dispositions necessary to become his disciples, and to qualify them for an immortal existence which he came to reveal; adapted at the same time to the particular case, and calculated to obviate and remove the prejudices of his hearers, who expected worldly greatness and prosperity under their Messiah. For his discourses were not sublime speculations concerning the deity, or curious detached moral essays, but what immediately applied to the condition and hearts of those about him.

He first, then, apprizes them of the necessity and happiness of a mind sitting loose to the things of this world, and satisfied with little-"Happy are the poor in spirit, for they shall see God!" not dissipated by its gay and pleasurable scenes, but serious and thoughtful, becoming the uncertainty and importance of the present state. He recommended meekness and gentleness to men who were prone to be contentious and impetuous, yet not to be without an ardent zeal and thirst after virtue and holiness.

They were to be merciful, as they themselves expected mercy at the hands of God; and, if they looked hereafter to enjoy his favourable

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vourable countenance and presence, to keep pure from all vicious irregular desires and арpetites.

They were never to have recourse to methods of violence, either in propagating his religion, or in freeing themselves from the dangers and sufferings it might bring upon them, but to look for their justification and reward in a future world; being strictly careful all along of their own private demeanour and good example; for that all, in their respective places and situations, were to be the salt of the earth, and lights of a dark and ignorant world.

In vindicating the moral law of God, dictated to Moses, from their false comments and abuses of it, and in exhibiting the still higher demands he made from his followers, he delivers the most sublime rules of social virtue and of the purest morality.

He cautions his hearers, and his true disciples in all times, against seeking the praise of men in their virtuous and religious actions, as what would tarnish all their merit, and exclude them from the divine approbation. And he teaches them in what form to pray acceptably.

to

to God; mentioning the heavenly Father as the only object of prayer and worship, and thereby excluding himself and all other persons. Indeed, one wonders how any, with their Bibles in their hands, can ever think that there is any person but one, God the Father of all, to whom their prayers are to be made.

As the great snare of mankind, and bar to their proficiency in virtue and the needful qualifications for heaven, would arise then, and at all times, from an immoderate love of the world, he is most earnest with them to avoid it; and endeavours, by a variety of lively and convincing arguments, to free them from all solicitude for the morrow, and lead them to an entire cheerful reliance on divine Providence, at all times and under all events.

He enjoins them to abstain from censuring and condemning others, and to be candid in making allowance for their feelings, but severe towards themselves.

Drawing towards the end of his discourse, he inculcates upon them, that all pretences to the being his disciples, and belonging to him, would fail them at the great day of account, without solid virtue, and doing the will of the heavenly

heavenly Father, as he had taught it them. Nay, should they be favoured with privileges above others, and divine powers of preaching and propagating the truth with effect throughout the world; though they might by these contribute to save others, they would be lost themselves if they lived in any known iniquity, and did not suitably improve their superior advantages.

He then confirms this weighty sentiment, and finishes the whole with the beautiful and apt comparison of the text; which would leave the stronger impression on the minds of the multitudes around him, if,-as his manner was, and, as hath been conjectured, having before him in sight houses standing securely on high ground, and others in ruins in the valleys on sandy foundations, he pointed out the former to them, and bid them attend and consider, that he that not only heard and received, but retained and lived according to, his heavenly instructions, was the wise man who builds his house upon a rock, which nothing can shake. And, in the wide ravage and

ruin of other houses before them in ill-chosen situations, he pointed out to them the fatal presumption

sumption and folly of pretending to be his disciples, and not regulating their lives by his precepts and directions.

It was necessary to give you this abridged account of our Lord's divine sayings in this admirable discourse, as he refers us to them in the concluding part of it, where he lays such infinite stress on not merely knowing but doing them; on which I propose to lay before you a few out of many useful reflections which it suggests to us. And

I.

In agreement with what he here makes to be of such infinite consequence, every thing in his religion tends and leads to holy and virtuous practice.

When in his lifetime he went about preaching every where that men should repent, who were desirous of becoming his disciples; it was enjoining them to amend and reform their lives, or they could not belong to him. When his apostles after him called the nations to repentance, i. e. to turn from dead works to serve the living God, of whom they had hitherto been ignorant; it was because God had appointed a day in which he would judge the world