Having ascertained the sense of the concluding portion of the text, we proposed, in the next place, to show the mercy and benevolence of that divine provision for our benefit which it asserts; but we have already anticipated this part of the subject in the very attempt to explain it. We have seen that while all mankind lay under the awful sentence, dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," without a shadow of right or the most distant hope of ever returning to existence when once the grave had closed its gates upon them, it pleased the Almighty to interfere in behalf of his helpless and offending creatures, and to send us a Saviour, who might raise us from the death both of the body and of sin; who might procure us a perfect reconciliation with his Father, and a title to joys unspeakable at His right hand for evermore. All this I say we have seen, and what more need be seen to display before our eyes the unbounded riches of the grace and mercy of God?

Finally, then, let us derive this serious reflection from the deeply interesting doctrines revealed to us in the text-that, whatever allowances may be made at the great day of account (and many doubtless will be made,) for heathens and even for Jews, in consideration of the comparative darkness of the dispensations under which they lived, Christians at least can expect no mitigation

on this score. The few words of Scripture, on which we have now been commenting, will of themselves rise up in judgment against us, if we refuse to profit by them while we have yet the opportunity; they stand as a blazing beacon to warn us of our danger, and to show us the course which we must steer to avoid it; they point out the path to heaven and to hell, and whichever we choose to take we shall enter it with a perfect consciousness of the place to which it will finally conduct us.

SERMON XIII.

SUPERSTITION AND ENTHUSIASM.

ROMANS xii. 1.

I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.

BESIDES those impediments to the knowledge and practice of true religion, which arise from the corrupt inclinations of man, there are others which are produced by a perverse application of his intellectual powers. Now when erroneous conceptions are once formed on religious points of fundamental importance, it is easy to see that their influence will extend to one doctrine after another; till at length they will vitiate the whole theory of religion, and generate a system of belief and duty, which is any thing else than a reasonable service. It would be a work of endless labour to enumerate the multitude of different ways in which mankind

have continued to render the light, which is in them, darkness; but, judging from our knowledge of human nature, and the history of religion in all ages, there appear to be two errors to which we are particularly prone, which have poisoned the purity of Gospel truth, and have conducted those, whom they have deceived, into extravagances, which the Christian blushes to remember, and the infidel exhibits with rapture. These are superstition and enthusiasm; two methods of perverting religion, which have ever been as baneful in their effects, as they are unfounded in their principles. It is of great moment to obtain as clear an insight as we can into their nature, their causes, and their consequences; both that we may guard against the intrusion of these pernicious guests into our own minds, and also be prepared to assist others, who are suffering under their influence.

The words, superstition and enthusiasm, have been at different times employed with great laxity, and used by different persons with much diversity of meaning. But, though these terms have been applied sometimes more strictly and sometimes more comprehensively, certain leading ideas have been always intended to be respectively included in them. It will be sufficient, therefore, for our purpose to define each of them by some one of the general properties which it has been uniformly understood to comprise, and from which, other

dependent characteristics might afterwards be deduced, if necessary: by superstition then we mean, "the belief, which a person entertains, that he is able to discover the designs of Providence in bringing about external events;" and by enthusiasm, "a conviction existing in a man's mind, that he is able to determine what sentiments are communicated to him by God's Holy Spirit, at the very time such communication is made, independently of its future and permanent effects.”

Before proceeding farther it will be necessary to prove, on the authority of Scripture, that both these notions are erroneous, and to show in what respects they are so.

Superstition, in undertaking to explain the acts of providence, naturally divides events into two classes, as they are the causes of temporal good or evil; and pronounces them accordingly to be either rewards or judgments. This temper of mind, however, is much more occupied in referring events to the latter division, than to the former; and in this exercise of its peculiar propensity it once met with a signal rebuke from our blessed Saviour. "There were present," says the Evangelist, "at that season, some who told him of the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices." The narrators of the calamity, which had happened to these unfortunate people, having fully satisfied their own minds that

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