wife; it was poffible Job might be infincere, and the devil took the advantage of the die for it.

It is a bad picture, and done by a terrible mafter; and yet we are always copying it. Does a man, from real conviction of heart, forfake his vices !the pofition is not to be allowed-no; his vices have forfaken him.

Does a pure virgin fear Gop, and say her prayers? -she is in her climacteric.

Does humanity clothe and educate the unkown orphan !-Poverty thou haft no genealogies:-See! is he not the father of the child? Thus do we rob heroes of the best part of their glory-their virtue. Take away the motive of the act, you take away all that is worth having in it ;-wreft it to ungenerous ends, you load the virtuous man who did it with infamy-Undo it all-I beseech you give him back his honour-restore the jewel you have taken from him-replace him in the eye of the world

it is too late.

It is painful to utter the reproaches which fhould come in here.—I will truft them with yourselves : in coming from that quarter, they will more naturally produce fuch fruits as will not fet your teeth on edge for they will be the fruits of love and goodwill, to the praise of God, and the happiness of the world, which I wish.

SERMON XVIII.

The Levite and his Concubine

JUDGES XIX. 1, 2, 3.

And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king is Ifrael, that there was a certain Levìte fojourning on the fide of Mount Ephraim, who took unto him a concubine.

A CONCUBINE!— but the text accounts for it, for in those days there was no king in Ifrael: and the Levite, you will fay, like every other man in it, did what was right in his own eyes, and so, you may add, did his concubine to,-for she played the whore against him and went away.

-Then Shame and grief go with her; and whereever she feeks a shelter, may the hand of juftice shut the door against her!

Not fo; for he went unto her father's house in Bethlehem-Judah, and was with him four whole months. Bleffed interval for meditation upon the fickleness and vanity of this world and its pleasures! I fee the holy man upon his knees,with hands compreffed to his bofom, and, with uplifted eyes, thanking Heaven, that the object which had fo long fhared his affections, was filed.

The text gives a different picture of his fituation ; for be arofe and went after her to speak friendly to her, and to bring her back again, having his fervant with him, and a couple of affes; and she brought him unto ber father's house, and when the father of the damsel faw him, he rejoiced to meet him—

-A moft fentimental group! you'll fay: and fo it is my good commentator, the world talks of every thing; give but the outlines of a story,let Spleen or Prudery fnatch the pencil, and they will finish it with so many hard ftrokes, and with fo dirty a colouring, that Candour and Courtesy will fit in torture as they look at it.-Gentle and virtuous spirits! ye who know not what it is to be rigid interpreters, but of your own failings.-to you I addrefs myfelf, the unhired advocates for the conduct of the mifguided,-whence is it, that the world is not more jealous of your office? How often must ye repeat it, “That such a one's doing fo or fo”

-is not fufficient evidence by itself to overthrow the accufed?-That our actions ftand furrounded with a thousand circumftances which do not present themselves at first fight; that the firft fprings and motives which impell'd the unfortunate, lie deeper ftill;-and, that of the millions which every hour are arraign'd, thousands of them may have erred merely from the head, and been actually outwitted into evil; and, even when from the heart —that the difficulties and temptations under which they acted, the force of the paffions,the suitableness of the object, and the many struggles of

Virtue before the fell,-may be fo many appeals from juftice to the judgment feat of Pity.

Here then let us stop a moment, and give the ftory of the Levite and his concubine a fecond hearing. Like all others, much of it depends upon the telling; and as the fcripture has left us no kind of comment upon it, 'tis a story on which the heart cannot be at a lofs for what to fay, or the imagination for what to fuppofe:the danger is, bumanity may fay too much.

And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Ifrael, that a certain Levite fojourning ox the fide of mount Ephraim, took unto himself a con cubine.

O Abraham, thou father of the faithful! if this was wrong,-Why didft thou fet fo ensnaring an example before the eyes of thy defcendants? and, Why did the GOD of Abraham, the GOD of Ifaac and Jacob, bless so often the feed of fuch intercourses, and promise to multiply and make princes come out of them?

GOD can difpenfe with his own laws and accordingly we find the holieft of the patriarchs, and others in Scripture, whofe hearts, cleaved most unto GOD, accommodating themselves as well as they could to the dispensation: that Abraham had Hagar; that Jacob, befides his two wives, Rachel and Leah, took also unto him Zilpah and Bilhah, from whom many of the tribes defcended; that David had seven wives and ten concubines,-Rehoboam, fixty and that in whatever cafes it became reproachable, it seemed not so much the thing itself,

as the abuse of it, which made it fo: this was re. markable in that of Solomon, whofe excefs became an infult upon the privileges of mankind; for by the fame plan of luxury, which made it necessary to have forty thousand stalls of horses,—he had unfortunately mifcalculated his other wants, and fo had seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines.

Wife-deluded man! was it not that thou madeft fome amends for thy bad practice, by thy good preaching, what had become of thee !-Three hundred-but let us turn afide, I befeech you, from fo bad a ftumbling-block.

The Levite had but one. The Hebrew word imports a woman a concubine, or a wife a concubine, to distinguish her from the more infamous fpecies, who came under the roofs of the licentious without principle. Our annotators tell us, that in Jewish economics, these differ'd little from the wife, except in fome outward ceremonies and ftipulations, but agreed with her, in all the true effences of marriage, and gave themselves up to the husband (for fo he is call'd), with faith plighted, with fentiments, and with affection.

Such a one the Levite wanted to fhare his folitude, and fill up that uncomfortable blank in the heart in fuch a fituation; for notwithstanding all we meet with in books, in many of which, no doubt, there are a good many handfome things faid upon the sweets of retirement, &c. . . . yet ftill" it is not good for man to be alone :" nor can all which the cold hearted pedant Auns our ears with upon the Vol. V.

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