2. Those who have endeavoured to improve their speech for the good of others —
[This declaration of God is as consolatory to you, as it is alarming to the careless and ungodly world. Never have 3^ou endeavoured to speak for God, but God has listened to it with pleased attention, and recorded it in the book of his remem- brance, that you may "be justified " in his sight, and have a place assigned to you amongst the jewels of his crown '^. The saints, too, shall then bear their testimony also in your behalf. One will say, ' He taught me, when a child, the first principles of Christianity, and was, under God, the means of leading me to the knowledge of the truth.' Another will say, ' He visited me in the hour of sickness, and instructed me, and guided me into all truth : and to him, under God, I owe the salvation of my soul.' Thus, both from God and man, will you have most blessed testimonies at the bar of judgment, and receive a proportionable measure both of bliss and glory to all eternity.]
k Mai. iii. 16, 17.
Matt. xii. 39 — 41. But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seekeih after a sign, and there shall no sign he given to it, hut the sign of the Prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whales helly, so shall the Son of man he three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh shall rise in judgment with this generation, and shall condemn it: hecause they repented at the preaching of Jonas; and, hehold, a greater than Jonas is here.
UNREASONABLE and wicked men are ready to complain of want of evidence, when they neither attentively consider the means of conviction, that are afforded them, nor act agreeably to the convictions, that are already impressed upon their minds. This was eminently the character of the Jews in our Lord's days. They had a right indeed to expect, that their re- ligion, which had been confirmed by so many miracles, should not be superseded by any religion, which did not exhibit the same credentials. But the miracles wrought by our Lord were so numerous, so plain, and evident, that his enemies, unable to question the reality of them, ascribed them to the agency of