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But why, it may be asked, did not Jesus call the old gentleman too, when he was about it; and thus save the world from that hideous example of filial ingratitude and disobedience, with which these runaway fish-boys commenced their apostleship?

Why, I suspect that the old fool was honest, and therefore not cut out to make a clergyman; and Jesus might think he did enough for him, by instituting the fast of Lent, and a few other banyan days, to promote the sale of his fish.

Well, we have now five of them embarked in the new trade; Andrew, Peter, John, James, and Jesus. Remember, if you please, only five. "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues;" that is. not in their religious assemblies merely, as our sense of the word might seem to imply, but in any assemblies where the gudgeons were to be fished for.

"Preaching the gospel of the kingdom." THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM! Now be not so be-gospelled, I beseech ye, Sirs, as to let the force of that phrase escape your rumination.

What could the gospel of the kingdom be? but the king's gospel, to be sure-the gospel in those parts of the world, already by law established.

How, in the name of your five fingers, could it have been any other sort of gospel? How could it have contained a word about " suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, dead and buried; he descended into hell; third day he rose again from the dead"-when, at that time, it could not have been pretended that any such events had happened, for there the what-d'ye-callhim, was, preaching it himself. And our wiseacres that go to church and chapel, have never dreamed of doubting that Christ preached Christ; and that the Gospel contained the gospel, when not a bit of gospel could possibly have been in existence.

But preaching, whatever the preaching was, was but a small part of the gospel-trade. He was engaged in "healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of diseases among the people." All manner of diseases! He didn't confine his practice, it seems: He must have ruined all the surgeons and apothecaries in Palestine. "And his fame spread throughout all Syria."-It must have been his own fault, if he didn't make hay while the sun shone.

And though I dare say he was too genteel to take the fees himself, yet the devil's in't, if the four fish-boys that thumpt the mortar for him, and spread the plaisters, and made up the medicines, were negligent of their master's interest. What say ye? says the Christian: mean ye to say that the Son of God kept a surgery, and sold physic? I mean to do what no Christian has honesty enough to do-I mean to stand by the text of Scripture; and where I don't find a lie ready told to my hand, I don't mean, as they do, to supply the deficiency, and tell the lie myself.

The text of Scripture barely is, that " they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments,

and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those which had the palsy; and he HEALED them." Και εθεράπευσεν αυτους-. . "he doctored them-he waited upon them he attended on them during their lying-in-he gave 'eto physic; and some of 'em got better, and some of 'em died."

That's all on't, gentlemen, by the truth of God's word; and take this book for God's word, THAT'S ALL ON'T. It is the utmost force of the words of the text. It is not intimated that there was any thing miraculous in the business. It is not so much as implied that he cured all his patients, he only tried at it. And what right have Christians to assert that there was a miracle, where the text asserts no such thing.

How desperately fond of lying must they be, who would outlie the Gospel; and are for gulping it down faster than it can be mixed up for 'em.

The miracles are not ready yet. We shall have enough of 'em by and by. But there is nothing miraculous in the text, thus far. I'm sorry for't. But ye know, we must not make miracles ourselves, and stick 'em in the miracle-book, by hook or by crook.

I am willing to make the most of such as I can find; and finding that when Jesus's disciples came unto him," he opened his mouth :" I shall take that to be a miracle, and shut mine, that I may not say any thing more than

DELENDA EST CARTHAGO.

THIRTY-FIFTH DISCOURSE.

On Temperance.

Delivered in the Areopagus, on Sunday, May 27th, 1827, By the Rev. ROBERT TAYLOR, B. A. Orator of the Society.

MEN AND BRETHREN-We have so fully and entirely established the great principles of moral virtue, on the everlasting basis of science and of truth-we have so heedfully and faithfully laid down the proprieties and fitnesses of sentiment and action which become a man in all the predicaments, and with respect to all relations, developed in the drama of his eventful history, that none who have travelled with us through these delightful studies will lightly esteem their usefulness, or can possibly have failed of reaping the fruit of that moral improvement, which no wise man was ever too wise to desire, and no good man ever too good to need.

It is those only who fall in upon our so far advanced stage, and cannot take up the clue and concatenation of the whole science, who must necessarily fail of feeling much of that interest, or will be indisposed to yield that cordial conviction which they otherwise would have felt, and could not have withheld.

For this moral science, even when aided by the most enlivening illustrations, must necessarily be too abstruse for the understandings of persons, who have.never been used to hear any thing but what they were always used to hear, and are therefore apt to take offence when any one throws a stone into the stagnant pool of their consecrated stupidity.

But, without their leave, we shall proceed to establish, on principles of certainty and evidence, the rules by which a man may ensure to himself the longest and the happiest life on earth, even though he should go to the devil when he dies. And happy enough, in my mind, are they who can contrive so as not to go to the devil, before they die.

rance.

For this end, which is indeed the only and the whole end of these discourses, we are now studying the moral qualities which are the immediate means or generally procuring causes of prosperity; these are, industry, temperance, prudence, and perseveWe treated in our last discourse, of industry; we come now to consider the claims of temperance. This, as a moral quality, as well as industry, is distinguishable from the absolute virtues, in that the strictest observance of it will be far from making any direct and essential contribution to the character of a wise and good man. The motives of temperance exist only (and exist sufficiently) in the most exclusive and selfish consultation of a man's own ease and convenience merely. A man would not feel that intellectual satisfaction and joy of heart that attends the consciousness of the pure virtues, for all the temperance in the world, if a consequent ease and convenience to himself were wanting. Circumstances may modify and alter the fitness and propriety of temperance, making it to be more or less fit and proper; whereas, the virtues are always the same, and in all vicissitudes of fortune equally obliging upon us.

Thus, when sailors on board a ship, which it is ascertained must in a few minutes inevitably go to the bottom, tap the last cask, and so drown their care ere they be drowned themselves: there is no argument, no philosophy, no reason in the world to show, but that in so doing, they act in the very wisest and best way they possibly could. For though, indeed, nothing is more odious than intoxication, and a man ought never to be without his wits about him so long as he is in this life; yet upon going out of it, his wits will be of no more use to him; and wise is he who, when he can no longer preserve the flesh, makes the best bargain he can with the spirit. For nothing so strengthens a man's faith in going to glory, as being in his glory first. And if ever a man has real occasion to see double, it must be when he stands between two worlds, and has to look to both, here and hereafter, at the same moment.

Though temperance is by divines reckoned as one of the four cardinal virtues, yet the seat of it being in the stomach, and not in the heart; the reasons of it lying so entirely in calculations of

personal convenience, irrespectively of any considerations of public good or general usefulness; it is so much more of a physical than a moral quality, that the reckoning it to be a virtue at all, can only have originated in a mighty scarcity of virtues, and in the hasty mistake of supposing that that which is opposite to a vice must needs be one: which were it the case, indeed temperance should be the capital of the column, and stand as the chief of all virtues. For than its opposite, intemperance and gluttony, there can be nothing that more degrades a man, that more justly exposes him to the ridicule and contempt of his fellow men, or more entirely robs him of all just grounds of a rational respect for himself. There is nothing on earth so truly despicable, so odious, so loathsome, as a drunkard.

The most temperate man is not therefore virtuous, though he be, so far as he is temperate, superior to the natural impediments and hindrances of virtue. There is very little ground for giving himself credit upon the mere negation of a vice, for not being what, if he were, he would be truly contemptible.

So that, at the first glimpse, it might seem but an ill compliment and a bitter sarcasm on human nature, to recommend temperance at all; as if it were as much as to say, "it may be virtue in a man to possess such a degree of command over his own appetites, as no beast is deficient of; it shall be his wisdom to have wit enough to cool his own broth."

Your apotactites, hydroperastates, abstainers, water-drinkers, may by habit subdue the cravings of nature, and establish a new animal economy within themselves, so as to prolong existence upon much less than nature's ordinary requirings; but excepting the better share of the means of subsistence, which their forbearance leaves to others, of what profit, or of what effect to the promotion of the general happiness, is their self-imposed asceticism?

"The hermit from the mountain's grassy side,
His guiltless feast may bring ;

His scrip, with herbs and fruits supplied,
And water from the spring."

But for all this, he is only the more the saint, but none the more the man. Society owes him nothing-virtue owes him nothing. He is only what every pious and religious man in the world is, good: to go to heaven when he dies (and the sooner the better). Good to be there, where, you know, "they neither marry, nor are given in marriage;" good for glory, i. e. good for nothing.

From that diametrical contradiction of morals and religion, and that utter and irreconcileable incompatibility of the one to the other, which we have traced in every other branch of the moral science, we arrive at the absurdity of all absurdities, in the article of temperance. As soon as the principle of faith interferes with this, the humblest of all moral qualities, the most obvious of all natural proprieties, it is exalted into the highest degree of human

perfection; and not temperance merely, and moderation in the use of the reflections which our health requires, and for our health's sake only, (the only consideration which a wise man would have of the matter,) but abstinence and mortification have been enjoined. As if God Almighty begrudged a man his victuals, or as the poet sings

or,

"A herring hath a charm,

Almighty vengeance to disarm ;"

"Wrapt in majesty divine,

He wished to know on what we dine."

Thus men, departing from the all-sufficient and only sacred law of creation, have maintained perpetual hostilities against their own nation, for which the very birds and beasts hoot at the Lord of the creation, as the greatest fool in it, whose superior attribute of reason points not out to him a medium between starvation and gluttony, and who finds it easier to take nothing, than to be satisfied with enough.

But the cruelty and outrage upon nature is surely the same, with the only difference of having less excuse for it; in those who are inexorable to her solicitations, as in those who play the alderman with her. There being in the animal economy many means and provisions of nature to counteract the mischiefs of repletion; but none to supply, none to repair the damage of an absolute deficiency.

Intemperance on this side, as (when voluntarily incurred) it is a more egregious, and I may say more UNNATURAL fault committed without temptation, and even when temptation was acting in the opposite direction; it is a more severe affront upon nature, and justly, more severely resented by her. In too long an abstinence, the gastric juice, which should never be inactive, becomes sour; and not finding the necessary substance to act upon, begins to erode and prey upon the coats of the stomach itself. For man, says my Lord Byron, is a carnivorous production

"And must have meals, at least one meal a day :

He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction;
But like a shark and tyger must have prey;
Although his anatomical construction,

Bears vegetables in a grumbling way:

Yet labouring people find beyond all question,
Beef, pork. and mutton's better for digestion."

"Tis but to acquaint ourselves with the action of the viscus to see at once in situ, and observe its intimate connexion with the moral nature of man; and we shall see that however useful abstinence may be to prepare us for another life, 'tis like to prepare us faster than our hurry calls for. The best divines in the world have been but pitiful physicians: for whereas they tell us that nothing can get the devil out of a man but praying and fastingthe fact on't is, that whatever the praying may do, 'tis certain that the fasting lets the devil in. As nothing is more obvious to notice than the irritability of temper, the corrugations of the countenance in sympathy with the state of the stomach, and the

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