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SERMON X.

ON PART OF GOSPEL FOR THE FIFTEENTH

SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.

MATTHEW Vi. 24.

No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other; ye cannot serve God and Mam

mon.

INDEPENDENT of the moral excellence of our Lord's discourses, without taking into consideration those sublime and interesting truths, which, found here for the first time, could not fail in arresting the attention; there is a simplicity and a charm in the very language itself, which stript, though it be, of almost every as

sociation with which it was originally accompanied, preserves still much of its early beauty and freshness; supplied with the most unerring characters of power; the touch that could heal the sick, the voice that could raise the dead, the feet that could move on the surface of the waters, as lightly as one walks on earth, eyes before whose glance the spirits of darkness trembled and were abashed, it might be expected that every word coming from the lips of a teacher so eminently gifted, would be received with the same reverence, and obeyed with the same devotion, as the letters that were traced by the finger of God on the tables at Sinai. But to execute successfully the mission on which he came, more was wanting than all these; he who knew what was in the heart of man, knew well the quality and extent. of the obstacles that would retard his progress; he was fully aware how firm

a hold early opinions, erroneous though they be, have on the minds of men. One less intimately versed in the mystery of nature, had rudely attempted to force it to his purpose; but he who preceded nature herself was content to untwine, one by one, those complicated folds, which wound, as it were, about the human heart, resisted admission to that knowledge which was to become its future consolation and support: to console the sorrowing, to reassure the weak, to strengthen the wavering, to silence. the reproachful man, to refute the unbeliever, to convince the honest seeker. after truth; such were the exercises: of. his graver hours, such the plan and method of his being. To mingle in the harmless pleasantries of life, to make one in the joys of the marriage feast, to sit down at table with the hated publican, to extend the hand of kindness to the rejected sinner, to raise the humbled

penitent, to pardon the remorseful of fender, to pass from the lowly hovels of the poor, through all the gradations of penury and suffering, to the mansions of the wealthy and powerful, and, at every step, to scatter round the seeds of newborn affections, to reunite the broken ties of departed kindred, to revive the nearly extinguished flame of holiness and love, these were the occupations of his leisure time-these the hallowed pastimes of his lighter moments: occasionally permitted to address his hearers beneath the shelter, and protected by the sanctity of a consecrated roof, but more often driven by the excited populace out into the open fields; there, amidst the wild and desolate regions of his native land, beneath her own unclouded sky, standing on some commanding spot, and looking down on the attentive crowds that were gathered beneath; there did the divine author of

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our faith pour forth his new and wondrous lessons; while earth and air, the heavens and the floods, each in the variety of the images which they presented, ministered obedience to their God.

Allow this picture to retain some slight impression on your minds, while I solicit your immediate attention to that portion of Scripture which follows in close connexion with the passage I have selected for my text, and which, I may remind you, forms the subject of the gospel for the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity: "No man can serve two mas ters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will hold to the one and despise the other." Apply this maxim to the common affairs of life, as society is at present regulated, and we shall easily admit its force and accuracy; but as the whole turns on the idea of service, by considering what