Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is

perfect.

How many precepts and declarations of holy Scripture are we in the habit of passing by, as beyond our attainment or comprehension. How do we live as if those precepts had never been uttered, and speculate as if those declarations had never been made. And unworthily as we thus treat many parts of the sacred volume, the discourses of our Saviour himself furnish perhaps the greatest abundance of commands and assertions usually set aside and neglected. There is that in the holy simplicity of his words, which ill accords with our wishes, sinful and ignorant as we are, of flying from the light, and wrapping ourselves in the robes of hypocrisy; something in the lofty and superhuman standard to which He refers our thoughts and acts, which sets at nought

1 Preached on Sunday, October 31, 1841.

the customs and deemings of that world, to which we are all too much in bondage. Yet, when we consider the earnest and truthful character of all our Lord's precepts, and remember the confession of his enemies, that He taught them as one having authority, we cannot surely suppose that He lifted up an ideal pattern merely, or exaggerated our duties to prove our deficiencies; but we must conclude that He spoke as knowing what was in man-both his proneness to evil, and his endowment with power for good. And least of all do His words deserve to be accounted unreal, who performed all that He enjoined; who, emptying himself of his glory, passed out of the fruition of supreme blessedness into the exile of a life of faith and prayer; who learned obedience by the things which He suffered; and being made perfect, became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him and are made like Him. When the precepts of holiness came down on men from the mountain that burned with unapproachable fire, they might but serve to shew them the difference between the God of purity and his fallen creatures; but when the Son of man Himself delivers them to us, a thousand human sympathies should be kindled in our hearts: He who spoke these lofty words had passed through the years of helplessness, and the care and nurture of a human mother, had grown in wisdom and in stature, wept over the woes of his nation, and

the sepulchre of his friend,-and ministered in his humility to the bodies and souls of men. Nay, he was yet to pass through the conflictive agony of spiritual misgiving, and to enter before us into the valley of the shadow of death. If ever then the words of a teacher and master had claim upon the earnest and humble attention of his disciples, such claim belongs to the precepts of our Divine Lord and Saviour.

I have chosen for our consideration this day, one of the most sublime and comprehensive of those precepts;-one, however, which it is to be feared that few of us practically regard, as influencing our thoughts and conduct. Christ has been speaking of the narrow and selfish conduct of men, in confining their bounty and love merely to those who are disposed to make them a return; He has been pointing out for a pattern to his disciples, the universal and impartial regards of their heavenly Father, who causeth his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and unjust. Then, as if by this reference he had stirred a subject too various in its bearings, and too deep in the foundations of redemption, to be then pursued, He shortly touches the general duty of which he had enforced the particular case: "Ye then shall be perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect."

Now the first thing enjoined in these words is, the contemplation of the Divine character. For

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that which is to be our pattern, must in this case be sought out and ascertained, not without earnest labour and endeavour. The knowledge of God is not natural to man. To seek after Him, to find Him, and to know Him, are duties frequently enjoined in Holy Scripture. And this knowledge is represented to us as the highest acquirement and exaltation of man: "Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches: but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise lovingkindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth." So that the knowledge of God is a pursuit truly worthy of the best and highest energies of his creatures. And, notwithstanding that it is necessarily partial and limited, being relative only, and derived from that connexion with ourselves in which God has been pleased to reveal himself; notwithstanding that it is also necessarily, even as far as it can advance, imperfect and impure, clouded by the mixtures of worldly modes of thought and selfish regards; yet even thus it is the best guide to all wisdom, the highest purifier of human thoughts and motives.. And when employed in this search, all our faculties are then in their noblest exercise, and the powers which He has bestowed, in their most complete harmony and activity. When that

subtle and strong Intelligence, the spirit of man, which we call by the various names of the reason, the understanding, the moral sense, the imagination, the judgment, according as it assumes one or other of its numerous offices, combines all these in the humble endeavour to know Him who is its author and upholder, and in each of these capacities receives and reflects light from Him who is the Father of lights, we cannot conceive any state of man, which shall better fulfil the high purposes for which God sent him into the world.

We are called upon then, as elsewhere in Scripture, so especially in this precept, to contemplate the Divine character. And if the words of Christ which led to these seem to have respect chiefly to what is called Natural Theology, the proofs of power, wisdom, and goodness in creation and providence, let us not forget how great a revelation has been made to us of the Divine character, since their utterance, by the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, the descent of his Spirit, and the constitution of his Holy Catholic Church. Let us not forget that in proportion to these our means of knowing God, will knowledge of Him be required of us; that the visible things of creation might have bounded the range of the ancient Gentile's enquiries after God; and the promise made to the fathers, with the types of the legal ordinances,