it; for "they refuse to hearken, and pull away the shoulder, and stop their ears that they should not hear."

Lastly, our vanity is no less an impediment to our faith, than our presumption or our pride; because true faith excludes vanity, as incompatible with that humility, which is at once the infallible indication and support of a devout faith. Where vanity then exists to any extent, our belief is likely to be weak and insecure, because an overweening opinion of our own importance, while it absorbs our thoughts, must necessarily detach them from Him, to whom they are so infinitely due; for it is certain, that the more we think of ourselves, the less we can think of God. "Wo unto them," says the Psalmist," that draw iniquity with cords of vanity,-that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight! As the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as dust, because they have cast away the law of the Lord of Hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel."

If, as the text evidently suggests to us, they, who are not seriously disposed to believe, find the difficulties of belief greater, the more they withhold their convictions from the truth; so will it also follow, that we, who are seriously disposed to believe, the more anxiously we devote our minds to this holy purpose, the fewer impediments shall we find to oppose our faith. Our belief will

improve in proportion as we encourage it; and where we raise no obstacles to retard its influence upon our minds, they will soon cease to be perplexed with difficulties or doubts. To reject any portion of that revelation, which the Saviour of mankind came down from Heaven to deliver to us, is not to be a true disciple of his. And this is really the case with numberless Christians, who are content not to believe all that he has revealed to them, for no wiser reason, than because they imagine they believe enough: but to such, I would repeat the warning of the Apostle, "Be not deceived, God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that also shall he reap." A partial faith cannot be a perfect faith, and a perfect faith only will justify the Christian, who has had full opportunities of rendering it perfect, at the solemn inquisition of quick and dead. This is not much for God to demand of us, when he has supplied us with such powerful motives, and furnished us with such abundant means to acquire it. Let the doubting Christian only seek after it with humility; let him earnestly and unceasingly endeavour to possess it; let him constantly offer up his devotions to God, in the fervour of awakened penitence for past transgression: all his doubts will then subside; and he will have no higher wish than to be constantly guided by the glorious gospel of his Saviour and Redeemer.

"And they were astonished at his doctrine; for his word was with power."

WHAT an imposing spectacle must it have been to the long-deluded inhabitants of Judea, when the Saviour, emerging from the sanctified waters of Jordan, announced the tidings of a new religion! Fifteen centuries had now completed their term, since the promulgation of the law. The Almighty had long since ceased to constitute man a medium of communication betwixt himself and his rebellious creatures. The gift of prophecy had not now been bestowed for above three hundred years, but upon the Saviour's forerunner. The degenerate descendants of the righteous Abraham were become the dupes of their ignorant or interested teachers, and, far from endeavouring to free themselves from the trammels of a very imperfect

worship, encumbered as it then was with numerous and vexatious ceremonies, they raised their arrogant expositors of the Scriptures to equal authority with their great lawgiver, and submitted, as the oracle of their faith, to an insufficient law, corrupted by the ignorance and vanity of men, and obedience to which was an absolute bondage.

The original law of Moses, even in its most perfect state, was still but an incomplete dispensation; "for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit." It was Christ Jesus who consummated that grand scheme of religion, which was dimly shadowed out in the Mosaic Scriptures, and only obscurely prefigured by the Prophets, but which, in its consummation, rendered clearly intelligible the shadows and types under which its principal objects had been indistinctly represented. It was the Redeemer of mankind who poured down upon us that most excellent gift of wisdom, which maketh wise unto salvation, "for his word was with power."

It was, however, in the midst of that most humiliating servility of mind, which held, upon the mere credit of tradition, those doctrines then most favoured among the Jews, that Balaam's remarkable prophecy was fulfilled, which foretold,

that there should "come a star out of Jacob, and a sceptre should rise out of Israel, and should smite the corners of Moab, and destroy all the children of Seth." At this dark and stormy period arose the illustrious Gallilean, of humble and unimposing exterior, but who "spake as never man spake," whose words diffused knowledge through the whole extent of Palestine," for they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake," beyond which they soon spread, dissipating that gloom of ignorance that had so long gathered over the minds of men. "For the word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." With all the simplicity of an ordinary man, the Saviour of the world had the dignity of a "teacher sent from God." He exploded the idle and surreptitious memorials of the Jewish elders, and reformed, 'or rather perfected, the preliminary law. We behold a form of worship, perfectly novel, of a character the most simple and unimposing, which had nothing in it of pomp to arrest or prepossess the mind, prevailing over a system long and extensively established, to which habit had attached a stubborn reverence, and which the splendour of its forms had so associated with the prejudices of its votaries, as to render it dear to and inseparable from their pride. By the voice of this humble teacher, the gigantic frame of the Jewish ceremonial was