this were the habit of the mind, what a mighty safeguard against temptations you would carry about with you in a world that is full of them. Your tempter does not appear to you in a personal form; but his agency on your hearts is not the less real on that account-nor is the answer less applicable from your mouth than it was from the mouth of the Saviour, Get thee hence, Satan. Rebuke the evil suggestion away from you. Let the mind, by the summary act of that authority which belongs to it, dismiss from its inner chambers every tempting thought, every rising inclination to sin; and while you are called upon to keep your eyes with all diligence from viewing vanity, I also call upon you to keep your hearts with all diligence from dwelling upon vanity. I do not know a single practical direction that you would find of more use for keeping you from what is evil; and we are told that we should cease to do evil, ere we can learn to do well. I know not a more efficient lesson for carrying along with you from the very commencement of the good work of sanctification, and for supporting you through the whole of its subsequent stages. Do, my brethren, act upon it from this moment. Think of the quick and instantaneous movement by which our Saviour put the whole of that bright and glittering illusion away from Him, which formed the grand conclusive attempt of the adversary to seduce Him from His principles. Go, and do likewise. Keep no measures with temptation. Your safety lies in shunning, and in shutting it out, and in dismissing it from your thoughts. When any gay or flattering imagination gets hold of you-be it wealth, to seduce you from your integrity, or to withdraw you from the present path of your humble and sober-minded, but safe and cautious employments, to some track of ruinous ambition—or be it pleasure, to steal your heart to some object of idolatrous affection-or be it fashion, to tempt you to some act of unlawful conformity to a world lying in wickedness-think, my brethren, of your calling-you are the servants of the Lord; and be ever ready to dismiss the evil suggestion with the answer-I must worship the Lord my God, and Him only must I serve.

Thus much for temptation in the general. But let me say a

few words on the particular temptation that is here recorded. One might think that it would be difficult to find a parallel to this temptation in the familiar and every-day history of menthat for this purpose it would be necessary to go to him who stands on the very pinnacle of human society-to the single man of the world, before whom lieth the avenue which promises to conduct him by some strides of mighty and unprincipled violence to universal monarchy. Such a man there lately was, who aspired after all the glory of all the kingdoms upon earth; and in the track of his guilty ambition many, and very many, were the acts of homage which he rendered to the god of this world. In the history of this man, we see at once the power of Satan's temptations and the treachery of his promises; but we mistake it if we think that the passage of our Saviour's history which is now before us does not admit of a wider application. The enlightened Discerner of the human heart will perceive the identity of its passions under all the variety of rank and of circumstances. To regale the appetite for distinction, it is not necessary that man should aspire above the level of this widely extended world: it is enough that he gain an eminence above the level that is immediately around him. His own confined neighbourhood may be all that he knows, and to him it is just as animating a field of ambition as the world is to the mighty conqueror; and therefore, in the very humblest walks of society we may behold the busy working of the same pride, and the same passion, and the same keen and interested rivalship, and the same ardent struggle for superiority, that we read of in the higher game of victory and of empire. And thus it is that the temptation of glory may be carried down to the very basis of society. Men measure themselves by themselves, and compare themselves with themselves; and thus it is that when walking the streets, we may behold the gait and bearing of conscious elevation among the most tattered of our labourers, as well as among the wealthiest of our citizens-for pride may dwell in a cottage as well as in a palace. It sits on the workman's bench as well as on the monarch's throne, and struts driving a flock of sheep as well as at the head of a victorious army.

But in all these cases, the glory we aspire after is a glory we seek from one another. It is the notice, and the homage, and the admiration of men. It is not the glory that cometh from God only; but in giving way to it, we make an idolatrous defection from the great God of heaven and of earth; and to make good this defection, the god of this world plies all his artifices, and brings the flattering prospect of distinction to play upon our fancy, and arrays the perishable splendours of earth with a charm and a stability which do not belong to them; and throws into the far and distant back-ground of our contemplations the certainty of that death which, in a few short years, will blow to pieces the whole of his glittering infatuation, and the loathsomeness of that grave of which one and all of us must be the dumb and the mouldering occupiers. Oh! how many resign themselves to his flattering illusions, and crowd the broad way in pursuit of them! And, keenly driven along by some airy spectre, the sight of which inflames their ambition, there is no room in the hearts but for the employment of following after it; and the will of God, and the service of God, and the worship of God, are all trampled upon and renounced in the daily and hourly incense which they offer to some cheating idol of this world. Money, which purchaseth all things, purchaseth distinction also; and this forms the most frequent and powerful instrument by which the great adversary seduces his thousands and tens of thousands from their loyalty to the God of heaven. With this he bribes the vanity of the young in the shape of costly and glittering ornaments-and who can tell how many have been betrayed by the power of this temptation into the surrender of that most graceful of all ornaments-that unsullied purity which when cruelly pressed and prevailed upon has often turned her who was at one time the pride and the promise of a parent's old age into a shame and a bitterness which have brought down his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. With this he has turned the commercial world into one vortex of driving and impetuous rivalship; and though it be well that each should put forth the might of his hand to the bidden duty of providing for the things of his own house, yet it is not well if,

moderate to nothing a man's ambition about a place of eminence and distinction in society. It is very true that on him may be performed, or on him there may not be performed, the truth of the saying-that the hand of the diligent maketh rich; but riches are not what his heart is set upon. He looks to another home, and his eye is filled with the splendours of another inheritance. He acts on the great though simple prospect of eternity; and on the whole you behold a man giving himself to the faithful and diligent and high-principled discharge of all the duties which belong to the line that Providence has assigned to him, and making no rash or unadvised attempts to change it. His heart is free from that ambition after the glories or the distinctions of this world which pierceth man through with many sorrows, and has blasted many a precious influence of the word of God, by the cares of life on the one hand, or the deceitfulness of riches on the other. Such, my brethren, I conceive to be the clear line of duty that lies on every individual, and I leave it to you to conceive what a Christian and good and orderly aspect it would throw over the face of the country, were this to become the practical and the universal moral of all its people-were the unbridled rage of commercial enterprise to be tempered by the lessons of this passage. We would see less of goading ambition for a high. eminence of wealth among the citizens, and less of that blind and impetuous and miscalculating confidence which tempts so many to acts of desperation, and less of that relaxation of principle and virtue that leads to so many a splendid and guilty, and at length shipwrecked enterprise, signalized by the ruin of many families, while another phoenix with gay and golden plumage rises from the ashes of the devouring conflagration.

SERMON XXII.

[PREACHED in the Calton, Glasgow, 15th February, 1815.]

II. CORINTHIANS V. 20.

"Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God."

In the prosecution of the following discourse, I shall first consider the entreaty of the text-"Be ye reconciled unto God," as addressed to you by the beseeching voice of a fellow-mortal; and in the second place, I shall consider the warrant given to him by God to address you in this manner-and in virtue of which warrant it is not only he who beseeches you, but God, or Christ, the Son of God, who beseeches you by him,-" As though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled unto God.”

Let me, then, in the first place, consider this entreaty of the text as coming upon you through the beseeching voice of a fellow-mortal. It came in this shape from the mouth of Paul to the people whom he addressed in this epistle. It comes in this shape from the mouth of a Christian parent to those children for whose eternal salvation he is bound to labour, and to put forth his every power of earnest and affectionate exhortation. It comes in this shape from one friend to another, in that highest exercise of friendship, when man presses upon his fellow the care of his eternity. And it comes in this shape at the moment in which I am now addressing you, when, knowing as

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