TO CHARLES CHRISTIAN BUNSEN,

LATE MINISTER OF THE KING OF PRUSSIA,

AT THE COURT OF ROME.

MY DEAR AND HONOURED FRIEND,

I cannot deny myself the pleasure of dedicating this sermon to you, which the wish you have repeatedly exprest to see it in print has led me to insert in this volume. In my own eyes its chief value is, that it formed a new link in our friendship. From the very first indeed you had received me with that frank and gracious cordiality, which I have so frequently found in your countrymen: from the very first we both felt that we were bound together by our common admiration and love for Niebuhr. But this sermon, you said at the time, convinced you that there was a still more intimate principle of union between us; and therefore I venture to trust that you will excuse my connecting your name with an offering so unworthy of you. Often as my thoughts recur to Rome, and to the overflowing delight I enjoyed there, from so many rich sources, from scenes of the deepest historical and sacred interest, and from the exquisite beauties of art and of nature, they call up the image of him, whose wisdom and kindness almost doubled that delight, and whose friendship is the most precious part of the treasure I brought away. Many a time too do I go back to that holy sanctuary,

where, as you felt a righteous exultation in declaring, you have been allowed to set up the pure spiritual worship of God on the site of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.

May God be ever with you, and prosper your endeavours to serve Him! and may He enable you to accomplish some portion at least of what you desire for the good of His Church in your own country!

Your ever grateful and affectionate Servant,

J. C. HARE.

Matthew xi. 7.

What went ye out into the wilderness to see?

THE Sound of these words must be familiar to you all; and few can have forgotten the occasion on which they were uttered. At an early period in our Lord's ministry, and, as appears both from the context in St Matthew, and from the corresponding passage in the seventh chapter of St Luke, soon after the institution of the twelve apostles, John the Baptist, who was then in prison, having been told of the wonderful works that Jesus was performing, sent two of his disciples, with a charge to ask the Worker of those miracles, Art Thou He that should come? or do we look for another? Not that the messenger who was sent before the face of the Lord, was ignorant of Him for whom he came to prepare the way. Not that the Morningstar was ignorant of the Sun, of whose rising it was the herald and the harbinger, and in the fulness of whose light it longed to fade away and to be swallowed up. On the contrary the Baptist himself had already declared publicly, that Jesus was the Messiah, when he bare record that he had seen the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and abiding upon Jesus, and that he was thus certified by divine inspiration that Jesus was the Son of God, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world. His object therefore in sending this message would seem to have been to obtain an assurance that the new teacher, who had arisen in Israel, and the rumour of whose marvellous works and doctrine had penetrated through the walls of his prison, was the same person whom at His baptism

he had recognized and acknowledged to be the Christ, but who at that time had been pleased to fulfill all righteousness by appearing in the character of an inferior, and declining for a season to assume His own higher, more spiritual authority.

For the words of the message,-Art Thou He that should come? or do we look for another? — are hardly compatible with the interpretation proposed by certain commentators on the passage, that John's design was not to satisfy himself, his conviction having, as they conceive, already attained to the highest degree of certainty, — but to implant the same conviction in his disciples, by sending them to hear the words, and to see the works, which proved Jesus to be the promist Messiah. And why should he have shrunk from making the same open declaration, which he had previously made, when his disciples told him, that He who had been with him beyond Jordan, and to whom he had borne witness, was baptizing? Such an indirect line of proceeding, familiar and dear as it is to human policy, and to the wisdom of this world, ever fond of walking in the paths of that prompter, whose persuasions first led to the plucking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, is altogether alien from the kingdom of heaven, and wholly at variance with the truthspeaking, straightforward, zealous character of the Baptist. I do not mean, that it is never allowable to speak on any subject indirectly. Our Saviour's answer on this very occasion, His conduct on several others, which a moment's consideration will recall to your minds, proves that it is not only allowable, but may often be commendable, and even a matter of duty. We may be in situations where modesty and a seemly selfrespect forbid our putting forward the naked

truth prominently. At other times a like obligation may be imposed on us by prudence, or, to speak more correctly, by charity for all prudence, which is anything else than the servant and agent of charity, providing for the careful execution of its dictates, according to its twofold office, of doing whatever seems to be for the good of others, and of refraining from whatever will harm them, unless for the sake of some higher good, is at best of an ambiguous nature, and treads on such slippery ground, that it will scarcely keep from sliding into sin. If this restriction be duly attended to, if we remember that prudence is a weapon, which we are bound, whenever occasion arises, to wield in defense of others, but which Christianity forbids our unsheathing, save in a case of extreme necessity, for ourselves, we shall easily see that, though it may not unfrequently be a duty to worship Truth in secret, no contingency can ever render it a duty to deny or violate her worship. It may now and then be right to use such words as shall not thrust the truth too obtrusively forward: but it can never be right to use words, the plain, obvious, direct meaning of which, as they are sure to be understood by our hearers, is false. Had St John felt thoroughly confident in his own mind that the teacher to whom he sent his disciples, was the same Jesus, at whose baptism he had seen the heavens open, and the Spirit of God descending, and had heard the declaration of the Almighty Father, being thus admitted at once into the immediate presence of the Triune Godhead, surely he would not have commissioned his disciples to address Him in words implying that he had either forgotten or distrusted the testimony of the Heavenly Witnesses (BE). When these disciples came to Jesus, and put the question with which their master had charged them, our Lord,