

Oh, who can complain of what he presumes emphatically to term the cross, when all which be bears of that ignominious symbol, amounts to an expression of contempt, the shy reserve of a half-friend, the impotent declamation of a pamphleteer! Much more than this is every day borne by the adherents of political parties: and, in many instances, endured without any resentment beyond a momentary feeling of injury. The cross, which, in the present circumstances of the visible church, its members are required to bear, is a bitter contrition for their own sins. The cross is now laid, and it is to be laid by themselves, upon their sensual appetites, their ambition, their vanity; upon the unhallowed artifices by which they would reconcile secular consequence with a reversionary interest in heaven. Let them groan under such a cross, and thus really find themselves "crucified unto the world, and the world to them;" and they

Clergymen, particularly in their spiritual noviciate, have great reason to be upon their guard in respect to the hostile complaints and misrepresentations of the irreligious. That a minister who surpasses the generality of his order in purity of doctrine and conduct, will incur the dislike of voluptuous and earthlyminded men, is a matter of course. I confess that I am disposed to number this circumstance among a clergyman's worst temptations; because he may make too much of their hatred. He may value it as a very passable, if not incontrovertible,proof of his own fidelity. Now it is unquestionable, that a preacher may declaim against pride without humility, and utter menaces against sin with the feelings of a reprobate. All religious persons should cultivate a self-forgetting spirit. Otherwise the layman will too surely assume the airs of a meddling and touchy inquisitor; and the priest turn his sermons into personal apologies.

It has been said of the financier Neckar, that whatever his intentions were, when trusted with the affairs of France, he brought the mind of a petty provincial banker to the concerns of a mighty empire. Let Christians beware, lest they bring the spiritual imbecilities of a novice to sustain the grand edifice of Christianity. If they would do the work of Him that sent them while it is day,' they must be willing to sink into nothingness; and passing by the obloquy cast upon their characters and labours, survey a lost world with pity. Ministers have abundant cause to maintain habits of tenderness and commiseration; since none are so frequently called upon to exercise them. The late seraphic Bishop Horne exhorted them to avoid unfeeling modes of address, by saying, "Remember

Jesus weeping over Jerusalem!" And Beveridge reminded his brethren of the duty of pitying and loving the sinner while he spared not his

sins.

I have certainly noticed among professed Christians, a sad want of sorrow and compassion for the errors and crimes of mankind. Let such recollect, that originally they were the same as the infidels, false teachers, and rakehells of the world, "the children of wrath, even as others." Under this humiliating impression, how can they treat sinners with a kind of high scorn and self-righteous contumely, when perhaps, at the same time, themselves are chargeable with a languid and heartless attention to their own enJangered souls, and neglecting to bear in mind, that even allowing their own state to be secure, yet the extremes of security and ruin are separated only by a point; and that their present safety is effected by the unmerited grace of God, and is suspended on their vigilance and selfdistrust.

The forward hasty spirit of the times has probably infected us all. Mingled as Christians necessarily are in the turmoils of life, and deeply interested in the public events of this astonishing period, they may be extremely liable to contract an insensibility to the spiritual state and danger of mankind. On them is imposed the very serious necessity of ascertaining, whether the odd, cold, and repulsive treatment sometimes encountered among their more immediate connections, or the wide world itself, be incurred solely for religion's sake, or because these sufferers have not religion enough to stody patiently the Christian character, but indolently take up with notions invented and offered for acceptance by others, and thus desecrate the Gospel by some of the most mischievous consequences of their own ignorance and rashness.

With shame have I seen a religionist even court opposition. His apprehensions did not arise from

The lifted axe, the agonizing wheel,

Luke's iron crown, and Damiens' bed of steel;'

but-must it be told?-from the possible cessation of hostilities. Oppo sition is apt to be flattering; because it implies a degree of notoriety.Poor Pusillus! With what impatient curiosity does he dash his paper-knife between the leaves of a tract damp from the press, to take the dimensions of his own publicity, or to measure the growth of his party's influence! How readily he understands the initials, and fills up the blanks, and dives into the meaning of the asterisks with all the conscious powers of an astrologer!

Pusillus! is this fireside amusement the cross? Is this the “ tribulation" through which you are entering into the kingdom of Heaven? Does your soul need to be confirmed by supernatural gifts, in order that in such persecution you may be " in nothing terrified by your adversaries?"

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The propensity of religious characters to think themselves persecuted, may be easily accounted for, 1st, from the universal disposition of human creatures to imagine themselves the subjects of other person's thoughts; 2dly, from the unequivocal declarations in scripture of the enmity of the world to practical believers; and, 3dly, from the history of the church having in all ages fully confirmed such declarations. The combined effect the two last mentioned causes on common minds would be very powerful, even if it received no additional strength from the first. The conclusion is reached by the following syllogism. The Scripture says, "all that live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution." But we live godly in Christ Jesus: therefore, we shall suffer persecution. Observe, however, the large assump tion whereon this deduction is founded; namely, that their life is the one described; an assumption, surely, which should be scrutinized with

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no common severity before it be formally advanced. It was an awakening inquiry that Christ once put to certain candidates for a high station, Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I shall be baptized with?" The way to a martyr's distinction lies through a martyr's sufferings. That must be a godly life indeed, which (relatively) deserves the dignity of persecution. I think I could name persons who lead such a life; but I never heard them complain of the malignity and cruelty of the world, though some among them might have done this most truly. On the contrary, their most bitter complaints were uttered against themselves. Their language was, in substance, "Whatever the world says of us, we know of ourselves what is infinitely more humiliating than any accusation of theirs." In men elevated so far above the vulgar standard, the first of the before-cited causes has proportionally ceased to operate. An anxiety, or a curiosity, to know what others think of them, they leave to such as fight the world with its own weapons. Their anxiety is transferred to more serious objects. They are afraid of spiritual schiomachy, of fighting with shadows, and beating the air. According to their views, the most awful questions at the day of judgment will refer, not to the treatment they have received from mankind, but to their own conduct. The inquiry will not be, What did you suffer? but, What was your example?

pared to establish beyond all possibility of an overthrow, meet with rebuffs from the sneers of a trifler, and the sophistries of a hair-splitter. feeling of being despised by the one, and perplexed, if not confuted, by the other, is certainly sufficient to awaken the most anti-christian passions of our nature; and the ultimate effect, when excited in a halfdisciplined mind, may be a persuasion, that the individual is purely "persecuted for righteousness' sake;" though an impartial bystander might suggest that the sneer and the sophistry too were, in a certain degree, allowable; that is, if ignorance of mankind, and a coarse and feeble defence of truth, are legitimate objects of satire.

Persons who make pretensions to an intellectual character, are strongly tempted, when religion is a novel ty to them, to identify their mental credit with their faith. Every observer of human nature is familiar with the quick-sightedness and irritability of his fellows, whenever they suspect an insult to be offered to their understanding. No wonder then that an immature professor of Christianity feels himself wounded, if his sentiments, which he is pre

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Alas! I can answer for myself, that when I have had occasion to admonish my domestics, and indigent neighbours, and have plainly seen my instructions received with incredulity, sullenness, and obstinacy, the impression upon my own feelings, instead of being compassion for their darkling, wandering souls, was rather resentment at their want of submission to my opinions. Accordingly, I regarded their behaviour, not as a mirror of myself, but as a personal affront. My infallibility was not to be questioned; and my emotions were a humiliating illustration of Luther's saying, that every man had a Pope in his own heart. Wherever this assumption of infallibility exists, adieu to all toleration. Bulls will issue alike from a bishop of Rome, a patriarch of Constantinople, an archbishop of Canterbury, from a general assembly of Presbyterian, or from a Methodist conference; and be their technical form what it may, their contents may be all summed up in one conclusive assertion,-" We are right, and all others wrong." The next step is to punish what has been condemned.

Should a perusal of these remarks incite any person to measure his notions of religious persecution by the standard of the Scripture, with a serious determination to quiet or

qualify his complaints of the world's usage, to transfer his more severe opinions of others from them to himself, to make allowance for the infirmities and mistakes of mankind, to study in the misconduct of his accusers the form and pressure of his own character, to find in all these things new causes of humiliation, and, as a general result, convince him that he is (what he has often called himself, without acknowledging in detail that he is so)"the chief of sinners," the writer will attain his object. The religion of the present time, if contemplated in the general habits of certain among its less unobtrusive friends, seems shrunk into the dimensions of formality and self-righteousness. To some religionists of the first century, an apostle thus addressed himself;"Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law; and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which sit in dark ness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes; which hast the form of knowledge, and of the truth of the law." In another place, contrasting the actual sufferings of him self and his fellow-labourers, with the (assumed) spiritual tranquillity and success of certain contemporaries, he writes;-"Now ye are full, now yeare rich, ye have reigned as kings without us. We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ: we are weak, but ye are strong: ye are honourable, but we are despised."Again: "Ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise." In the context to the passage last cited, it is very observable, that St. Paul formally apologizes for introducing the narrative of his sorrows, and does violence to his feelings even when compelled to assert the dignity of his apostolic character. Mark his words; "I speak as concerning reproach, as though we had been weak: howbeit, wheresoever any is CHRIST. OBSERY. No. 109.

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bold (I speak foolishly) I am bold also. Are they ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) I am more!"Oh, let us, who have lived to this hour secure from all personal injury, in possession of houses and lands, blessed with parents, wives, children, "no man making us afraid," undisturbed in our public assemblies and in the retirement of our closets, the Scriptures in our hands, the ministers of Jesus Christ perpetually repeating that most true invitation, "Come, for all things are now ready,"-let us, who enjoy this fulness of blessing, be ashamed of desecrating the term persecution by applying it to such marks of the world's disapprobation, as, when skilfully decomposed, are, at the worst, only "cruel mockings," which may be surely regarded as the least formidable modes of the enemy's hostility!

In the existing circumstances of the Christian Church, our most insidious, and therefore most dangerous enemies, are ourselves. As to the world at large, that is our foe, not, as I conceive, because it opposes the followers of the Son of God, but because it assumes an aspect of neutrality, and, according to its own mistaken views of candour, lets them think and act, to a certain extent, as they please, and thus removes that apprehension of danger which induces caution and vigilance. The gratuities of an enemy are suspicious. If he suspend his operations, he does this to strengthen his future measures. If he sleep on his post, it is that we may sleep also. If he feign retreat, it is that be may allure us into an ambush.-I conclude with St. Peter's cautionary directions;-"Have your conversation honest among the Gentiles; that whereas they speak against you as evil doers, they may, by your good works which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good? Have

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