ance to the great adversary be not diligently maintained by you-you have not done all to stand, if you exercise not that faith in Christ by which alone you are enabled to withstand him whose works Christ came to destroy-you do not see the matter aright, if in every temptation which crosses your path, and in every evil thought which would lead you from the belief or the love or the practice of the gospel, you do not recognise another and another attempt of him who is incessantly warring against the soul: And happy shall I be, my brethren, should these hints give such a direction to the desire and the doings of any one of you, as may help you forward in that great business of sanctification, by which the influence of the Evil One over your alienated hearts is completely done away, and you are rendered altogether meet for the company of Him in heaven -whose grace dealt out to you on earth enables you to resist the devil, and purifies you from all spot and wrinkling, and restores to you the lost image of your Creator, and prepares you for the fellowship of Him and of the unfallen angels who surround His throne.

SERMON XXI.

[PREACHED at Glasgow, 3d December, 1815.]

LUKE IV. 1-13.

"And Jesus, being full of the Holy Ghost, returned from Jordan, and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, being forty days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing: and when they were ended, he afterward hungered. And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written, That man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. And the devil, taking him up into an high mountain, shewed unto him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time. And the devil said unto him, All this power will I give thee, and the glory of them, for that is delivered unto me; and to whomsoever I will I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Get thee behind me, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. And he brought him to Jerusalem, and set him on a pinnacle of the temple, and said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down from hence: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee; and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. And Jesus answering, said unto him, It is said, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. And when the devil had ended all the temptation, he departed from him for a season.”

JESUS was set before us as an example that we should follow His steps; and if we do not fasten an attentive eye upon all that He did in this lower world, we do not fulfil the duty which lies upon us of looking unto Jesus. In conformity to the undoubted truth of this assertion, that all Scripture is profitable, there is no part of our Saviour's revealed history which may not be turned to some profitable account; and it is from the want of attention, from the listless and superficial style of our reading the Bible, and running over the task of its successive chapters, that so many of its passages are just of as little significancy, and exert as small an influence over us, as if they were

veiled from our eye by some material covering, or occurred at intervals as so many chasms of blank paper. Many of us, perhaps, may never have adverted to the practical lessons that may be gathered from the history of the remarkable encounter that took place between the Captain of our salvation-armed as He was with the fulness of the Spirit of God, and that great adversary who, whatever our dark and degraded conceptions of him, is at the head of a mighty rebellion on the wide theatre of God's administration; and with the exception of a very little flock, wields an entire ascendency over the face of this world which lieth in wickedness-and claims so thorough and so firm a footing in this province of the universe, that he is called in the Bible the god of this world-and who, when he made his attack upon the Saviour armed with the Spirit of God, entered into the combat with Him by the opposing armour of that spirit which worketh in the children of disobedience; and the result of the contest, wherein the great Head of the Church was engaged, was just the same with what the result will be of that actual contest which he carries on with the members of the Church-even those who hold Christ the Head, and who, receiving out of His fulness the same Spirit of God, will be enabled to overcome on this principle-that greater is He who is in them, than he who is in the world.

But we have not gathered all the information that is to be gotten out of the passage before us, until we have ascertained. what the precise moral lessons are which the conduct of Christ, under the particular temptations by which He was assailed, is fitted to impress. Do any cases occur in the whole history of man, bearing such a resemblance to the cases of the text, that we may obtain out of them a pointed and particular instruction of-Go, and do likewise? Tell me a single case, for example, that can make out anything like a parallel between the situation of a human being, and the situation of Jesus Christ, when He was tempted by the instigation of commanding this stone that it be made bread. Why, my brethren, I believe that out of this passage a principle may be gathered applicable to a thousand diversities in the history of human affairs; but in

stead of announcing a general principle, and then applying it to cases, I have often thought it a more effectual way to begin. with stating an impressive case, and out of that evolving a clear and commanding principle. I direct your attention, then, all at once to the very frequent and familiar case of a man on the eve of bankruptcy-when he is agitated by all the forebodings of controversy-when futurity lowers upon him, and his heart bleeds within him at the approaching descent which his family must soon make before the eye of the public. I do not say that the resemblance between him and his great pattern lies in his having to sustain the buffeting of a personal encounter with the adversary of his soul; but think not, my brethren, think not that the vigilant eye of this prince of darkness is not upon him that he is not making every use of his opportunity to secure a subject to his dominions; and, though he does not whisper the temptation into his ear, think not that he is not plying his heart with an allurement which many, I fear, in the unhappy circumstances I am now conceiving, have found to be irresistible. He does not just say-Command this stone that it be made bread; but does he not come round the despairing man with his busy suggestions, and make every trial to shake him out of his integrity, and fill his agitated bosom with the painful image of a beggared family, even as the bosom of the Saviour was filled with the agonies of hunger? And do you not think that he has some hand in the affair when the deluded man is meditating on unfair and dishonourable expedients for securing some fragment to himself out of the wreck of his ruined speculation? Ah! my brethren, it is he who, in effect, has commanded that such goods as can be easily conveyed from the notice of creditors shall be turned into bread. It is he who sets you on some plan of secrecy for turning all you can lay your hand on into a provision for yourself and for your children. It is he who glosses over the dishonesty of the proceeding, and lulls the conscience into quietness, by mingling with the temptation the kind, and amiable, and natural impulse of a parent's affection, and a parent's anxiety. It is he, my brethren, who pursues this artful game, and finds his abundant

harvest of ruined principle and integrity, in that sweeping tide of fluctuation which sets in at intervals with such a devouring energy, as not only to overwhelm the rash adventurer, but to tear up by the sinews the firmest and oldest establishments. Ah! my brethren, it is in a season so critical as this that the principle of a Christian is brought to its severest trial, and that the wily tempter plies him with the suggestion to take hold of what is not his own, and on what he has no right to put his finger, that he might turn it into bread.

The

Now, mark the sentiment wherewith a real and an altogether Christian will meet the deceitfulness of this temptation. elevated language of his heart will be, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." Though the terrors of approaching poverty are mustering before me in dark and threatening array, yet will I not be tempted from my integrity. My Saviour would not command the stone to be made bread, because had He done so He would have violated a committed trust. I will not turn a single fragment of my substance to the secret purpose of a provision for my family, because, should I do so, I would be violating a commanded duty. Oh, no! I will meet this temptation as my great Exemplar did before me, and I will meet it with His own weapon and His own sentiment—that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Oh! what a fine security does Christian principle confer, for all that is just, and honourable, and of good report! How clearly and commandingly does the line of duty lie before the eye of him who has firmly seated his confidence in God! We have a warrant to pray to Him for daily bread; and tell me if ever the promise failed of its accomplishment, that as the day came the provision of the day came along with it? To this extent every Christian is warranted to trust in Him; and with such an anchor of security, all distressing anxieties for the morrow should be given to the winds. This is the noble defence which I call on one and all to set up, in that dark hour of their visitation, when they are floundering along through an ocean of many difficulties." I have been young, and now am old," says the psalmist, "and