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a perfect convalescence: and when once the duties of religion shall be recommended by the general example of the superior ranks, then, and not till then, the bridle of legal restraint will act with effect upon vulgar profligacy.

But, in the application of whatever means for the remedy of the evil,-whether of legal penalties, which ought to be enforced, and in some cases ought to be heightened, -or of the milder persuasion of example, or of the two united, which alone can be successful,-in the application of these various means, the zeal of reform, if it would not defeat its own end, must be governed and moderated by a prudent attention to the general spirit of Christianity, and to the general end of the institution. The spirit of Christianity is rational, manly, and ingenuous; in all cases delighting in the substantial works of judgment, justice, and mercy, more than in any external forms. The primary and general end of the institution is the public worship of God, the Creator of the world and Redeemer of mankind.

Among the Jews, the absolute cessation of all animal activity on their Sabbath had a particular meaning in reference to their history: it was a standing, symbolical memorial of their miraculous deliverance from a state of servitude. But to mankind in general, to us Christians in some degree, the proper business of the day is the worship of God in public assemblies, from which none may without some degree of crime be unnecessarily absent. Private devotion is the Christian's daily duty; but the peculiar duty of the Sabbath is public worship. As for those parts of the day which are not occupied in the public duty, every man's own conscience, without any interference of public authority, and certainly without any officious interposition of the private judgment of his neighbour,-every man's own conscience must direct him what portion of this leisure should be allotted to his private devotions, and what may be spent in sober recreation. Perhaps a better general rule cannot be laid down than this; that the same proportion of the Sabbath, on the

whole, should be devoted to religious exercises, public and private, as every man would spend of any other day in his ordinary business. The holy work of the Sabbath, like all other work, to be done well, requires intermissions. An entire day is a longer space of time than the human mind can employ with alacrity upon any one subject. The austerity therefore of those is little to be commended, who require that all the intervals of public worship, and whatever remains of the day after the public duty is satisfied, should be spent in the closet, in private prayer and retired meditation. Nor are persons in the lower ranks of society to be very severely censured, those especially who are confined to populous cities, where they breathe a noxious atmosphere, and are engaged in unwholesome occupations, from which, with their daily subsistence, they derive their daily poison, if they take advantage of the leisure of the day to recruit their wasted strength and harassed spirits, by short excursions into the purer air of the adjacent villages, and the innocent recreations of sober society; provided they engage not in schemes of dissipated and tumultuous pleasure, which may disturb the sobriety of their thoughts, and interfere with the duties of the day. The present humour of the common people leads perhaps more to a profanation of the festival than to a superstitious rigour in the observance of it: but, in the attempt to reform, we shall do wisely to remember, that the thanks for this are chiefly due to the base spirit of puritanical hypocrisy, which in the last century opposed and defeated the wise attempts of government to regulate the recreations of the day by authority, and prevent the excesses which have actually taken place, by a rational indulgence.

The Sabbath was ordained for a day of public worship, and of refreshment to the common people. It cannot be a day of their refreshment, if it be made a day of mortified restraint. To be a day of worship, it must be a day of leisure from worldly business, and of abstraction from dis

sipated pleasure: but it need not be a dismal one. It was ordained for a day of general and willing resort to the holy mountain; when men of every race, and every rank, and every age, promiscuously-Hebrew, Greek, and Scythian-bond and free-young and old-high and lowrich and poor-one with another-laying hold of Christ's atonement, and the proffered mercy of the gospel, might meet together before their common Lord, exempt for a season from the cares and labours of the world, and be "joyful in his house of prayer."

SERMON XXIV.

We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.-JOHN iv. 42.

Ir was in an early period of our Saviour's ministry— in the beginning of the first year of it, shortly after his first public appearance at Jerusalem, that the good people of the town of Sychar in Samaria, where he made a short visit of two days in his journey home to Galilee, bore that remarkable testimony to the truth of his pretensions, which is recordod in my text. "We have heard him ourselves," they say to the woman of their town to whom he had first revealed himself at the well by the entrance of the city, and who had first announced him to her countrymen. "We no longer rely upon your report: we ourselves have heard him. We have heard him propounding his pure maxims of morality, inculcating his lessons of sublime and rational religion, proclaiming the glad-tidings of his Father's peace. We ourselves have heard him; and we are convinced that this person is indeed what he declares himself to be: we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world, the Christ."

This profession consists, you see, of two parts. The

terms in which it is stated imply a previous expectation of these Samaritans of a Christ who should come; and declare a conviction that Jesus was that person. It is very remarkable in three circumstances.

First, for the persons from whom it came. They were not Jews: they were Samaritans,--a race of spurious Israelites sprung from the forbidden marriages of Jews with heathen families,-a nation who, although they professed indeed to worship the God of Abraham after the rites of the Mosaic law, yet, as it should seem from the censure that was passed upon them by a discerning and a candid judge, "that they worshipped they knew not what," -as it should seem, I say, from this censure, they had but very imperfect notions of the nature of the Deity they served; and they were but ill instructed in the true spirit of the service which they paid him. These were the persons who were so captivated with the sublimity of our Saviour's doctrines, as to declare that he who had so admirably discoursed them could be no other than the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

The second thing to be remarked, is the very just notion these Samaritans express of the office of the Christ whom they expected, that he should be the Saviour of the world. In the original language of the New Testament, there are more words than one which are rendered by the word "world" in the English Bible. One of these is a word which, though it properly signifies the whole of the habitable globe, is often used in a more confined sense by those later Greek writers who were subjects of the Roman empire and treat of the affairs of the Romans. By these writers, it is often used for so much only of the world as was comprised within the limits of the Roman empire. It has been imagined that the evangelists, following in this particular the example of the politer writers of their times, have used this same word to denote what was peculiarly their world, the territory of Judea. Men of learning in these later ages have been much too fond of the practice of framing expo

sitions of Scripture upon these grammatical refinements. The observation may be partly just: in many instances, however, it hath been misapplied; and I would advise the unlearned reader of the English Bible, wherever the world is mentioned, to take the word in its most natural-that is, in its most extended meaning. This rule will seldom mislead him; and the few instances in which it may be incorrect, are certain passages of history in which exactness of interpretation is not of great-at least not of general importance. In the text, however, at present before us, the original word is not that which is supposed to be capable of a limited interpretation. On the contrary, it is that word which is used by the sacred writers to denote the mass of the unconverted Gentile world, as distinguished from God's peculiar people. Of this world, therefore, and by consequence of the whole world, the Samaritans, as it appears by the text, expected in the Christ the Saviour. It appears, too, from the particulars of our Saviour's conference with the woman at the well, which are related in the preceding part of this chapter, it appears, that of the means by which the Messiah was to effect the salvation of the world, these same people had a very just, though perhaps an inadequate apprehension. They expected him to save the world by teaching the true religion. "I know," said the "when the Messiah is come, he will tell us all things," all things concerning the worship of God; for that was the topic in discussion. The circumstances which the evangelist's narrative discovers of this woman's former life, give us no reason to suppose that she had been a person

woman,

of

-

a very thoughtful, religious turn of mind, which had led her to be particularly inquisitive after the true meaning of the prophecies. It is to be supposed, therefore, that the notions which she expressed were the common notions of her country. It was the notion, therefore, of the Samaritans of this age, that teaching men the true religion would be in great part the means which the Messiah would employ for the general salvation of mankind: and

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