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it to themselves to discover the proper occasions for again resorting to such assistances, when, upon his quitting them, they should be once more exposed to the dangers and temptations of the world. "Can the children of the bride-chamber "fast, while the bridegroom is with them? "So long as they have the bridegroom "with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come when the bridegroom "shall be taken away from them, and then "shall they fast in those days." He adds another reason for the little weight which he laid on the external offices of religion, his great object was to point out its real and essential duties, and if he had wasted time in expounding the former, he would have weakened the force of his other instructions, so infinitely more important. These observances, which had constituted the whole religion of the Pharisees, were therefore the old

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garment, which it was quite vain to attempt to mend, and which it was much better at once to throw aside, and to provide a new one in its stead.

Our Saviour's observations on the Sabbath are no less enlightened and valuable. The Pharisees reproached his disciples for plucking the ears of corn on that day, as they passed through some corn-fields; and on another occasion, which we find at the beginning of the third chapter, they have even the effrontery to throw out insinuations against himself, for performing upon the Sabbath the miracle of restoring the withered hand. Nothing, certainly, could be more absurd than accusations of this nature; but in an age in which so much stress was put upon outward forms, they probably carried some aspect of plausibility. Mankind are therefore much beholden to the decisive and triumphant refutation which

the words of our Lord have for ever given to such bigotted notions. He represents the institution of the Sabbath as intended for the improvement and the happiness of the human race-therefore any action which was either indifferent, and had no tendency to carry away the mind from religious impressions, or which was conducive to the necessary support of life, could never be justly construed as contrary to the spirit of that holy ordinance, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." Much less could any blame be justly thrown on the exercise of acts of beneficence upon that sacred day. Such acts were, on the other hand, the most correspondent of any with its character. In an enlarged view of Christian duty, not "to do good," if it is in our power, is "to "do evil," not " to save life," if we are able to save it, is " to kill;"-and surely

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the dispositions which led to such a description of conduct were not suited to the heavenly benevolence of the Sabbath. There are still one or two instances that follow in succession, which I shall quote as additional examples of the incidental instructions which our Lord was accustomed to draw from the circumstances in which he happened to be placed. The celebrity which he had acquired seems to have struck two sets of individuals in a peculiar, but very different manner. The Jewish doctors, provoked with his opposition to their narrow and dogmatical assumptions, thought fit to ascribe his miraculous works to the power of the Devil. His Relations, on the other hand, who, in the simplicity of his early life, had not prognosticated the sudden influence which he was to obtain over the minds of his countrymen, imagined that he was hurried along by some

singular enthusiasm which would, probably, terminate in his destruction. "They "came to lay hold on him," (we are told,) "for they said he is beside himself." To the Scribes and Pharisees he triumphantly replies, that the character of his works might decide as to the source from which they came, that all his efforts were directed against the powers of darkness ;

how then could " Satan cast out Satan?" How could his kingdom "be divided "against itself?" Upon this occasion it was that he uttered those memorable words, the most severe that he ever uttered, in which he almost excludes from the hopes of mercy those who could contemplate his performances, and yet impute them to an impure origin. "He that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost "hath never forgiveness, but is in dan"ger of eternal damnation,-because they "said, he hath an unclean spirit."

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