for these women that they were thus taught their inattention and unbelief whilst it was not too late for repentance and confession. They might have been left to die in their forgetfulness; for there is nothing in their history to show that the strength of memory and the force of circumstances would have brought Christ's words to their remembrance; on the contrary, the empty sepulchre, which you would have thought most likely to recall the words, had nothing but a bewildering effect; for you read, "they found the stone rolled away from the sepulchre, and they entered in, and found not the body of the Lord Jesus; and it came to pass, as they were much perplexed thereabout, behold, two men stood by them in shining garments." The circumstances were precisely those which might have been expected to suggest the long-neglected sayings, and thus cause the truth to flash upon the mind: yet you see, that had there not been the angelic interference, the women would have had no explanation to give of the disappearance of the body of their Lord. And they might have been left without this interference; suffered to die with Christ's words as witnesses against them, witnesses which would have proved them inexcusable in not knowing that Messiah was to be crucified for sin, but not suffered to see corruption in the grave.

word, there will not always occur this angelic recalling of it to the mind? not, at least, whilst there is yet time for the laying it to heart? We dare not doubt this. And if the remembered words fall reproachfully on the ear, when we may yet make use of them for good, what, alas! shall it be if the words be then only recalled, when there shall no longer be "place for repentance?" Our blessed Savior Himself, speaking of what shall be the process of judgment at the last dreadful day, makes his word the great accuser of all such as reject him. "He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day." And when with this you connect the part which angels are to take in the awful assize on the whole race of man; for we read that "the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just:" that "the Son of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and shall cast them into a furnace of fire ;"-O terrible thought, that the very beings who now watch over us as friends, good angels, not evil, shall bind up the offending, and cast them into Hell!-when, we say, you connect what Christ says of his word, with what He elsewhere says of angels; But God dealt more graciously with the word, the condemning thing at the these women than their inattention, or judgment, the angels, the ministers of want of faith, had deserved; he caused vengeance; you can hardly question the words to be brought to their re- that the office, which celestial beings membrance, whilst they might yet in- performed towards the women at the spire confidence, though they could resurrection of Christ, is one which hardly fail also to excite bitter contri- they will yet perform towards multition. It is often thus with ourselves; tudes, when the earth and the sea shall the appropriate text is made to recur have given up their dead. Is it the to the mind; but whilst we gather sensualist who is being carried away infrom it an abundance of comfort, we to outer darkness? and wherefore is he are forced to reproach ourselves for speechless? The attendant angel hath having been cast down, or terrified, said, "Remember how he spake unto when God had put such truths upon you when he was yet with you upon record as should have left no place earth; Neither fornicators, nor adulfor anxiety or doubt. If Christ be wa- terers, nor effeminate, nor drunkards, kened from his sleep, through our ter- shall inherit the kingdom of God." It ror at the storm, he may not only re- is the word which judges him, and it buke the winds and the waves, but is the angel which binds him. Is it the chide us at the same time as men of covetous on whom has been passed a little faith." sentence against which he has nothing to urge? The angel hath said, "Remember how he spake unto you, Co

May it not, however, be, that, where there has been wilful inattention to the

SERMON III.

THE BURNING OF THE MAGICAL BOOKS.

“Many of them also which used curious arts, brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.”—Acts, 19: 19.

mising. In no place does there seem to have been so great a display of supernatural energy; as though men, much addicted to witchcraft, to the attempting unlawful intercourse with potent but invisible beings, were likely to be most wrought upon by evidence of intimate connection with spiritual agents. You read that "God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs, or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them." It must have been very striking to the Ephesian magicians, to find that St. Paul could thus apparently communicate a sort of magical virtue to articles of dress: they were perhaps more likely than men who had never meddled with occult arts, to feel the force of such an evidence of superhuman might. In short, the Ephesians, because accustomed to produce strange results by some species or another of witchcraft, would naturally ascribe miracles to a similar agency; hence, the miracles, which were to serve as their credentials of christianity, required to be more than commonly potent, such as were not in any degree imitable, whether through the dexterity of the juggler, or the incantations of the sorcerer. And it seems to us one of those instances, not the less remarkable because easily overlooked, of the carefulness with which God adapts means to an end, that, in a city in which, of all others, false miracles were likely to abound, and improper arts made the mind familiar with strange phenomena, the powers granted to the preachers of christianity were of extraordinary extent, sufficing to place an apostle at an immeasurable distance from the most consummate magician.

It is, moreover, evident that the hold gained on the Ephesians was gained by and through the demonstration of the superiority of St. Paul's power to that possessed by any dealer in unlawful arts. In the verses which immediately precede our text, you have the account of a singular occurrence, which appears to have had much to do with the obtaining for christianity a firm footing in Ephesus. You read that certain Jews, who travelled the country as exorcists, persons, that is, who

professed to cast out the evil spirits which had then frequent possession of men's bodies, took upon them to employ the name of the Lord Jesus in their endeavors to eject demons, having observed with what success it was used by St. Paul. Amongst others who made the wicked and insolent attempt, for such it surely was, to endeavor to weave a spell from a name which they openly blasphemed, were the "seven sons of one Sceva, a Jew." As though they thought that numbers would give force to the adjuration, these seven appear to have gone together to a man demoniacally possessed, and to have addressed the foul spirit in the name of Jesus Christ. The spirit, however, answered, "Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are ye?" Thus the demon professed himself ready to submit to Jesus, or Paul, his accredited. messenger; but he knew of no right which these exorcists had to dispossess him by the name whose potency he acknowledged. He was not, however, content with thus refusing to be exorcised: he took a signal revenge, causing the man, in whom he dwelt, to put forth supernatural strength, so that he leaped upon the seven men, and overcame them, and forced them to flee "out of the house naked and wounded."

This was quickly noised abroad, and produced, we are told, great effects among both the Jews and Greeks who were dwelling at Ephesus; "and fear fell on them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus was magnified." To men accustomed to make use of charms and incantations, the evidence thus given of the sacredness of Christ's name, and of the peril of employing it to any but those who believed in his mission, would naturally be very convincing: it was just the sort of evidence which their habits made them most capable of appreciating, and by which therefore they were most likely to be overcome. Accordingly, it seems at once to have taught numbers the necessity of submitting to Christ, and renouncing those arts of magic and sorcery, through which they had perhaps endeavored to hold intercourse with spirits. They acted with great promptness on the conviction: they laid open all the mysteries of their witchcraft, they "came,

Now there are certain points of view, under which if this conduct of the Ephesians be surveyed, it will appear singularly deserving of being both admired and imitated. We believe of this incident of the burning of the magical books, as of the rest of scriptural history, that it has been "written for our admonition," and ought not to be pass-er and skill. And what we have first to ed over with a mere cursory notice. We shall accordingly proceed to the endeavoring to extract from it such lessons as there shall seem ground for supposing it intended to furnish.

them how to put deceits on others and himself. Yea, and we have our books upon magic. What are half the volumes with which the land is deluged, but volumes which can teach nothing but how to serve the devil better? How numerous the works of an infidel tendency! How yet more numerous those of an immoral! What a shoal of poems and tales, which, though not justly falling under either of these descriptions, can but emasculate the mind of the reader, filling it with fancies and follies, and unfitting it for high thought and solemn investigation. What treatises on the acquisition of wealth, as though money were the one thing needful; what histories of the ambitious and daring, as though human honor deserved our chief aspirations; what pictures of pleasure, as though earthly gratifications could satisfy our longings.

perceptibly passed on my hopes, de- | there is a broader sense in which every sires, and fears. Regenerated in bap- one of us by nature holds intercourse tism, I may indeed have been "daily with fallen angels, and learns from renewed," and never, therefore, have needed conversion. But if I have ever lived a worldly life, and then hearkened to the dictates of religion, the transition may have been silently and imperceptibly effected, but must be demonstrable from strong contrasts between what I am and what I once was. We have always therefore to require of men, who, once worldly, now think themselves converted, that they rest content with no evidence but that of a great moral change; not satisfied, because there may have been something of external reform, but searching for proof of such alteration in character, that they hate what they loved, and love what they hated. Such a proof the Ephesians gave, when they burnt their costly treatises on magic. They had been specially addicted to magic by and through magic they had specially offended God, and periled their souls: so soon, therefore, as Christianity had won its way to their hearts, it was against magic that they showed a holy indignation; it was magic which they proved themselves resolved to abandon. The moral change was thus satisfactorily evidenced; the thing which had been most delighted in was the thing most abhorred; and no proof could be stronger, that the men were new creatures in Christ.

We ask the like proof from those of you who suppose themselves "renewed in the spirit of their mind." Have you burnt your books on magic? We do not accuse you of having, like the Ephesians, practised the arts of the sorcerer: ye have not woven spells, nor muttered incantations. Ye have had nothing to do with the mysteries of enchantment, or with the foul rites of necromancy, dazzling the living or disturbing the dead. But, nevertheless, ye have been in communion with "the god of this world," "the prince of the power of the air:" ye have submitted to his illusions, and surrendered yourselves to his service. If, in some peculiar sense, the sorcerer or the magician give himself up to the devil, and make himself his instrument,

* Collect for Christmas-day.

And if we have our books upon magic, have we not also the scenes and places where fallen spirits may be declared the presiding deities?-the crowded mart, where mammon is almost literally worshipped; the gorgeous theatre, where the very air is that of voluptuousness; the more secret haunts of licentiousness; the mirthful gatherings, where the great object is to forget God; the philosophical, where the chief endeavor is to extol man. Indeed it must not be said that there is nothing of witchcraft going on around us. The question of the Apostle to the Galatians has lost none of its force: "Who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth?" Nay, not only may every unconverted man be declared, in some great sense, under the influence of sorcery: he may be said to practise sorcery; for he is instrumental, whether by his precept or his example, to the seducing others into sin, and confirming their attachment to the world.

We may, then, almost literally bring him, if he think himself converted, to the test furnished by the conflagration of which we read in our text. We ask him whether he feels, and manifests, a righteous indignation against those practices and pursuits which at one