by their love of real wisdom and real goodness. From motives of sound prudence they will form a judgment that shall enable them to protect themselves and their fellow creatures from lurking envy and outrageous hatred. They will act under the guidance of a judgment not widely dissimilar from that which, if those odious sinners repent not, will be hereafter proclaimed before men and angels, when the last trump shall have sounded, and the oppressor, the scorner, and the profligate, shall be raised from their graves, and receive from God himself a dreadful and irreversible sentence of condemnation.

Now experience tells us that other men act from their ruling passion, from latent views of profit, or honour, or revenge-from the silent, and to themselves almost imperceptible, influence of prepossessions and humours, of early habits and uncontroled affections. But it also tells us that our own judgments are frequently misguided by our own prejudices and humours, by our credulous acquiescence in groundless rumours, by our undue predilections for individuals, and our excessive attachment to the interests and credit of a particular profession, a political party, or a religious sect. It tells us that men of discernment and candour are disgusted and even incensed at the proneness of polemics indirectly to arrogate to themselves superior sagacity or superior sanctity-to charge criminal intentions upon the ablest and fairest advocates of speculative opinions different from their own-and thus to judge harshly, and it may be erroneously, of their fellow labourers

in the search after truth, while they are themselves in danger of being judged. But in order to perceive the guilt of such judgments, we need not wait for the slow decisions of our minds upon elaborate and formal proofs of duty and propriety. With the rapidity as it were, and the vivacity of instinct, nature herself bears witness to the ascendancy, which the benevolent affections ought to have over the unsocial. When we find ourselves to have formed an unjust opinion of enlightened and well principled men, we instantly feel shame and compunction-we retrace our thoughts, and would gladly recall our words. But, when our error is on the favourable side, we lament indeed the mistake, but smart under no humiliating or mortifying chastisement from within, in our reflections upon the motive-we have not judged criminally, and therefore in this instance we fear not to be judged.

To conclude. For our general guidance in practice, and our general consolation under evil report, let us avail ourselves of the instructions which the Scriptures have given us for acquiring the habit of judging righteously. Have we not errors, prejudices, humours, and irregular appetites of our own? Are they not sometimes unaccompanied by any efforts of self-command, and sometimes unsuspected by ourselves through the blindness of self-love? And yet, my brethren, for our secret faults, as well as our more open and presumptuous sins, must we not one day render an account before the Searcher of all hearts? These awful reflections will instantly impress us with feelings of Christian

338 ON THE HABIT OF JUDGING UNRIGHTEOUSLY. humility, and gradually prepare us for the exercise of Christian charity. The properties of that virtue you shall hear in the ardent and energetic language of an inspired Apostle: "Charity suffereth long and is kind; charity envieth not, vaunteth not itself, does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity, but in the truth, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." May this charity, in its full extent, and with all its blessed effects, take possession of your hearts! Then you will check the violence of false tongues, and "follow, as much as lieth in you, peace with all men." You will lay up for yourselves the wellearned reward of esteem from your fellow-creatures, and the well-grounded hope of approbation from your Heavenly Father, as faithful guardians to the reputation of the virtuous, as useful promoters of tranquillity and good will in families and neighbourhoods, and as sincere followers of your most holy and benevolent Redeemer!

SERMON XIV.*

ON FAITH.

EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS xi. 6.

But without Faith it is impossible to please him; for he that cometh to God, must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them who diligently seek him.

THE instructive and comprehensive import of these words deserves our serious attention, whether we consider them as employed to illustrate the reasoning of the sacred writer in this and a preceding chapter upon the facts which he has there stated, or as presenting to us concisely and perspicuously the fundamental principles of all religion, whether speculative or practical, whether natural or revealed.

Enoch, before his translation, had this testimony, that he pleased God; but that he pleased God was a proof of his faith, and his translation was the recompence of that faith exercising itself in correspondent works-of a principle fixed in the understanding and ruling the will-a principle, convincing Enoch that God is, and impelling him to please

* July 1812.

God as the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Now, in opposition to the infidel who ridicules the intellectual weakness of faith, and the fanatic who contends for its exclusive efficacy, I must observe to you, that the Faith of which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks, though in some part it includes the belief of a Messiah, must not be confined to the signification of mere assent to the evidences of Christianity, but extends to the persuasion of the human mind upon all those subjects and doctrines, in which the existence of a Deity, his attributes, his moral government of the world, and his protection of righteous men, both in the ordinary and extraordinary dispensation of his providence, are concerned; and, indeed, by a logical series of consequences, leads us to the consideration of a future life, in which the justice, wisdom, and benevolence of God will become conspicuous by the happiness he will confer on those, who seek him earnestly, and obey him constantly.

Faith, we are told, is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen; and in this explanation the present, you find, is distinguished from the future, belief from knowledge, expectation from possession. The word substance, as some learned men suppose, corresponds to the expression which the Septuagint translators have used in rendering two Hebrew words, Tuhelit and Tequa, which originally meant confidence or reliance, say they. Thus in the Greek Old Testament, we have the same word which occurs in the Epistle to the Hebrews, ToσTαois, my hope is in thee. But I