your devotion to God, must ye regard it as of the smallest moment. Gratitude to the Saviour must fill your souls. To him you must consecrate all the powers he has renewed ; and the whole of your life must henceforth be devoted to the praise of his grace, and to the glory of his name. And never must you return to your former state. Think, I pray you, how the enemies of Christ would have triumphed, if this cripple had relapsed into his former state of impotence, and had again been necessitated to be carried, as before, to the temple-gate, to beg for alms. And will not the world triumph, if they ever behold you again returning to the state in which you were, previous to your reception of the Gospel? O ! remember that the honour of your Lord and Saviour is bound up, as it were, in you and your conduct : if you walk uprightly, he will be glorified ; but if you turn back, he will be dishonoured, and his very name be blasphemed. O ! beg of God that you may never give occasion to the enemies of your Lord to speak reproachfully, but that, both in time and in eternity, you may be distinguished monuments of his power and grace.]
Acts iii. 14, 15. Ye denied the Holy One and the Just, and desired a murderer to be granted unto you ; and killed the Prince of life.
IN the Apostles of our Lord we behold an ad- mirable mixture of wisdom and firmness. On no occasion did they withhold the truth from their most powerful opponents ; and on no occasion did they excite needless prejudice, in their manner of declaring it. It was necessary that they should assert the honour of their Lord, by whose Almighty power they had been enabled to work a most stupendous miracle. But, in doing this, they would appear, to many, to be setting up the Lord Jesus against Moses, and to be detracting from the honour of Jehovah. To obviate this misconception, they profess at once the greatest reverence for the religion of their forefathers ; and proclaim, that " the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob," had wrought this miracle for the ex- press purpose of " glorifying his Son Jesus," whom