صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

reclaim, is not only innocent but laudable; and such reproof can never be administered with effect, if we are not as careful to reform ourselves as to admonish others. He who has clear ideas of the malignant nature and fatal consequences of sin in his own. character, who strives against it with prevailing ardour, who prays against it with strenuous perseverance; he, in short, who is solicitous to "cast the beam out of his own eye," that he may be able, with greater propriety and more powerful effect, to "pull out the mote from his brother's eye;" will know how to unite charity with zeal, and humility with correction. I do not say that we should wait till we have subdued all our corruptions, before we take upon ourselves the office of censor or of judge; for then, who would be able to exercise the necessary duty of reclaiming the wanderer, instructing the ignorant, and raising the fallen? But we certainly should not wilfully cherish the vices against which we lift up our voice. We should not be indulgent to greater faults in

ourselves,

ourselves, while we are severe to lesser infirmities in others. By comparing our own manifold transgressions with the strict precepts of the Gospel, and the perfect character of Christ; and by constant application to the spirit of illumination and of purity; our judgment will be unbiased by passion, our censure regulated by prudence, and our in-, dignation softened by benevolence. Thus shall we cease to make even virtue a snare to us; and to sin against the plainest principles of the Gospel, under pretence of doing honour to God, and of promoting the eternal welfare of mankind.

SERMON XVII.

On the small number that shall be saved.

7TH. CHAP. OF ST. MATTHEW, 13TH, AND 14TH. VERSES.

"Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."

WHAT is the language of the generality

of mankind, when the difficulty of the work of salvation is asserted, when the numbers that shall finally be excluded from the blessedness of Heaven are recounted, and the few that shall enter in at the strait gate declared? "We cannot adopt opinions so opposite to charity and candour. We can

not

not believe that they, who are living with us in the constant interchange of kind offices, who are only subject to the frailties of our common nature, devoted to the business of their respective stations, or to the pleasures becoming their age and rank, shall perish everlastingly. We do not plead for the scandalous offender. He who has broken not only the laws of God but those of man; he who is cruel and malignant, unjust and dishonest; he whose unruly passions scatter ruin and devastation around him as far as his influence extends; is willingly given up to the hand of justice; and we view his condemnation with complacency. But what has he done, who is no one's enemy but his own? What has he done, who merely lives in forgetfulness of a Being who shrouds himself in mist and darkness; in disregard of a state, of which he knows nothing but that it is distant and invisible, unconnected with the tangible objects of the present life, and at variance with many of its enjoyments? Can it be expected that man, whose feelings

must

« السابقةمتابعة »