and will be, the effect : " I am come," says he, " to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against the mother, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law: and a man's foes shall be those of his own household^" But then we should ask ourselves, " Have I, like Enoch, this tes- timony, that I have pleased Gode?" If I have, I am satisfied. I would most gladly, if it were in my power, please all who are connected with me : but if they reduce me to the dilemma of either displeasing them or God, they must excuse me : for " I must obey God rather than manf." The persons who are offended with me, would expect their servant to obey them rather than a stranger: and is not God entitled to that de- ference from me ? I am " a servant of Jesus Christ ;" and I must, at the peril of my soul, obey him. And as our blessed Lord said respecting his own conduct to his heavenly Father, " I do always those things which please him";" so, God helping me, will I say : and if I stand condemned for it at man's tri- bunal, I have this comfort, that, when standing at the tribunal of my God, he will say, " Well done, good and faithful ser- vant ; enter thou into the joy of thy LordV]
a Matt. x. 35, 36. e Heb. xi. 5. f Acts v. 29.
g John viii. 29. h Matt. xxv. 21.
Gal. i. 15, 16. When it pleased God, ivho separated me from my mother s womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; im- mediately I conferred not with flesh and blood.
GREAT were the trials which the Apostle Paul met with in the Churches of Galatia through the subtilty of some Judaizing teachers, who laboured, and with too much success, to turn the newly con- verted Christians from the faith which Paul had preached to them, and to bring them over to a faith compounded of Judaism and Christianity. To give the greater weight to their doctrines, they repre- sented Paul as preaching a Gospel which he had received only from human authority, and not from the Lord Jesus Christ, as all the other Apostles had ; and consequently, as unworthy of the confidence