tinguished from the other ten, that he should be thus honored? We know that at the period when he received this message he was distinguished by a pre-eminence, not in merit, but in guilt. But two days before he had denied his master, when his master was about to die for him. All his disciples forsook him and fled," but Peter went further, and added the guilt of falsehood and curses to the baseness of desertion. His sin was of the first magnitude, of a crimson dye. It had, too, this peculiar aggravation, that it brought a scandal on the church when the church seemed least able to bear it. The Shepherd was smitten; the sheep were scattered; and this was the season in which Peter dishonored his Lord and denied his connexion with his persecuted followers.

This then was the man to whom the risen Savior especially directed his angel to send his joyful message. Had the faithful John, who adhered to him in his sufferings and stood by his cross, been thus singled out, it might have excited no surprise; but for Peter, the treacherous Peter, to be thus honored, seems indeed mysterious. Who can fathom the depth of the Savior's love? Who can measure his unbounded grace even this grace which produced a suitable repentance, and filled him with such grief as required an extraordinary succor ?

Jay's Morning Exercises, vol. i. Matt. xxvi. 58: "Peter followed afar off," and ultimately denied Christ. This leads to the comment, the force of which is heightened by a consideration of the privileges which Peter had enjoyed, and by comparison, &c. "Peter followed afar off."

This was very unbelieving in him. He had seen his Lord's miracles, and knew what he could do. He knew that he had actually stipulated for their release in the garden, as the condition of his own surrender. He knew that he had assured them that after he should have risen from the dead he would appear to them, and employ them as his witnesses, which involved their preservation. What a difference between Peter and Paul!-Paul, who said, "None of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I may finish my course with joy;" and between Peter and Luther! Luther, who, when informed of his dangers, said, "If there were as many devils in Worms as there are tiles upon the houses, I would go." But" Peter followed him afar off."

This was very ungrateful. The Savior had done much for him. He had healed, by a miracle, his wife's mother. He had called him to the apostleship, the highest honor on earth. He had singularly distinguished him, with James and John, on several occasions. He had saved him by his grace, and enlightened him from above, and was now going to suffer and die for him.

A friend is born for adversity. Then, instead of keeping at a distance from us, we look for attendance and sympathy. Peter could have unequivocally testified in favor of suffering innocence, but he hangs off! And Patience itself complains, "I looked for some to take pity, and there was none; and for comforters, but I found none!"

All this, too, was in violation of his own profession and vows, that he was willing to follow him to prison and to death, that he would die with him rather than deny him; and all this had scarcely left his lips, and was uttered just after our Savior had so solemnly forewarned him. Yet "Peter followed him afar off." This led to something worse; and I wonder not at the sequel. His after-conduct in denying him thrice, and swearing with oaths and curses, was only the continuance and the increase of his present reluctance.

Walker on unholy ministers.

A holy and upright minister of Christ never fails to possess a secret dominion in the hearts of those who are of the most opposite character. Hate him they may, and probably will, but at the same time they are constrained to reverence and esteem him; even "Herod feared John and observed him, and did many things," because he knew that he was a just and holy man.

Whereas, on the other hand, when they see those who are clothed with the sacred character paying no regard at all to propriety of conduct, but mixing with the world and living at large as other men do-when they see them grasping at power or scrambling for riches, spreading their sails to every wind, and ready to embark in any cause that can recommend them to those who are able to gratify their ambition or covetousness-however they may avail themselves of their treason, yet surely they must despise such traitors in their hearts, and look upon them as the dregs and refuse of human kind.

1

But, alas! strange as it may seem, it seldom happens that these perfidious men become so thoroughly contemptible as to be altogether harmless. Even those who despise most, by a perverse and fatal subtlety make their example an occasion of hardening their own souls, fetching arguments thence to extenuate their guilt and to cherish their presumptuous hopes of impunity; for it has often been observed that no twig is so slender that a wicked man will not cling to it when he feels himself sinking under the rebukes of conscience and the overwhelming fears of an approaching vengeance.

Bishop Sherlock on bad passions.

Hence it is evident in what manner sensual lusts do war against the soul (1 Peter ii. 11), considered as the seat of reason and all the nobler faculties, in the due use and improvement of which the dignity of man consists. If we look into the ages past, or into the present, we shall want no instances of the pernicious effects of passion, assisted by a corrupt and depraved reason. The miseries which men bring upon themselves and others are derived from this fountain; and these miseries, which we provide for ourselves and others, will be found upon a fair computation to make nine parts out of ten of all the evil which the world feels and complains of. "Whence come wars and fightings among you?" says James, "come they not hence, even of your lusts, which war in your members?" He might have added to his catalogue many iniquities more, and repeated the same questions and answers. Whence proceed jealousies, suspicion, the violation of friendship, the discord and ruin of private families? Whence come murders, violence, and oppression? Are these the works of reason given us by God? No: they are the works of sensuality, and of reason made the slave of sensuality. Were all who are given to such works as these to be deprived of their reason, the world about them would be much happier, themselves more harmless, and, I think, not less honorable. So effectually do sinful lusts war against the soul that it would be better for the world, and not worse for the sensualist, if he had no soul at all.

Scripture examples of comment of exposure will be found in Job iv. 8-21; v. 1-14; xii. 17-25; xxi. 7-34. See also Job xxii. 4-10; xxiv. 3-25. Ps. lxxviii.

Walker, on Isa. liii. 3, mixes comment with expostulation. The subject is, despising Christ.

Consider then that to despise Christ and reject the Savior is the blackest ingratitude that can be imagined. . . . . . To render evil for good, hatred for love, is accounted monstrous among men; and the person who behaves in such a manner toward his fellow-creatures is justly condemned and abhorred by all; yet the most heinous and detestable instance of ingratitude among men is as nothing when compared with your ingratitude toward God. Did he, without any solicitation from you, and not only without but even contrary to your deserts, send his own Son into the world to save you? Did the Lord Jesus Christ, "the brightness of the Father's glory and the express image of his person," assume your nature, become a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, lead a poor, afflicted, persecuted life, and at last die a shameful, painful, and accursed death, to satisfy offended justice and to render your happiness consistent with the honor of the divine government? And is this your requital?

I beseech you, my brethren, to bestow some attention to this; and, if your hearts have any softness at all, such unparalleled baseness can not fail to make the deepest impression upon them. Does this astonishing, this undeserved goodness merit no regard? Does God's unspeakable gift to man deserve no return of gratitude and praise? Shall the blood of Christ be shed in vain-nay, trampled under your feet as an unholy thing? Will you crucify the Son of God afresh, and say, by your neglect of his great salvation, "Away with him! away with him!"" we have loved strangers, and after them we will go?" Surely you can not, you will not, pretend to justify such conduct; there is something in it so disingenuous and perverse, so shocking and unnatural, that I am persuaded when you attend to it you must loathe and abhor yourselves on account of it.

But this is not the whole of your guilt; your ingratitude is heightened by the most insolent contempt both of the wisdom and goodness of God. You charge God with folly when you reject the terms of the gospel covenant; for your behavior plainly implies one of the following accusations: That this method of salvation is unnecessary, and that God from all eternity has employed his counsels about a needless af

fair, or else that it is ineffectual, and that the person whom God has chosen to execute his designs is not worthy to be depended upon, or that the terms proposed are so rigorous and severe that a wise man would rather choose to perish than submit to them. Thus dost thou arraign thy God, O sinner! Dost thou hope to prevail in the day when God shall plead with thee?

Nay, further, by despising and rejecting Christ you openly proclaim war against the Most High and bid him defiance. "He has set his king upon his holy hill of Zion, and put all things under his feet;" he has ordained by an irreversible decree that "all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father." He has published to the world that there is no other name given among men by which they can be saved than the name of Jesus, that this glorious Mediator is constituted the final judge of mankind, and that those who do not bow to the sceptre of his grace shall be dashed to pieces with his rod of iron in that day when he shall be revealed from heaven in flaming fire, to take vengeance upon those who know not God and obey not this gospel which we now preach to you; and yet, in the face of all these declarations, you proudly say by your conduct, “We will not have this man to reign over us; we neither fear his power nor court his grace, but are determined to stand on our own defence."

Such, my brethren, is the malignity of your sin: it includes the blackest ingratitude, heightened by the most malignant contempt; nay, an open defiance of the omnipotent God, rejecting his offered mercy and daring him to execute all the rigors of his justice. I do not mean that you are at present conscious of this complicated impiety; I rather suppose that you are startled when you hear it mentioned, and are ready to reply, as Hazael did to Elisha, "Is thy servant a dog, that he should do these things?" But be assured all I have now said shall be made good against you at last, if you continue to despise and reject the Savior; and the greatest mercy that can befall you, in the meantime, is to get those eyes opened which Satan has so long closed, that you may see and abhor your guilt in this matter. Oh! be exhorted, then, deliberately to weigh the representation I have given you, if you go out of this world with such a dreadful load of guilt as I have described!

Here is a specimen of the way of men-of God dealing with sinners. Mr. W. attacks the strongholds of nature's depravity; and, if such powerful comment take not effect, sad indeed must be the state into which a man falls when he is thus past feeling. Mr. Walker, in the concluding part of his discourse, assumes the most inviting forms of address, endeavors to touch the heart, and incite to feelings of the most winning character. A comment of caution to ministers on 1 Cor. iv. 30; also suited to 1 Cor. ix. 27, Dr. Chalmers's text.

A preacher may have his mind familiarized to every article of faith, so as to demonstrate the channel of influence by which it is brought down from heaven upon the hearts of believers-to cast an eye of intelligence on the whole system of Christian doctrine-to lay bare those ligaments of connexion by which a true faith in the mind is ever sure to bring a new spirit and a new practice along with it-and to hold up the light both of scripture and experience over the whole process of man's regeneration. It is possible for him to do all this, and yet have no part in that regeneration-to declare with ability and effect the gospel to others, and yet himself be a castaway-to unravel the whole of that spiritual mechanism by which a sinner is transformed into a saint, while he does not exemplify that mechanism upon his own person-to explain what must be done and what must be undergone in the process of becoming one of the children of the kingdom, while he himself remains one of the children of the world. To him the kingdom of God has come in word, and it has come in the letter, and it has come in natural discernment; but it has not come in power. He may have profoundly studied the whole doctrine of the kingdom, and have conceived the various ideas of which it is composed, and have embodied them in word, and have poured them forth in utterance, and yet be as little spiritualized by these manifold operations as the air is spiritualized by its being the avenue of the sound of his voice to the ears of his listening auditory. The living man may, with all the force of his native intelligence, be a mere vehicle of transmission. The Holy Ghost may leave the message to take its own way through his mind, and may refuse the accession of his influence till it makes its escape from the lips of the preacher, and may trust for its conveyance to those aerial undulations by which the report is carried forward to an assembled multitude, and may only, after the entrance of hear

ing has been effected for the terms of the message-may only, after the unaided powers of moral and physical nature have brought the matter thus far-may then, and not till then, add his own influence to the truths of the message, and send them with this impregnation from the ear to the conscience of any whom he listeth. And thus, from the workings of a cold and desolate bosom in the human expounder, may there proceed a voice which, in its way to some of those who are assembled around him, shall turn out to be a voice of urgency and power. He may be the instrument of blessings to others which have never come with kindly and effective influence upon his own heart. He may inspire an energy which he does not feel, and pour a comfort into the wounded spirit the taste of which and the enjoyment of which are not permitted to his own. And nothing can serve more effectually than this experimental fact to humble him, and to demonstrate the existence of a power which can not be wielded by all the energies of nature-a power often refused to eloquence, often refused to the might and glory of human wisdom-often refused to the most strenuous exertions of human might and human talent, and generally met with in richest abundance among the ministrations of the men of simplicity and prayer.

You will have perceived from the foregoing examples, that comment, whether laudatory or reprehensive, unites with description, narration, amplification, expostulation, &c. To make this matter plainer, however, I shall add a few examples classed according to the character of the materials on which the comment is engrafted, and the manner in which it is introduced, only premising that the former examples might have been similarly classified, had it not been my object to keep the two kinds of comment distinct, and that these are merely specimens. A complete list would embrace almost every kind of writing.

ARGUMENTATIVE COMMENT.

Jay on Acts iii. 9, 10. The reality of this miracle is shown by brief but forcible arguments, and the effect is greatly enhanced by the several comments that are interspersed.

The cripple's walking was a proof of the reality and perfection of the cure. His praising God was the proper improvement of it. What an attestation was here to the divine mission of the apostles, and so to the truth of Christianity itself! There was nothing like artifice or collusion in this miracle. The patient resided not in a remote place, but in Jerusalem, that is, in the midst of the enemies of Christ. He had been lame from his mother's womb, and was now upward of forty years old. He was well known. He was a beggar. Multitudes had seen him; many had relieved him; and many had handled him, for he was carried daily to the place of begging. And this was not an obscure corner, but the entrance into the temple. And the thing was not done in the night; but at nine o'clock in the morning, when there was a concourse of people. Put all this together; and then ask whether anything could have been fairer. Could anything have been more open to detection had there been any imposture? Compare such an achievement with the prodigies of heathenism and the miracles of the Romish church. What then shall we think of the credulity of unbelievers? What is the faith of a Christian to their belief? Christians believe difficulties, because they are abundantly confirmed; but they swallow improbabilities and impossibilities. Their rejection of the gospel can not arise from an intellectual but a moral cause. They do not want evidence, but disposition; they receive not the love of the truth that they might be saved.

Walker furnishes a specimen of familiar argument united with strong comment and solemn appeal, in his discourse on Ps. xix. 13, first clause. It is in vain to say, O sinner! that the sins of profane swearing, perjury, theft, uncleanness, and drunkenness, are not presumptuous sins. It is in vain for you to plead that you do not directly intend thus much; I verily believe you think so; for, proud and stubborn as you are, I am confident that you dare not utter such blasphemies before God, nor even avow them to your own heart. But does it follow thence that you are not chargeable with them? The fallacy of this reasoning can easily be detected. Tell me, do you intend your own damnation? I need not wait for an an swer; I am sure you do not. Pray, then, what meaning have you at all? You wil

fully transgress the laws of God, but you do not intend to be punished for it; on the contrary, you shudder at the prospect of suffering, and would certainly oppose it with all your might. This is one side. On the other hand, you say that you have no direct intention to injure or insult the majesty of God; you mean no prejudice to his authority, nor to any of his perfections, his wisdom, holiness, justice, or almighty power. Can anybody reconcile these two opposites? You are unwilling to be miserable, and yet you are willing that God should possess those tremendous attributes by the exercise of which you must be made miserable! This is a flat contradiction. The case is plain, whether you perceive it or not; you would certainly dethrone God if you could; you would reverse his laws or disarm his power that you might follow your inclinations without fear or control. And this is the disposition of every presumptuous sinner, though perhaps his heart may be so hard and unfeeling as not to perceive it.

Dr. Chalmers on Mark ii. 27. The sanctity of the sabbath.

The first recommendation of the sabbath is the place which it occupies in the decalogue. There was much of Jewish observancy swept away with the ruin of the national institutions. There was much designed for a temporary purpose, and which fell into disuse among the worshippers of God after that purpose was accomplished. A Christian of the present day looks upon many of the most solemn services of Judaism in no other light than as fragments of a perishable ritual; nor does he ever think that, upon himself, they have any weight of personal obligation; but this does not hold true of all the duties and all the services of Judaism. There is a broad line of distinction between that part of it which is now broken up and that part of it which still retains all the authority of a perpetual and immutable law. Point out to us a single religious observance of the Hebrews that is now done away, and we are able to say of it, and of all others which have experienced a similar termination, that they every one of them live without the compass of the ten commandments. They have no place whatever in that great record of duty which was graven on the tables of stone, and placed within the Holy of Holies under the mercy-seat. Then how does the law of the sabbath stand as to this particular? does it lie within or without a limit so tangible, and forming so distinct and so noticeable a line of demarcation? We see it standing within this record, of which all the other duties are of such general and such imperishable obligation. We meet with it in the interior of that hallowed ground of which every other part is so sacred and so inviolable. We see it occupying its own conspicuous place in that registry of duties all of which have the substance and the irrevocable permanency of moral principle. On reading over the other articles of this memorable code we see all of them stamped with such enduring characters of obligation as no time can wear away, and the law of the sabbath taking its station in the midst of them, and enshrined on each side of it among the immutabilities of truth, and justice, and piety. It is true that much of Judaism has now fallen into desuetude, and that many of its dearest and most distinguished solemnities are now regarded in no other light than as the obsolete and repealed observances of an antiquated ritual; but it is worthy of being observed well that the whole of this work of demolition took place without the line of demarcation; we see no attempt whatever to violate the sanctity of the ground which this line encloses. We nowhere see any express or recorded incursion upon any one of the observances of the decalogue. We perceive an apostle in the New Testament making his allusion to the fifth of those observances, and calling it," the first commandment with promise;" and, by the very notice he bestows on the arrangement of the duties, we are given to understand that no attempt had been made to disturb their order or to depose any one of them from the place which had been assigned to it. We should count it an experiment of the most daring audacity, without the intimation of any act of repeal passed in the high legislation of heaven, to fly in the face of that sabbath law which stands enrolled among the items of so notable and so illustrious a document, and nothing short of a formal and absolute recalment can ever tempt us to think that the new dispensation of the gospel has created so much as one vacancy in that register of duties which leave upon the aspect of its whole history the impress of a revealed demand that is unalienable and everlasting. We can not give up one article in that series of enactments which in every age of the Christian world has been revealed as a code, not of ceremonial, but of moral law. We can not consent, but on the ground of some resistless and overbearing argument, to the mutilation of the integrity of this venerable record. We see throughout the whole line of Jewish history that it stood separate and alone, and that, free from all the marks of national or local peculiarity, it bore upon it none of the frailty of the other institutions, but has been preserved and