dead, shall bear respecting you at the last day. Judge then yourselves, brethren, that ye be not judged of the Lord. Judge whether there be not some price for which ye have already sold your Saviour, and for which ye are betraying him to an ungodly world. I must tell you, that if there be any thing, even life itself, which ye are not ready to part with for his sake, that is the price for which ye have sold him ; and that, though ye may continue to deceive both yourselves and others, the hour is coming when your true character will be declared, and your proper doom awarded to youz. May God, in his infinite mercy, impress this awful subject on all your minds, and lead every one of you to look for this unhappy character, (supposing there to be one amongst you,) not to your neighbour, but to yourselves ; and to inquire, every one for himself, " Lord, is it I? Lord, is it I ?" that so at last the number of this unhappy people may be diminished ; and if it were possible, that not one of you should remain, who shall not at last have an approving testimony from the heart- searching God ! Amen, and Amen.]
z Matt. x. 39.
John vii. 17. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.
THE very enemies of our Lord were constrained to say, " Never man spake like this man." Yet did many of them persist in representing him as a de- ceiver : and, because he had not been educated after the manner of the Scribes and Pharisees, they con- sidered him as incapable of instructing them*. But to what was it owing that they could not receive his word ? Was there any thing in his mode of convey- ing his instructions, which involved them in unneces- sary obscurity ? The parabolic form in which he taught the people was common in his day ; and, if it cast somewhat of a veil over his instructions, it tended to remove the offence which too explicit a statement would occasion, and to convey knowledge to persons precisely in such a measure as they were
a ver. 12, 15.