With regard to the two miracles of healing, the matter is sufficiently clear.No doubt the sufferers co-operated with Christ by a belief in his power to heal them, and by a consequent inclination to obey his command. This kind of faith in him, you will remember, my brethren, was generally required by our Lord, in persons who came to be relieved by him. -"Believest thou that I can do this?" was the question commonly put-and then " according to their faith" it was

done unto them.-When the commands"Stretch forth thine hand"-"Take up thy bed, and walk," were given, had the persons addressed begun to reason about the matter and said, "This man is mocking me. How am I able to stretch forth my hand, it is withered up;-How can I take up my bed, who have not strength to stand;" -their infirmities no doubt would have remained upon them, because of their unbelief. But they had the will, the disposition to obey-and to that was immediately added the power.

1 Matt. ix. 28, 29.

And up to a certain point this may serve to illustrate the moral question. Our God, we know, is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. There exists not in the breast of any one among us, even a desire to please him, but it is observed by him immediatelyand like the lenient father in the parable, he goes forth to meet us, and offers us grace to carry our godly resolutions into effect. Thus far the parallel holds good, but no farther. The Christian moralist goes on to say, that even for this desire to please God-even for this inclination to exert his palsied faculties in the service for which they were granted-the service of his Maker-he is indebted, not to his own heart, but to the Spirit of grace working within him. The Scripture plainly teaches that " every good and perfect gift cometh from above'." And what says our Church? Hear our tenth article.-" The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his

James i. 17.
2

own natural strength and good works to faith, and calling upon God. Wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ, preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will."-And after this can we assert that man is so far a free agent as to be fairly considered an accountable being-and to be judged according to the deeds done in the body, whether they be good-or whether they be evil?-Yes, we do-because the Scriptures assert it also:and we believe that God will be found true, though every man be made a liar that God will be wise, though in order to establish his wisdom, all the wisdom of the world must be acknowledged to be foolishness.

But how do we reconcile the manifest self-contradiction of the two propositions? How is it that we make God the author of all that is good in man-and yet talk of punishing him for the evil, and rewarding him for the good, as if both the

one and the other were his own? How is this difficulty to be explained?

It would be very easy, my brethren, to evade the question by vague declamation or to mystify and apparently solve it, by glozing, and sophistical arguments. It would be easy perhaps to send you hence, under a persuasion that the point had been fully examined, and the difficulty removed. But how long will that persuasion last?-Till the very next time that your thoughts are directed to the subject and then you will find that all the difficulty remains, while the reasoning by which it was removed has been forgotten. Do you ask, why is this?Simply because the difficulty never was removed. It never was, and never will be removed. The moralist will succeed in reconciling these two propositions when the mathematician has succeeded in making two parallel lines meet.

Then why introduce the subject at all, if no explanation can be given of the matter in debate?-What practical benefit can be derived from such inconclusive

discussions?-The greatest possible benefit, my brethren.-If I have convinced all who now hear me, that the topic before us involves a difficulty beyond the reach of the human intellect, I shall have paved the way for more practical good, than the fullest and most satisfactory explanation of the point could have accomplished.— It is very clear that no man will make any great progress towards Christian perfection who is not a searcher of the Scriptures-and who does not search them in a right spirit and with right views.—It is also clear, that no man can be so wrong in his views--no man can sit down to the perusal of the holy volume with so little chance of benefitting by his studies-as he who supposes that he shall find all things in it level at once to his comprehension-or superable eventually to his diligence. Obviously it is of the greatest importance to awaken men from such delusive dreamings as this, by bringing before them fairly and candidly, a difficulty which all must allow to be insurmountable. They will then be prepared for