sures, that the best Christian shall ever be the best subject, least needing the coercion. of human law, most ready to lend his aid in all emergencies, and willing to bear even more than his own share of the common burdens. * 5. Before I conclude, I would direct the attention of my younger friends to His obedience to His earthly parents. I would shew them how that, sprung from God himself, He was subject unto them, and exhort them to strive diligently to follow his example; to love, honour, and obey their father and mother, and thus begin in their earliest years to shew the blessed fruits of that gospel, which I pray to God may be their stay and support in their perilous journey through this life. 6. Lastly, observe all, how Jesus never yielded to temptation. Though "in all things tempted like as we are, yet not once did he do a deed, utter a word, or harbour a thought which could be construed into a violation of God's law, according to its strictest interpretation. Remember then, * If no young persons are present to whom it will apply, this section may be omitted in family reading. that temptation can never be made an excuse for crime; if we sin because we are greatly tempted, most assuredly we shall as greatly fall. Take then, in the name of God, I beseech you, take Jesus as your pattern and example. With him walk humbly before God and man; with him pour out your spirit in prayer; with him forgive all wrongs; with him comfort and sustain, support and bless ; with him be content with whatever may be allotted you; with him resist successfully the temptations of the powers of darkness: and then you may rest assured, that you have come to the hearing of the gospel with hearts meet for its reception, that you have received the gift of the enlightening, guiding, and sanctifying spirit of God, and are partakers with Christ, with him entitled to the privileges of the sons of God. - LECTURE V. VICTORY OVER TEMPTATION.-CHRIST IS VICTORIOUS. 1 COR. X. 13. God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; bnt will, with the temptation, also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it. EVIL, from the fatal period of its introduction by the sin of our first parents, up to the present hour, has invariably taken its rise from a prospect, arising in the mind of a thinking being, of some pleasure or advantage to be produced thereby. The Apostle expressed himself well, when he spake of "the pleasures of sin for a season."* * Passions inordinately excited by any external circumstance, towards such objects, at such times, or in such degrees, as that they cannot be gratified consistently with worldly pru Fleeting and evanescent they are, and if they were not, who could withstand their influence; but still they are pleasures, delightful to us, according to the present constitution of our natures, while sin is in its first stages, and afterwards habitual, and therefore apparently necessary. If this were not the case, we cannot conceive that man would sin, we cannot conceive that he would be the only creature refusing to fulfil the purposes for which he was created; or if his freedom of choice be alleged as a reason for his alone disobeying the commands of God, the violation of which constitutes sin, we cannot believe that any will, if unbiased by the expectation, whether true or false, of some immediate advantage, would prefer that, the inevitable consequences of which, death, everlasting death, are inscribed on tablets more enduring than adamant, and in characters that cannot dence; are temptations, dangerous, and too often successful temptations, to forego a greater temporal good for a less, i. e. to forego what is, upon the whole, our temporal interest, for the sake of a present gratification. This is a description of our state of trial in our temporal capacity. Substitute now the word future for temporal, and virtue for prudence, and it will be just as proper a description of our state of trial in our religious capacity."-Butler's Analogy, part i. cap. ii. be mistaken. No, if sin had nothing to promise, if she could not strew her path with delights, and build up her fairy palaces as meet and pleasant resting-places, whose doors are ever open to welcome the weary traveller to comfort and repose, none would willingly withdraw their steadfast gaze from the bright crown of glory, and the everlasting rest in heavenly mansions, which is the sure reward of the race of obedience. It is not now our object to discuss why the Almighty ruler of all things has so formed his rational creatures, as that they should readily recognize as pleasure, that which is most abhorrent to his own nature, but we may observe that, as things are now constituted, the purposes of their being could not be fulfilled without it. They find themselves placed here with a prospect of everlasting felicity which must be earned, a reward which must be struggled for, and for which, without this struggle, they themselves could not be properly prepared; * "The known end why we are placed in a state of so much affliction, hazard, and difficulty, is our improvement in virtue and piety as the requisite qualification for a future state of |