instead of raising their practice to their principles, to lower their principles to their practice. If there be any here present, in this congregation, to whom these remarks are applicable; and perchance there may be some, let them ponder deeply and seriously on this most awful sentence, a sentence rendered ten thousand fold more awful as coming from the mouth of Him who was love itself: Whosoever shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. And if Christ deny us, if he be ashamed of us, if he say unto us, Depart from me, for I know ye not, there is none other name under heaven whereby we can be saved beside him there is no Saviour; and what will await us but eternal weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth?

Most heartily, then, do I pray, my brethren, whosoever you be, or whatever may be your destiny; whether you shall be called upon to take your hereditary station among the noble and the great, or whether you shall have precedence amid the ranks of the learned; whether you are to have your part in the disputations of the senate or the bar; or whether you are to probe the mysteries of science; whether you are

to fill the most important of all offices, that of the student in divinity, elucidating the Scriptures and vindicating the ways of God to man; or whether yours shall be the happy lot of a parish priest, both in the privacy of domestic enjoyment and the busier scenes of active life,most heartily do I pray that the spirit of our God may write on the fleshly tablets of your hearts, there to be worn as a spiritual phylactery, this solemn injunction of the inspired Apostle, Whether we eat, or whether we drink, or whatsoever we do, do all to the glory of God. $

SERMON II.

MATTHEW X. 34, 35, 36.

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth. I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his Father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes shall be they of his own household.

It is well known that the fact of which we have now read the prediction has often afforded to the infidel a subject for cavil, while, to the advocate of revelation it has not unfrequently been a source of perplexity. And a source of perplexity it must continue to be, so long as the Christian concedes what the infidel quietly assumes, that the immediate end of all religion is the promotion of peace upon earth. If the pro

motion of peace upon earth be the immediate end of all religion, it is quite in vain to contend, that of all religions Christianity is the best. The opponent has only to refer to the revolutions occasioned in society by the first preaching of the Gospel, to the subsequent contentions of orthodox and heretic, to the crusades, to the consequences of the Reformation, when strife, yet unappeased, was excited not only between the Papist and the Protestant, but between those whose object was merely to bring back to its primitive purity the church of their fathers, and those who established new sects, and, I might almost say, a new religion; he has only to produce these facts, and, referring to the bitter controversies still raging around us, to demand where in the history of paganism a parallel can be found. I know that, to meet the objection, we are sometimes referred to the cases of Socrates and Aristotle; but of these instances the very most that can be made is, that there are on record two solitary exceptions to the general rule of universal toleration. And as to Ombos and Tentyra', it is mere special pleading to quote the poetical exaggerations of Juvenal, when we can be met by the express asser

tions of the Emperor Julian, who, in appealing to the Egyptians in favour of paganism, states it as a fact universally admitted, that an inter-community of gods was as prevalent among them as among the other nations 2. Equally useless is it to refer, as some commentators do, to the severities practised by the heathens against the primo-primitive Christians. For here the Christians were the assailants, and the heathens only acted in self-defence. The Christians were persecuted, not because they declared that Jesus was the Son of God, but because they made war upon all other religions; because they persuaded and turned away much people, saying, they be no gods which be made with hands; because they denounced every thing that exalted itself, and was called a god, save Jehovah; because their first commandment was, "Thou shalt have none other gods but me;" because, as Quintilian expressly says, theirs was regarded as a superstition which was the bane of all other religions. Thus St. Polycarp was condemned, because, said the people, he is a destroyer of our gods, who teacheth all men not to sacrifice or to worship them. Thus, too, it was as an

2

See the whole subject

Ap. S. Cyril. cont. Julian. lib. v. discussed, Divine Legation, book ii. sect. 6.