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"shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye

have love one towards another." He, then, who -refuses to fulfil this duty, discards the profession, and renounces the blessings, of Christianity. On the other hand, "if we fulfil the Royal Law," as it is called

St. James," of loving our neighbor as ourselves, we ❝do well," and shall, as the reward of our obedience, receive eternal life.

See, then, O Christian, thy obligations to the performance of this duty; the example of thy Saviour and thy God to teach, His commands to engage, His terrors to alarm, His mercies to entice thee, accompanied with peace of mind, and approbation of heart. Happy is the man who fulfils such obligation! He is an heir of God, a joint-heir of Christ, and when the last trumpet shall awake him to Judgment, his name will be found written in the book of life!

SERMON

SERMON X.

ST. JOHN BAPTIST'S DAY.

THE Church has celebrated the nativity of this Saint as she has done the martyrdom, or day of death, of other Saints. For St. John the Baptist, though he laid down his life for the truth of his preaching; yet he was not a Christian martyr, as our Saviour's Apostles were, who suffered in testimony of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. However, his memory was celebrated by the Christian Church, because he was the fore-runner of our Blessed Lord, and, by preaching the doctrine of repentance, paved the way for publishing the Gospel. His birth was foretold by an Angel, and brought to pass after an uncommon manner, his mother being past the usual time of child-bearing when she conceived him. His office of being the harbinger or fore-runner of Christ was predicted by the Prophets. Malachi calls him "the messenger to prepare the way of the Lord." And Isaiah calls him "the voice of one crying in the wilderness, "prepare ye the way of the Lord." He lived an austere and ascetic life; and till the time of his preaching, took to a retirement in the wilderness, feeding upon locusts, a sort of grasshoppers, in that country, and wild honey, which the bees had made within the hollows of trees. His apparel was suitable to this hermetical life, being only a rough garment of camel's hair, tied to him with a leathern girdle. He seemed to be an imitator of the Prophet Elijah, who lived a life of a not much unlike nature; whereupon the prophetical predictions of him give him the same name. He

had

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had a divine commission by the Holy Spirit of God, to administer the rite of Baptism to those who repented of their sins; and our Saviour was pleased to confirm the truth of his mission by partaking of that holy ceremony at his hands, the Baptist, at the same time, acknowleging Him to be the Messias. He was imprisoned by Herod for preaching against his incestuous marriage with Herodias, his brother's wife, and afterwards, by the arts of that enraged woman, was beheaded.

ISAIAH xl. 3, 4, 5.

The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a bighway for our God.

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and bill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made

straight, and the rough places plain:

And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

HE chapter, of which these words are a part, is

TH

a prophetic description, first of John the Baptist, the fore-runner of our Lord, who was to prepare His way; and afterwards of the Apostles, who were to publish the glad tidings of Salvation to all nations. We meet, also, with another prophecy of John the Baptist in Malachi, the last prophet of the Jewish Church" Behold I will send my messenger, and

* Never before printed.

"he

she shall prepare the way before me; even the mes66 senger of the Covenant whom ye delight in; be"hold he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts." As this celebrated personage was accounted "more than "a prophet; as one born of woman had never risen

so great as John;" as he was, particularly, appointed to be the messenger of the Most High, and to prepare His way; some reflections upon his office and character, as they will be correspondent to the service of the Church on this day, will, it may be presumed, afford us lessons of use and instruction,

The office of John the Baptist, considered as the messenger of Christ, and what he did to prepare the way of the Messiah-to dispose men to embrace the Religion that would be propounded to them-is described with great propriety in this antient custom. For it was usual, in those times, to send a messenger before princes and men of eminence and distinction, to take care that uneven roads were made level, and all impediments removed out of the way, that they might pursue their journey with greater ease, and with uninterrupted * expedition.

Let us next consider what is implied in the figurative expressions of the Prophet.

Pride and vain-glory were the mountains he was to bring low-men of meek and humble minds were the vallies he was to exalt-hypocrisy and fraud were the crooked ways he was to make straight-oppression and injustice the rough places he was to make plain.

This interpretation will be found to agree with the account given in the New Testament of the Baptist's

• These preparations were expressed in the Greek word odowolny.

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preaching: "he preached in the wilderness of Judea, "saying, repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at "hand." The exhortation "repent ye," corresponds with what the voice in Isaiah was to utter-" prepare 60 ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert "an highway for our God." And the reason upon which this exhortation is grounded, " for the king"dom of heaven is at hand," agrees in like manner with that in Isaiah," and the glory of the Lord shall ." be revealed."

But the preparation to be made by John the Baptist, for the advent of the Messiah, is more literally expressed by the Prophet Malachi-" He shall turn the "heart of the fathers to," or, as the best interpreters have it," with the children, and the heart of the chil"dren with their fathers"-he shall prepare persons of all ages and conditions to receive the Messiah, and embrace the Religion, which He was about to publish to the world. Or, as the Angel explains it in St. Luke,

he shall turn the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, and make ready a people pre"pared for the Lord." In a word, the employment of John the Baptist, as the messenger of Christ, was to reform every vice and corruption in his countrymen, that they might be the better disposed to acknowlege the Saviour of mankind, whose object was to introduce, and establish, a new Religion, consisting of the sublimest doctrines and the purest precepts.

It may here be objected, that the Prophet Malachi speaks of Elijah as the forerunner, who was to restore all things; which was the received opinion, and general belief, of the Jewish nation. When the Scribes, in the presence of our Lord, insisted that Elias must

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