/hat, not for their own aggrandizement, but for the benefit of the Church to which they belonged. It should seem that these gifts were put forth by a special exercise of faith ; and that persons were en- abled to exercise them at those seasons, and in those degrees to which they were prompted by a special communication of faith to their souls a. The meaning therefore of our text is, ' Pride not yourselves on any gifts which you possess ; but thankfully acknowledge God as the author of them, and improve them humbly for his glory.' In this view, the words before us are precisely similar to that more enlarged statement which the Apostle gives in his First Epistle to the Corinthians b ; and the word ' faith/ in our text, is equivalent to that expression in the Epistle to the Ephesians : " To every one of us is grace given, ac- cording to the measure of the gift of Christ"."
But, as miraculous gifts have long since ceased, and as the caution in my text is equally applicable to gifts of every kind, I shall take this more enlarged view of the words, and consider,
I. The caution here given —
It is well known that gifts, of whatever kind they
be, are too commonly made an occasion of pride —
[It is difficult for any one to possess any particular quality, whether of mind or body, and not feel a measure of self- admiration and self-preference on account of it. How great a snare to a person's own mind superior beauty is, is well known : and so is every other bodily endowment, in proportion as it is admired by the world at large. Talent, too, will puff up the possessor of it with a conceit of his importance, and cause him to arrogate to himself a more than ordinary homage from those around him. And glad should we be if the same kind of conceit were never founded on attainments of a moral or religious nature : but it is a fact, that morality itself is made, by almost all who possess it, a ground for self-prefe- rence, and that, too, even before God himself; insomuch, that persons who have been preserved from great and flagrant transgressions, treat almost with contempt the provisions of the Gospel, from a conceit, that they need not to humble
a Compare 1 Cor. xiii. 2. Jain. v. 1.'). Matt. xvii. 20. b ver, 6*. with 1 Cor. xii. 4 — 1 1. ' Rph iv. 7.