these things be?" we want to be able to | dience most put to the proof? not sureexplain the doctrine, and thus to find ly as to the thing criminal even without grounds for our belief, over and above a commandment: but as to the thing inthe simple word of the Lord. But un- different till there was a commandment. doubtedly it is a higher, and must be a God might have made it the test of more acceptable, exercise of faith, when Adam's obedience that he should not we receive a truth, because revealed, kill Eve-a crime from which he would than when, because, besides being re- have instinctively revolted: but it was vealed, we can so arrange it that it com- a much greater trial that he should not mends itself to our reason. eat of a particular fruit; for eating it was no crime till he was told not to eat it. It is the same with commandments. God enjoins a certain thing: but we can hardly bring ourselves to obey, simply because He has enjoined it. We have our inquiries to urge-why has He enjoined it? if it be an indifferent thing, we want to know why He should have made it the subject of a law? why not have let it alone? Why not? Because, we may venture to reply, He wishes to test the principle of obedience: He wishes to see whether his will and his word are sufficient for us. In order to this, He must legislate upon things which in themselves are indifferent, neither morally good nor morally bad: He must not confine laws to such matters as robbing a neighbor's house, on which conscience is urgent; He must extend them to such matters as taking a bird's nest, on which conscience is silent. It is the same as with a child. He is walking in a stranger's garden, and you forbid his picking fruit: he knows that the fruit is not his, and therefore feels a reason for the prohibition. But he is walking on a common, and you forbid his picking wild flowers: he knows that no one has property in these flowers, and therefore he cannot see any reason for your prohibition. Suppose him however to obey in both cases, abstaining alike from the flowers and the fruit, in which case does he show most of the principle of obedience, most of respect for your authority and of submission to your will? Surely, when he does not touch the flowers, which he sees no reason for not touching, rather than when he does not gather the fruit, which he feels that he can have no right to gather. It is exactly the same with God and ourselves. He may forbid things which we should have felt to be wrong, even had they not been forbidden: He may forbid things which we should not have felt wrong, nay, which would not have been wrong, unless He had forbidden them. But in which case is our obe And we may justly believe that, in constructing the Jewish code, God interspersed laws for which there was no apparent reason with others for which there was palpable, on purpose that He might see whether his people would obey his word, simply because it was his word; whether they would wait to know why He commanded, or be satisfied with ascertaining what He commanded. But upon this, which is manifestly the correct view of obedience, it is to inconsiderable precepts, precepts as to inconsiderable things, rather than to those which have to do with felt and undeniable duties, that we might expect to find annexed a promise of reward. The obedience which shows most of the readiness to obey, must be the obedience which God most approves and if there be shown more of readiness to obey, where the thing done would have been indifferent, than where it would have been criminal without express command, we can have no difficulty in settling that the recompense of long life was even more to be looked for when the precept had to do with a trifle than when with the mightiest obligation. Look at the Jewish law-" Thou shalt not pervert the judgment of the stranger, nor of the fatherless,"-a noble commandment, to whose fitness every heart responds. "If a bird's nest chance to be before thee, thou shalt not take the dam with the young,"—a trivial comandment, for which it is perhaps hard to assign any reason. Yet it is to the latter, the trivial, and not to the former, the noble, that the words are added, "That it may be well with thee, and that thou mayest prolong thy days.” Do ye wonder at this? Nay, it is not that it is a better thing in itself to let the parent bird go, than to minister justice to the stranger and the fatherless : but that it is often harder to obey in trifles, where we looked to have been left at liberty, than in great things, as to whose fitness there has never been a doubt. mising at the first, and you fancied that little material of edification could be found in such a precept as we took for our text. Yet the precept has furuished us with important practical lessons, lessons against covetousness, against cruelty, against extravagance, against an undue use of the power given us by the affections of others, against the making little in religion of little commandments and little duties. What a wonderful book is the Bible, that its every verse should comprehend so much, single sayings being as mines of truth, into which if you patiently dig, you find stores of instruction and yet leave more than you find! By such laws, with such sanctions, God may be said to have consecrated trifles; to have taught us that trifles may be the best tests of principles; that our religion may be better proved by the habitual giving up of our own wills in common and every-day things, than by occasional and opulent sacrifices; that it is a greater effort of piety, marking more the depth of our reverence for the word of the Almighty, to make conscience of little duties which are made duties only by that word, than to give ourselves to high tasks, to which we are Be very careful in reading Scripture, summoned by the wants of the world whether the Old Testament or the New, and the voice of the Church. It may that you pass not over parts, as though be easier, it may require less of that they might be unimportant. Neither simple, unquestioning obedience in be always content with the primary which God delights, to attack supersti- meaning, and the obvious application. tion on its throne, than to let the bird Scripture has a hidden sense as well as fly from its nest. Be careful, then, in an open; and to them who search for religion how you make trifles of trifles. it with prayer, many a beautiful import Stay not to find out why God has for- is disclosed, which would never be susbidden this or that indulgence, why He pected by the careless or cursory obwill not let you do what seems unim- server. A verse is often like the nest portant, why He prescribes rules where on which the parent bird broods : when He might, as it appears, have safely left the parent bird is let go, there are young you to yourselves. Obey because there birds within, each of which has only to is a command, ay, though it be only the be cherished and watched, and it will be faintest expression of the Divinest will;" covered with silver wings, and her Abraham was to slay Isaac, because feathers like gold." God commanded it; you are to let With other lessons, then, carry away the bird, because God commands it. this as to the depth and comprehensiveThis is the obedience which God ap-ness of Scripture. Read the Bible yourproves; this is the obedience which God selves, and teach your children to read will recompense; obedience, not with- it, as a book that should be pondered, out a reason, but with no reason except not hurried over; a book, so to speak, the Divine bidding. Oh! you have only that may be better read by lines than by more and more to show me that it was chapters. Ay, your children-one's really unimportant, whether or not the home is as a nest; Job, when all was old bird were taken with the young, that smiling around him, reports of himself, there could have been no harm in secur-"Then I said, I shall die in my nest." ing both at once, and you more and It is a nest, a nest exposed to many rude more explain why a promise of prosper- invasions. The parent bird cannot ality should be annexed to the commandment, "Thou shalt not take the dam with the young; thou shalt in any wise take the young to thee, and let the dam go." go ways tarry with the young; but, when dismissed to wing its own flight upwards, that parent bird may leave its little ones to a better guardianship, and anticipate a day when they too shall There is neither space nor need for soar to brighter regions, and find a restmany concluding observations. Our sub-ing-place in that tree of life which is ject perhaps looked to you unpro- Christ Himself. SERMON IX. ANGELS OUR GUARDIANS IN TRIFLES. "They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone."-PSALM Xci. 12. The preceding verse is, "For He shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways." You will remember that, when Satan had placed our blessed Lord on the pinnacle of the Temple, it was with these two verses that he backed his temptation that He should cast Himself down, and obtain, through a useless and ostentatious miracle, the homage of the crowd assembled for worship. But the devil misquoted the verses. He left out the words" in all thy ways; "thus representing the angelic guardianship as having no limitation; whereas the promise was evidently meant to apply only whilst there was adherence to the ways of duty-those alone being the ways which could be called "thy ways," whether the passage were applied individually to the Messiah, or generally to the Church. It has been inferred from this application of the passage by Satan, that the words were prophetic of Christ, and should be interpreted especially, if not exclusively, of a care or protection of which our Savior was the object. This inference, however, can hardly be sustained as the devil could misquote, he could also misapply; and though it may be that, in its highest significance, this ninety-first Psalm has respect to the Messiah, there is nothing in its tone to give reason why it may not be taken to himself, by every true believer in "the Lord our righteousness." We shall assume throughout our discourse, that the Psalm is the property, so to speak, generally of the Church: it were to rob the members of some of their choicest comfort to prove that it belonged exclusively to the Head. If Satan gained nothing by applying the Psalm to Christ, he would have gained much if it were thence to be concluded that it applied to none else. But we wish also, as a preliminary matter, to make one or two observations on the translation adopted in the authorized version of our text. The verb which is used conveys the idea of something very violent, "lest thou dash thy foot against a stone." But it does not seem as if the original required us to suppose any thing very violent. The Hebrew word may be interpreted merely of such contact with a stone as would make you stumble, or put you in danger of falling; whereas dashing your foot implies extreme force, as though you were the subject of some unusual disaster or accident. You see that it makes a great difference in the passage, regarded as a promise to the righteous, which of the two turns we give it: we are always in danger of tripping over a stone; we are not always in danger of dashing the foot against a stone: so that you may be said to take the promise out of every-day life, and to confine it to extraordinary emergencies, when it is made to imply such violent collision as is not likely to occur in our commou walks. When the devil, indeed, used the text in the endeavor to persuade Christ to throw Himself headlong from the pinnacle of the Temple, it was literally the dashing the foot against a stone which might have been expected to occur: accordingly the word "dash" is this forcible collision, every case in which a man is in danger of stumbling, over however small an obstacle, and by however gentle a movement. employed with great propriety by our translators, in giving the account of our blessed Savior's temptation. Yet it should be observed that even the Greek word, which is thus translated " dash,' These are the necessary preliminaries by no means conveys necessarily the to our discourse, the settling to whom idea of great force or violence. It is, the text may be applied, and the defining for example, the very same word as is the precise import of its expressions. employed by our Lord in the eleventh The text, you see, is to be applied chapter of St. John's gospel, where He generally to the Church, to the people speaks of the security of a man who of God, of every age and of every dewalks by day, as compared with another gree. The import of its expressions is who walks by night. "Jesus answered, that conveyed by the version in the Are there not twelve hours in the day? Prayer Book, which makes them refer If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth to an ordinary and every-day danger. not, because he seeth the light of this These preliminaries having been adjustworld. But if a man walk in the night, ed, we have to endeavor to follow out he stumbleth, because there is no light in the trains of thought which may be him." We need not say that something evolved from the assertion, that God much less than dashing the foot against a gives his angels charge over the rightstone, will cause a man to trip or stum-eous, to bear them up in their hands, ble as he walks in a dark night. He can hardly" dash the foot" unless he be running; and Christ, at least, speaks only of his walking. As to the Hebrew itself, our translators have not always made it convey the idea of what is violent. The same word occurs in the third chapter of the book of Proverbs, where you read, "Then shalt thou walk in thy way safely, and thy foot shall not stumble." We seem warranted, then, in saying that nothing more is intended in our text than that tripping or stumbling which may indeed occur through violent contact with some great impediment, which may also be occasioned by a mere pebble in our path, and when, too, we are proceeding at a leisurely pace. So that, for once, the Prayer Book version is probably the more accurate of the two: for this runs, "They shall bear thee in their hands, that thou hurt not thy foot against a stone." And with this agrees Bishop Horsley's version, "They shall bear thee up in their hands, that thou hit not thy foot against a stone." There is far less of the idea of violence in the hitting, than in the dashing the foot against a stone. You will understand, as we proceed with our discourse, why we have been so anxious to divest the passage of the idea of violence. Not that we wish you to suppose that the promise does not include the case of dashing the foot; but we would have you aware that it includes cases where there is nothing of lest they hurt their foot against a stone. Now the first thing which strikes one, and which we should wish to set vividly before you, is the contrast between the instrumentality employed, and the business upon which it is used. Let us look a little at what Scripture tells us of angels: we may not be able to understand much as to these glorious and powerful beings; for what is purely spiritual evades our present comprehension; but we cannot fail to learn that they are creatures far transcending ourselves in might and intelligence. They are represented as God's ministers, executing the orders of his Providence. They wait reverently in his presence, to receive the intimations of his will, aud then pass, with the speed of lightning, through the universe, that they may accomplish whatsoever He hath purposed. Of vast number, for "the chariots of God," saith the Psalmist, "are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels,' they are described in holy writ as "creatures of wonderful agility and swiftness of motion, therefore called cherubim, that is, winged creatures," and seraphim, or flames of fire, because of so strange a subtlety as to "penetrate into any kind of bodies, yea, insinuate themselves into, and affect, the very inward senses of men*." An angel, in and through a dream of the night, moved Joseph to take the young child and his Bishop Bull. 66 mother, and return out of Egypt. In shall seem worthy their stupendous en. like manner, an angel roused Peter from dowments. Believing that God will alhis sleep, led him past the keepers, and ways proportion the means which He delivered him from the dungeon. That employs to the end which He proposes, these angels are endowed with admira- you would conclude that the highest of ble efficacy and power, we learn from created intelligences, such as the angels the invocation of David, Bless the are to be accounted, must be employed Lord, ye his angels, that excel in only on what is dazzling and magnifistrength, that do his commandments, cent, on the carrying out the designs of hearkening unto the voice of his word; "the Almighty in and through the nobler and from the fearful history of the de- combinations of cause and effect. And struction of the hosts of the Assyrian, it might almost strike you as derogatory when, in a single night, and through the to the dignity of angels, that they should single agency of one of these celestial be represented in Scripture as minisbeings, "an hundred fourscore and five tering spirits" to the heirs of salvation: thousand" became "all dead corpses." you might almost imagine it beneath We know also of angels, that, as beings of endowment so far surpassing immortal beings, they have no principle our own, that it should be a part, and, of corruption within themselves; as un- as it would seem, a main part of their alterable at least as the pure heaven office, to attend us on our passage through where they dwell, they can never die or this troublesome world, and aid our cnperish but by the hand of Him that first deavors to secure eternal life. gave them being; "* for, speaking of "the children of the Resurrection," Christ hath said, "Neither can they die any more for they are equal unto the angels." 66 And if these be only scattered and passing intimations of the nature and office of holy angels, they are, at least, sufficient to impress us with a sense of the greatness and gloriousness of these invisible beings; a sense which can but be confirmed and increased, when we consider what fallen angels have wrought; they being, according to the representations of Scripture, the grand antagonists of the Almighty Himself, and, though doomed to a certain destruction, yet able, for century after century, to keep the universe unhinged and disordered, not indeed to frustrate the Divine plans, but to oppose such obstacles to their completion as nothing short of Divine power could surmount. What angels are that have kept their first estate, we may infer in a measure from what is done in us and around us, by angels that have apostatized from God. And when you have duly considered and collected what is made known to us as to angels, it cannot fail but that you will have a very lofty idea of these, the principalities and powers of the invisible world, and that you will expect to find them occupied with matters that * Bishop Bull. Yet there is nothing more clearly laid down in the Bible, than that angels are thus employed in waiting on the righteous: and when you come to think of the worth of the human soul, a worth which, if you can measure it by nothing else, you may judge in a degree by the price paid for its redemption, you will probably cease to be surprised, that not only is there "joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth," but that the celestial hosts marshal themselves for the guardianship of the believer, and use their vast power in promoting his good. This, however, is removing the apparent contradiction to the lofty nature and sublime endowments of angels, by magnifying the employment, by arguing that it cannot be beneath any created intelligence to minister unto man for whom God's Son hath died. But if, over and above the general fact of angels being ministering spirits to the heirs of salvation, the Bible set forth angels as doing little, inconsiderable, things on behalf of man, interfering where there seems no scope for, or no need of, their vast power, discharging offices of the most trifling description, rendering services which can hardly be observed, and between which and their ability there is the greatest apparent disproportion, then, in all probability, your surprise will return, and you will again think the occupation derogatory to the beings so employed. Yet such is the case: the scriptural |