and place, but as forming one collective being. This, indeed, is suggested—we do not say intentionally implied by the personification in the text, in which a whole people is spoken of as one person-for, though the language is figurative, the idea is founded in reality. The Almighty appears to deal with such a collective agent, as we may suppose he would deal with an accountable being who should have no existence hereafter-Divine retribution is dispensed to it in this life. As the effects of sins committed at one period of life are often felt at a subsequent period, so the depraved condition of a civil society in one age of its existence -for its whole duration is but one continued life-is visited with the evil consequences in a later generation. And as it is impossible that one member of the human body should suffer without all the members suffering with it, so is it that one part of a corporate society should be morally diseased without all the other parts sharing in the attendant evils. By a regard, therefore, to your own welfare-to the welfare of those who are the dearest to you-parts of yourselves to the welfare of your children's children to the latest posterity-the obligation is laid on you to minister to the infected and infectious society in which you are living, the appointed means of purification and health. As you could not hear that a contagious disease had sprung up in your neighbourhood without feeling that all your family were endangered, look on the moral contagion around you as involving the entire community of which you are a member in special danger, and exposing you at least to temporal suffering. To complete the obligation, however, the will of Christ has made it authoritative and divine. Do you ask where and how he has expressed that will? Not merely by commands to be found in almost every page of his Gospel, and which require us to love our neighbour as ourselves. Not merely by the authority of his own example in weeping over the metropolis of his own land, and labouring with untiring benevolence for its recovery. But also by the diffusive na ture of the Divine remedy itself, by which it no sooner takes effect on an individual, than he feels himself impelled to proclaim its virtues to others, and to enforce its acceptance. And still more, if possible, by the Divine constitution of the Christian Church. Having composed it of such as have themselves made proof of the healing remedy, and furnished them. with the means of complete recovery and eternal life, he requires them to act as a body organised and appointed for the recovery of others. Every church in this city is the Divine dispensary of the neighbourhood in which it stands-the Gilead of the district. It is planted there, not merely for the convenience and advantage of its own members, but, also, that all the inhabitants around may be brought under cure. In prosecution of this high object, it is not to wait for applications from without. In imitation of Christ, it is to seek that it may save that which was lost. In imitation of his Apostles, its members are to go from house to house, making manifest the savour of Christ -diffusing the fragrant odour of the healing balm-in every place. All the means of spiritual recovery are in their possession, and from the first moment of their existence as a Church, they are required to employ them. All the population of that district are placed under their special ministrations; and as long as a single soul remains in ignorance of Christ, they are to ply those ministrations to the utmost, or to find themselves subjected to the charge implied in the startling interrogation, "Why is not the health of that soul recovered ?" IV. It cannot be pleaded in mitigation of this charge, that, although convinced of our obligation to promote the spiritual health of our community, we are distracted by the conflicting claims of various remedies. The text implies that there is but one remedy, and that there cannot be another--that the obligation to employ any remedy, and to employ this, is identical. We are aware, indeed, that, in the present day, re ligion has numerous competitors for the honour of improving mankind; that civilization and law, political economy, and secular instruction, forgetting their total failure as a remedy for human misery during the thousands of years in which they had the world to themselves; forgetting, that however useful they may be in their several subordinate departments, their utility can never extend beyond those limits, but by their becoming the handmaids of that Divine religion whose sphere is the universe and eternity; and forgetting that the moral progression of society of late, is owing, not to their influence, but to the operation of that religion; forgetting these things, they flatter themselves, that could they but be left to work alone, they should need no higher aid in order to renovate society, and make the world happy. But if the malady of sin has fallen upon the moral and immortal part of our nature, they possess not one quality of a remedy. If to leave the heart untouched, is to leave the man unhealed, they can have no pretension whatever to be regarded as a balm. At best they can but heal the hurt of the daughter of a people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, when there is no peace. At best they are but palliatives; but, like most other mere palliatives, they subsequently aggravate the disorder they pretended to cure. Science, for instance, taken by itself, has no tendency whatever to moral improvement. Such improvement can only result through the medium of conscience; by the agency of something which shall appeal to our hopes and fears; by a moral influence. But what connexion is there between the mechanical science and morality? How can a vicious heart be cured by lectures on geology? If no one expects to learn astronomy by studying botany-if no one expects to learn it even by studying religion-why should any one expect to learn religion, or to be able to dispense with religion, by studying science? The instruction of a community in worldly science can, at best, but multiply its mental and social resources, and thus cor rect its taste for some of the grosser forms of sensuality. But ask ancient Greece and Rome, and modern France, the direction in which it tends, unguided by revelation, and you will find that it leads through atheism to destruction. However simple the early character of a people may be while struggling to establish their political existence, survey the whole compass of history, and say, in what instance has a progress in arts, and science, and commerce, and attendant wealth, unaccompanied by religion, failed to increase the luxury and licentiousness, the arrogance and selfishness of a people, and thus to seal their doom? Investigate the claims of civilization, and you will find that it is but just beginning to ascertain them itself. The most distinguished writer on civilization of the present day* commences with the inquiry, which lies at the very basis of the subject before us, "Is society formed for the individual, or the individual for society?" and pronounces that one of the greatest philosophers† has thus resolved the question: "Human societies are born, and live, and die upon the earth; there they accomplish their destinies. But they contain not the whole man. After his engagement to society, there still remains in him the more noble part of his nature. We have each a separate and distinct existence, are endowed with immortality, and have a destiny higher than that of states." Yes, civilization and government must disclaim the power of reaching the soul. All they can accomplish, at best, is to restrain the eruption of its disease when it endangers the social health, and to develope other counteracting qualities likely to maintain that restraint. This is their best. History, alas, finds it abundantly easier to furnish illustrations of their worst—to show us that human government, apart from the influence of religion, aye, and in defiance of that influence too, can itself cater for the most morbid appetites of a people, up to the very point of social danger-that it can itself legalise immorality, and sell * Guizot. † De Royer Collard. the Sabbath, and open a thousand Hippodromes, provided the people will be content with destroying themselves, without destroying it—that it can persist in bartering away the morals, the rationality, the very bodily health of hundreds of thousands of its subjects, provided the sale of the liquid fire that inflicts these evils continues to swell the revenue. Well, then, may we appropriate the language of the context, and inquire, "Is not the Lord in Zion? is not her King in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with strange vanities?" To think of making any expedient of human device a substitute for the Gospel, is the highest provocation which man can offer, or God receive. Did you cousult only the temporal welfare of the community in which you dwell, the speediest and most effectual method of promoting even that, would be to give them the Gospel. It moralizes every society which it enters. Even when it does not convert a people, it arrests the progress of vice, denounces oppression, awakens compassion for the wretched, asserts the supremacy of law, elevates the public standard, and thus lays a foundation for civil improvement and social happiness. But you profess to design their spiritual welfare-and for this the Gospel is the only means. Here there can be no competition, no rival, no question. Compared with its wisdom, every other system is foolishness, for it is the wisdom of God. Compared with its power to sway the heart, all other strength is weakness, for it is the power of God. Its light alone can pierce the darkness of the soul. Its influence alone can break the chains of sin, and turn the heart, the house, the city, once devoted to Satan, into a habitation for God through the Spirit. But the Gospel can do this. It taught chastity at Corinth-humility at Athens -humanity and holiness at Rome-and converted even the jail at Philippi into a Christian church. And what it has done it can still repeat. Its Author is the appointed Healer of a diseased and a dying world: only let its saving health be diffused, and, like a heavenly |