SERMON III. JUDGES XIX. F, 2, 3. And it came to pass in those days, when there was no king in Ifrael, that there was a certain Levite fojourning on the fide of mount Ephraim, who took unto him a concubine. A CONCUBINE!-but the text accounts for it, for in those days there was no king in Ifrael; and the Levite, you will fay, like every other man in it, did what was right in his own eyes,--and fo, you may add, did his concubine too-for fhe played the whore against him, and went away. -Then shame and grief go with her, and wherever the feeks a fhelter, may the hand of juftice fhut the door against her. Not fo; for fhe went into her father's house in Bethlehem-judah, and was with him four whole months -Bleffed interval for meditation upon the fickleness and vanity of this world and its pleasures! I fee the holy man upon his knees, with hands compreffed to his bofom, and with uplifted eyes, thanking heaven, that the object which had fo long shared his affections, was fled—— The text gives a different picture of his fituation; for he arofe and went after her to speak friendly to her, and to bring her back again, having his fervant with him, and a couple of affes; and he brought him into her father's house; and when the father of the damfel faw him, he rejoiced to meet him. A moft fentimental group! you will say: and fo it is, my good commentator, the world talks of every thing: give but the outlines of a ftory,--let spleen or prudery fnatch the pencil, and they will finish it with fo many hard strokes, and with fo dirty a colouring, that candour and courtesy will fit in torture as they look at it. Gentle and virtuous fpirits! ye who know not what it is to be rigid interpreters, but of your own failings,- -to you ! address myself, the unhired advocates for the conduct of the mifguided,-whence is it that the world is not more jealous of your office? How often must ye repeat it, "That fuch a one's doing fo or fo,"--is not fufficient evidence by itself to overthrow the accufed? That our actions stand furrounded with a thousand circumstances which do not prefent themselves at firft fight; that the first springs and motives which impelled the unfortunate, lie deeper still; and, that of the millions which every hour are arraigned, thousands of them may have erred from the head, and been actually outwitted into evil; and even when from the heart, that the difficulties and temptations under which they acted, the force of the paffions, -the suitableness of the object, and the many ftrungles of virtue before fhe fell,may be fo many appeals from juftice to the judgment feat of pity. Here then let us stop a moment, and give the ftory of the Levite and his Concubine a fecond hearing like all others much of it depends. upon the telling; and as the fcripture has left us no kind of comment upon it, it is a story on which the heart cannot be at a lofs for what to fay, or the imagination for what to fuppofe the danger is, humanity may fay too much. - |