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ideas which are familiar to them. Great power thority are connected with the ideas of great pomp and splendor; and when we talk of the works of God, our minds naturally turn themselves to view the great and miraculous works of providence: and this is the reason why men are slow to discern the hand of God in the ordinary course of nature, where things, being familiar to us, do not strike with wonder and admiration.

When Naaman the Syrian came to the prophet of Israel to be cured of his leprosy, Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, 'Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again unto thee, and thou shalt be clean.' The haughty Syrian disdained the easy cure, and scorned the prophet: Is this your man of God, and this his mighty power, to send me to a pitiful river of Israel? Behold,' says he, 'I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may I not wash in them, and be clean? So he turned, and went away in a rage.' But his servants, not a little wiser than their master, thus reason the case with him: My father, if the prophet had bid thee do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done it? how much rather then, when he saith unto thee, wash and be clean?' Upon this gentle rebuke his stomach came down, and he condescended to follow the Prophet's direction: ' and his flesh came again like the flesh of a young child, and he was clean.' Not unlike to Naaman's folly is theirs, who take offence at the poverty and meanness of the Author of our redemption. His sentiments and theirs agree: he expected to have seen some surprising wonder wrought for his cure; and, when he was bid only to wash, he thought there could be nothing of God in so trifling a remedy. And is not this their sense, who think that so obscure, so mean a person as Jesus, could never be the messenger of God on so great an errand as the salvation of the world? who thus expostulate, Why came he not in a majesty suitable to his employment, and then we would have believed him; but how can we expect to be raised to the glory of God by him who was himself the scorn and contempt of men?

If we search this prejudice to the bottom, we shall find that it arises from a false conception of the power and majesty of God, as if the success of his purposes depended on the visible fitness of the instruments he made choice of. With men we know the case is so; they must use means which they can judge to be adapted to the end they aim at, if they intend to prosper in what they undertake: but with God it is otherwise. To stop the current even of the smallest river, banks must be raised, and sluices cut, when the work is done by man: but in the hand of God the rod of Moses was more than sufficient to curb the rage of the sea, and force it to yield a passage to his people. The foolishness of God,' says the Apostle, 'is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men :' teaching us that we should not presume to sit in judgment on the methods of Providence; since, how foolish or how weak soever they may seem to us, they will be found in his hand to be the wisest and the strongest. And this reasoning the Apostle applies to the case now before us : 'The cross of Christ was a stumbling-block to the Jews, and to the Greeks foolishness ; but unto all them which are called, the power of God, and the wisdom of God; because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men.' However the Jews, or however the Greeks, conceived of the crucified Jesus, yet to every believer he is the mighty power of God to salvation,' because God ordained him so to be; and this ordination gives full efficacy to the cross of Christ, however in itself contemptible, and to all human appearance unfit for the purpose. The waters of Jordan had no natural efficacy to cleanse a leper; in the rod of Moses there was no power to divide the sea but when ordained by God to these purposes, the sea fled back at the touch of Moses's rod, and the leprosy of Naaman was purged by the so much despised waters of Israel. If we would judge truly, the more simple and plain the methods of Providence are, the more do they speak the power of the Almighty. When God said, Let there be light, and there was light,' his uncontrollable power more evidently appeared, than if all the angels of heaven had been employed to produce it. When our Lord said, I will, be thou clean,' and the person was cleansed, his divinity shone forth more brightly than

if he had commanded all the powers above visibly to assist him. So likewise, when God committed the redemption of the world to Jesus, a man of sorrow and affliction, and of no form or comeliness, and gave him the power of doing such works as never man did, in confirmation of his commission, he appeared as plainly in him, as if he had clothed him with visible majesty and power. If we consider him afflicted and tormented, and given up to a cruel death, it proves indeed that he was weak and mortal; but still God is strong, and not the less able to establish the word which he spoke by this weak, this mortal

man.

As to this part of the offence then, so far as the majesty and power of God are concerned, it proceeds from very wrong notions in both cases, and supposes that the majesty of God wants the same little supports of outward pomp and grandeur as that of men does, and that his power depends upon the fitness of instrumental or material causes, as human power plainly does; whereas the majesty and power of God are never more clearly seen than when he makes choice of the weak things

of the world to confound the things which are mighty.'

Let us then in the next place consider, with respect to men, whether the advantages on their side would have been greater, had Christ appeared in greater splendor, and with more visible power and authority.

How far the imaginations of some men may rove on such inquiries as these, or what degrees of splendor and glory they would judge sufficient for their purpose, I cannot tell. This we are sure of, that the majesty of the Almighty is not to be approached by human eyes; that therefore, whenever it descends to treat with men, it must be veiled and obscured under such representations as men can bear. This is true, you will say; but is there no medium between the immediate presence of God, and his appearing in the form of a servant, and dying, not as the children of men commonly die, but as the vilest and most profligate criminal? Many degrees there are, no doubt, of visible glory, in any of which Christ might have appeared, but in none with greater advantage to religion than that in which he came. Suppose he had come, as the Jews expected, in the form of a mighty prince, and in that situation

had propagated his faith and doctrine; what would the unbelievers then have said? How often should we have been told before now, that our religion was the work of human policy, and that our prince's doctrine and dominions were extended by the same sword? Was ever any religion the better thought of for having been preached at the head of an army? This is certain, that, to make religion a rational act of the mind, it cannot be conveyed to us in too easy and familiar a manner: the less awe we have of our teacher, the more freedom we shall exercise in weighing and examining his doctrines. And on this account our Saviour's appearance was in the most proper form, as it gave to men the greatest scope and liberty of trying and searching into his doctrines and pretences: and therefore his meanness and poverty should least of all be objected by those who seem to contend for nothing more than to clear religion from fears and prejudices.

But perhaps they will say, we wanted him not to appear in worldly state and glory, or to exercise temporal dominion on earth; we would have been contented with a visible, though an inferior kind of manifestation of his divine authority. O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have written!' What think ye of giving sight to the blind; of opening the ears of the deaf; of loosening the tongue that was dumb; of restoring health to the sick; of raising the dead to life again; of raising even himself from the grave, and abolishing the scandal of the cross by a visible victory and triumph over death? What do ye call these things? What do they manifest to you? Are these the works of that mean man, that wretched, that crucified mortal, of whom we have been speaking? Do slaves and servants, nay, do princes and the greatest of the children of men, use to perform such works? If not, these are the very manifestations of divine power and authority which you require. Nor can it, I believe, enter into the heart of man to contrive any greater signs to ask of any person pretending to a divine commission, than these which our Saviour daily and publicly gave the world of his authority. Had he appeared with all the visible power and glory which you can conceive, yet still you cannot imagine what greater works than these he could possibly perform: and therefore the evidence now, under

all the meanness of his appearance, is the same for his divine authority and commission, as it would have been, had he come in the greatest pomp of glory and power,

As to us, I think, who are removed at a distance from the scene of this action, the evidence is much greater. Had he come in surprising glory, we might have suspected the relations of men, who, we might well think, saw and heard every thing under the greatest astonishment, and, like St. Paul, when he was caught up to the third heavens, could hardly tell whether they were in the body, or out of the body. But now we have the evidence of men who lived and conversed with him familiarly, who saw all his mighty works, and saw them without_ surprise or astonishment, being reconciled to them by daily use, and the long-experienced gentleness and love of their Master; and therefore they very justly introduce their accounts with this assurance, 'that they relate that only which they had heard, which they had seen with their eyes, which they had looked on, and which their hands had handled, of the word of life.' So far are we then from having any just cause of offence in the poverty and meanness of our blessed Lord, that from those circumstances arises the great stability of our faith, and this comfortable assurance, that our faith standeth not in the words or in the works of man's wisdom and power, but in the power and in the wisdom of the Almighty, who knows how to produce strength out of weakness.

DISCOURSE III.

PART II.

I HAVE already examined the first and great prejudice against the gospel, arising from the poverty and meanness of our blessed Lord, and the low condition of life in which he appeared in the world, and the wretched circumstances which put an end to it; and showed it to be so far from being a just offence against the gospel, that, when fairly considered, it serves to recommend religion to us with all possible advantage, and the

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