ture, but also the limitations of man's power over his fellow

man.

Now, into each of these six conditions he supposes himself to have passed under the eye of every man who is before him in judgment, and inquires into the treatment which he received at their hands: whether they did supply him when it was in their power, and comfort him when it was not: or whether they did utterly neglect him and basely suffer him to pine without help or consolation. Upon this, when the one class modestly decline having done for him any such charitable offices as he enumerates, and the other stoutly deny that they turned a deaf ear to the cry of his calamities, he explains that it was not of himself he spoke, but of the meanest of those who were his brethren: Inasmuch as ye did it, inasmuch as ye did it not, to the least of these my brethren, ye did it, or ye did it not, to me." The judge identifies himself with every one who is joined to him in a brotherly union, and identifies their evil or good treatment with his own, justifying to the last that love of his people for which he suffered and died and sent his comforter; verifying all the figures contained in Scripture, of their intimate union with himself their living head, of their being his members upon the earth, in whose sufferings he suffered, and in whose enjoyments he rejoiced.

The meaning of the whole transaction is therefore this, -that Christ hath set on foot upon the earth a cause to which certain others have associated themselves, and which they are striving with one accord to establish. In the prosecution of their object they are to encounter all the six forms of human misery, and to draw down upon their heads all the six forms of human trial-hunger, thirst, nakedness, sickness, exile, and imprisonment. In which encounter of stormy trial, they are to find in the world some who pity and assist them, others who neglect and despise them. By this mark the world is to be separated asunder, and acquit ted or condemned in the great day of her responsibility. So that, in truth, this test, which at first seemed merely mor al, turns out to be specially christian, and contains, as we now proceed to show, the mest discriminative mark between the friends and enemies of God, between the servants and the rebels to his Son's government.

For, as every man knows, deeds show the sincerity of words, and adversity proveth the true character of deeds; any cause will find coadjutors while it goes with the stream, but when it hath to struggle against it, none but true men

lie to their oar. Therefore Christ propoundeth the true test of adherence to him and his cause. Six jeopardies he puts it in, and a seventh can hardly be found; he enumerates the orb of its perils, and then asks who hath stood by it throughout the entire round. These are the men, says he, for whom my Father hath prepared a kingdom from the foundation of the world, for the rest, let them plead as their fears and self love may dictate, they must betake them to the devil and his angels, whose service they preferred to mine. He examines who are standing at the end of the battle, or have fallen with wounds in their breast, scorning flight or base submission. These he numbers and unites in his triumph; but the rest, who joined not his standard, or having joined it, turned not out to his help against the mighty, or having come into the field, preferred flight or base desertion to noble death and triumph, he rejects and abandons to the power of that enemy whom they loved or feared.

There is no evading or counterfeiting of this test. Had he placed it in forms of belief, then every sound-headed student of his word, who could logically extract the bearing of its various propositions, would have come off glorious, whatever had been the state of his affections or his morals. And no one but he could have come gloriously off: so that the busy multitude, who have not time accurately to try conclusions of doctrine; and the unlettered, who have not learning to consult the faculties and bodies of theological lore; and the unintellectual, who have not sufficient depth of mind to fathom their mysteries; and the wise, who have more sense than to meddle with their vain and profitless janglings, would all have been excluded for the sake of some few head-strong persecuting dogmatists. I, for one, feel truly most happy and contented in my mind, that upon whatever future destiny is made to turn, it is not upon a refined and finical creed. Had it been made to turn upon what are called frames of the inner man, or evanescent feelings of the mind, then I know not what a rabble of devotees and self-deluded enthusiasts would have rushed forward in the greatness of their self confidence. You would have had them, from the cell of the crazed with religious dreams, and from the gloomy chambers of the fanatic; you would have had persecuting prelates and infuriated inquisitors all pleading the holy convictions of their minds. Every dreamer, every visionary, every self-deluded prophet would have come, and every towering confident of God and pharisaical judge of his fellow. The whole catalogue of severe monas

tics, who lived on remote and retired communion, and built presumption upon the intoxications of self consequence, which their solitude and seclusion wrought within them-all would have come, claiming upon their deranged conceptions and fancied communions with God.

But as it is, the test reduces itself to that which alone can evince the reality of belief, measure the worth of service, and interpret the truth of feelings; namely, the trouble and the trial which we did undergo for him whom we profess to believe in, and to sacrifice to, and to feel for. It comes and makes inquiry whether for his sake we did encounter, when need was, the extremest rigours of life, neither felt ashamed of those who were called on to encounter them. If the fear of public reproach, or the loss of liberty, or exile, or straitened conditions, if any of these extremes, or any of the degrees which lead on to them, were willingly met when the cause was for Christ and his followers. "Those who deny me on earth, them will I deny before my Father in heaven; those who confess me on earth, will I confess before my Father which is in heaven.""

There is therefore no doubt that when these tests occur in the providence of God, they are touchstones for ascertaining true-hearted and faithful followers of the Cross of Christ. But it may be thought that there is a quaintness, if not a source of error and mistake, thus to reveal unto all ages and nations of men, a test of eternal judgment, which, it may be thought, is applicable only to those few times and places in which Christ or his members are suffering reproach and tribulation. But let us look a little deeper still, and we shall find that the age or country hath not been, in which these six perils of human life have not deterred, and their six opposite advantages bribed, the world from the cause of Christ.

For those six conditions, be they sad calamities of Providence, or inhuman inflictions of man upon his fellow man, are of all things the most terrible to be endured; and are avoided like the mouths of tigers and wolves, and other ravenous creatures. To escape from them is the delight, to fall under them the horror, of human nature. In every condition wherein we stand, be it high or be it low, there are constant temptations, beseeching us to rise a little higher and escape from some of the hardships with which we feel ourselves to be threatened or encumbered. Whenever we have a want or pain or any unquiet feeling, there is also a desire to escape from under its oppression; and when we

are escaped from under its oppression, there is a constant desire to ward it off. Though I be not hungry nor thirsty, yet the fear of want moves me to embark in a thousand schemes and occupations; or there are a thousand luxuries which I have ingrafted upon the stock of these natural appetites of hunger and thirst, which I could not without pain think of resigning, and which I strive by many means to preserve. Though I am not naked, but have raiment and accommodation to my person more than sufficient, yet I have ingrafted upon the natural stock of shelter from the cold, a thousand articles of personal decoration and vanity, to lose which would cost me dear, to supply the consumption of which to myself and family is a constant source of my anxiety and toil. And though I am not a stranger, yet how am I puzzled and perplexed, lest I should become strange to my present friends, to keep my place in society, and my credit in the great world of reputation; into how many shifts of hypocrisy driven, into how many artifices seduced, and into how many schemes am I hurried! So that, without further enumeration, as has been already said, the desire to shun these six miserables, and to gain the six opposite enjoyments, may be considered as the six great impulses which keep the moral world revolving round. Therefore, either at hand or at a distance, either through immediate feeling, or through far off, but oft-felt apprehension, these six conditions touch and instigate most part of our thought and activity.

With all which thought and activity to avoid the misadventures and calamities of life, the Saviour wishes himself and his cause to be interwoven; that we may take diligent order we in nothing do him wrong to effect our escape, or remove our distance from these the vultures of our present state; but that we be more contented to fall into their jaws than to forsake his fellowship, seeing the one perils only the body, the other both soul and body forever. His last judg ment, which is to determine the happiness or misery of eternal ages, he would bring into close contiguity and comparison with those every-day judgments of our own, which determine only the comfort or discomfort of time. The life to come, and the life that is, he would bring into actual mixture in our wishes and schemes, that we may steer a good course, not till death only, but for ever and ever. The Saviour doth not require of us, to rein in our desire to escape privations, but to be more content with the privation while he remains in his integrity within our conscience,

than to have deliverance at the expense of mangling and defacing the image of God within our breast; in short, to prefer the worse to the better for his sake, and rather to suf-, fer persecution with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.

And whosoever is a true servant of Christ, must needs suffer persecution, in some of these six circles of suffering, even in this enlightened age and tolerant land. Though I am no enemy to the gradations of human life, nor setter forth of levelling doctrines, I must, in justice to the present argument, say this much, that the world and the Saviour like each other not; and that in any rank of life, especially in the higher ranks, if a man make a determined stand for his Redeemer, he will have need of courage and resolution to keep his ground. Perhaps those of his own household may prove his foes. For certain, the fashions of his rank will turn against him and treat him roughly; they will tempt, they will threaten, they will revile him; and in the end give him up for a wild and crazed mortal. If it fareth so to godly people in this generation; what think you must be their case in foreign lands, and what must have been their case in barbarous times, for which, and for all ages no less than for us, these tests of Judgment to come are given? The inimical world changeth the weapons without relaxing the zeal of its warfare against the saints; and though it use not these six precise forms of jeopardy, it useth others akin to these, which human nature is alike loth to undergo; such as discountenance of friends, malice of enemies; exile from our natural confidence and rightful place in the family or social circle, often absolute seclusion from their love and esteem. All which degrees and forms of evil the Saviour includes in these six ultimate perditions of our good estate, as the lesser is included in the greater; and all these, however diverse in form to those mentioned in the text, are in substance the same, and will be taken in proof of our true allegiance to him and to his cause.

A little farther to expound the application of these six tests to the present times. I know that I speak to the experience of men, when I say that in your various avocations and spheres of life, you have a hard battle to wage with customs which bear against the truth as it is in Jesus; for into all departments of business, and into all the establishments and offices of life, there have crept habits which serve convenience at the expense of truth, and promote interest at the expense of honesty; so that in some departments of