cumstance, as to render the example most money in the most clean-handed way, and who feels compunction in consc atonement, or reparation for his fault. If he only give what he can conveniently spare, or even if his charities somewhat press on his resources, he certainly does nothing but what, on high christian principle, he would be bound equally to do, had his property accumulated in the most honorable modes. And it cannot be sufficient to make that use of money unjustly acquired, which a man of strong piety would make of the produce of integrity and industry, and thus, over and above the concealment of having been dishonest, to acquire the reputation of being benevolent. direct and appropriate. It is not for a moment to be question-quence, give large sums in charity, as an ed that a present advantage is often the immediate result of what is wrong, so that, in one way or another, the sin produces what the sinner desires to obtain. If it were not so, if the consequences of doing wrong were never, nay, if they were not frequently, profitable to the individual who does the wrong thing, we hardly know where, in most instances, temptation would lie, or where would be the exercise of virtue. In general it is a balance between the present and the future which we are required to strike: the great task to which we are summoned, is the not allowing ourselves to be overborne by immediate results, so as to keep more distant out of sight, but the calculating what will be for our profit on the whole, visible things and invisible being alike brought into account. And, of course, whilst such is our condition, or such the system of probation beneath which we live, a sort of temporary reward must often be attainable by the sinner: there must be something of advantage to be procured through want of principle, and lost through rigid conscientiousness. Such cases will often occur in the stir and jostle of a mercantile community, where vast interests become so involved, and immense revenues so depend on the turn of a single speculation, that the least underhand dealing might at times fill a man's coffers, and almost a dishonest thought transform him from the poor to the wealthy. And we are now concerned with the question, as to what is binding on a man, if, with the advantages, procured by a fault, lying at his disposal, the water from the well of Bethlehem sparkling before him, he become convinced of his fault, aware that he has done wrong, or not acted with the honor and integrity which he was bound to have maintained. Is he to drink of the water, to enjoy the advantages? Ah, it may be often a hard question: but we do not see how there can be any true penitence, where what has been wrongfully obtained is kept and used, as though it had been the produce of equitable dealing. If a man have grown rich by dishonesty, he ought, we believe, to become poor through repentance. We cannot think it enough, if an individual, who has not made his We should, therefore, be disposed to give the conduct of David as furnishing an example for those, who, conscious of a fault, are so situated as to be able to reap advantage from that fault. Let the case be that at which we have just hinted, as not unlikely to occur amid the complicated interests of a great mercantile community. Let us suppose an opportunity, presented to a trader, of making large profits, if he will but deviate, in some trifling particular, from what is strictly and undoubtedly upright. The fault to be committed may hardly be greater than that committed by David, who did nothing but thoughtlessly give utterance to a wish which ought not to have been entertained, or at least not expressed. It may just depend on the keeping back of some piece of information which the trade is not compelled to divulge, and which others, if equally on the alert, and equally shrewd, might perhaps have equally obtained, whether a certain article shall fetch a certain price, or be suddenly and greatly depreciated. The trader does nothing but hold his tongue, as David did nothing but give it too much license, and a large profit in consequence lies at his disposal. But now a feeling is wrought in the trader's mind, that it was not the act of a conscientious and high principled man, to take advantage of the ignorance of others, and thus entangle them in a bargain which they would not have made, with his reasons for expecting the sudden fall in the market. And as he debates what ought to be done with property so dubiously acquired, his first resolution will probably be to use it the exact objects injured are not to be ascertained, we do not, nevertheless, understand why there should be appropriation. The king of Israel held the helmet in his hands, and looked upon the water as it sparkled in that war-cup. Was he tempted by the freshness and clearness of the converted draught, now that he felt how wrong he had been in breathing the wish? Oh, no! it looked to him like blood; it came not from the well of Bethlehem, but from the veins of his soldiers: shall he drink, so to speak, of the very life of another? he shrinks from the thought and will do nothing with the water but pour it out to God. well and religiously: at least, he will pittance of orphans and widows. But say, it increases my power of benefiting if there may not be restitution, because others, and promoting religious objects; and I may lawfully retain it, intending that it shall be thus employed. But this is, to the very letter, what David would have done, had he resolved to drink the water, arguing that it would refresh and invigorate him, and thus enable him to fight with greater strength the battle of the Lord. But God will have no of fering on which there is a stain. Money, soiled by the mode of acquisition, is hardly to be sanctified by the mode of employment. When Zaccheus stood before Christ, and described what he did with his property, he spake of giving half his goods to the poor; but, mark, he did not reckon amongst those goods what he might have acquired through underhand dealing-such portion, if such there were, was not his to retain or distribute at pleasure: "If I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation I restore him fourfold." There was an accurate distinction made by this publican, now that he had been brought to a correct state of mind, between restitution and almsgiving: he would give alms of that only which had been honorably obtained; the rest he returned, with large interest, to those from whom it bad been unfairly procured. And though it might be impossible for the trader, in the case just supposed, to make restitution precisely to the parties who have been injured through his successful speculations, we do not see how, with his conscience accusing him of having done wrong, he can lawfully appropriate any share of the profits, any more than David might have lawfully drunk of the water procured at his ill-advised wish. It may not be possible to make restitution: for so interwoven are various interests, and so many are the contrivances for shifting off losses from ourselves, and making them fall upon others, that it is often hard to say where the pressure really rests; and it is among the most melancholy of facts, that the rich speculator who seems only to sweep up the gains of men of large means like himself, would often be found, if you could trace the effects of his speculations through their multifold spreadings, to have compassed unwittingly the ruin of a hundred petty dealers, and wrung away the scanty And the trader stands, with the profits of his scarcely honorable speculation glittering before him. Shall he invest them for his own use? shall he take possession of them for himself and his family? Oh, they may have been coined out of the losses, the distresses, the sufferings of numerous households; they may as well seem to him dimmed with tears, as the water seemed to David polluted with blood; and we would have him, if his repentance be sincere, and he desire to prove that sincerity, imitate the monarch in refusing to appropriate the least portion, in pouring out the whole as an offering to the Lord; and in exclaiming, when tempted to profit by the sin for which he professes to be sorry, Be it far from me, O Lord, that I should do this." 66 Now we have thus endeavored to give practical character to a narrative of scripture, which it is easy to read without supposing it to convey any personal lessons. Probably some of you, on the announcement of our subject, expected us to treat it as a typical history: for the mention of the well of Bethlehem, and the longing for its water, might immediately suggest that Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judah, and that he of fers to each of us, what, in his own words, "shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life." But it may be doubtful whether we have, in this instance, sufficient authority for regarding the registered occurrences symbolical; at all events, we should never spiritualize any narrative of facts, till the facts have been carefully examined as facts, and the lessons extracted which as their record may have been designed to convey. But whilst we should hesitate to found any doctrinal statement on the narrative before us, considered as typical, we know not why, having strictly confined ourselves to the plainest and most practical view of the passage, we may not now, in conclusion, survey the occurrences with an eye that looks for Christ and the Gospel, in the persons and events of earlier dispensations. There may be truth in the supposition, which some have advanced, that David had only a spiritual meaning in the wish to which he gave utterance. It is possible; and, if so, the whole transaction may have had that significative character which belongs to much of the history of early days, and which turned occurences into parables, through which God instructed his faithful servants. David, partially informed as to the scheme of redemption, and knowing that he himself was, in many points, set to prefigure the Messiah, must often have longed for fuller disclosures, and striven to give shape and consistency to dim, mysterious images, which passed to and fro in his visions as a prophet. He would associate Bethlehem, his own birth-place, with the birth-place of the Deliverer of whom he was a type; and look naturally on the trees and waters of that village, as obtaining a holy, a symbolical character from the illustrious Being who would arise there in "the fulness of time." It might then have been a wish for greater knowledge of redemption, which was uppermost in the monarch's mind, when he longed for water from the well of Bethlehem. How natural, that, harassed as he was with temporal troubles, he should desire spiritual consolations, and that he should pray for the refreshments which were eventually to gush forth, as he well knew, from Bethlehem. And may there not have been conveyed to him, through what then took place, intimations in regard of the deliverance of the world? Certainly, it were not difficult to give a parabolic character to the occurrences, and to imagine them ordered with a view to David's instruction. If water is to be fetched from the well of Bethlehem, it must be with the discomfiture of a vast host of foes: three unite in the purpose, and overbear all opponents. And if "living water" is to be brought to those who lie parched on the moral desert of the earth, indeed it can only be with the defeat of mightier than the Philistines: principality and power withstand the endeavor : who shall prevail in so great an enterprise? Three must combine: it is not a work for any one person, even though divine; but three shall unite, to strike down the adversaries, and bring the draught of life to the perishing: and if the cup come apparently in the hand of but one of the three, the other two shall have been equally instrumental in procuring the blessing. Thus far there is so much analogy as would seem to make it not improbable, that the transaction was designed to be significative or symbolical. But does the analogy end here? We would not carry it too far; and yet we can believe that a still deeper lesson was opened up to David. Did he long for water from the well of Bethlehem? did he think that it was only water, something merely to refresh the parched lip of the pilgrim, which was to flow from the Surety of a world that iniquity had ruined? It may have been so: it may have been that he was yet but imperfectly taught in the mysterious truths of propitiation and redemption. What then? he receives what he had longed for, what had been drawn from the well of Bethlehem; but it seems to him not water, it seems to him blood, the blood of one of those who had braved so much for his refreshment. May he not have learned something from this as to the nature of the interposition which the Redeemer would make? May he not have gathered that the fountain to be opened, for the cleansing and refreshing of the world, would be a fountain of blood? "My blood is drink indeed"—these words, uttered years after by the Redeemer himself, may have been virtually syllabled to the Psalmist, through his being forced to regard as blood the water from the well of Bethlehem, that well to which he looked as typifying, in some way, the person or office of Christ. And then there is a high solemnity in his pouring out the water unto the Lord. It was the blood of the costliest sacrifice, and must all be presented as an expiatory offering. We know not whether David were thus instructed or not; whether the transac-hem. The host of the mighty have been tion were designed to be significative, broken through; a stronger than the nor whether, if it were, the symbols were strong has unlocked for us the flowings explained. But certainly the occur- of the river of life: but oh, if we would rences are such as might be woven into take of the stream, and live for ever, we a kind of parable of redemption; and it must acknowledge it as the blood of is always pleasing to find figures and Him who went on our behalf against shadows which correspond to Christian "principalities and powers," and who truths, even where we have no express finding the springs of human happiness warrant for asserting the resemblance. dried, filled them from his own veins, Blessed be God, we need not long in and they gushed with immortality. vain for water from the well of Bethle SERMON VIII. THE THIRST OF CHRIST. "After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst."-JOHN, XIX. 28. If an impostor were to arise, desirous | for whom he wished to be taken, and of passing himself off as some personage whom prophets had foretold, he would naturally take the recorded predictions, and endeavor to make the facts of his history agree with their announcements. It would evidently be useless for him to pretend to the being the predicted individual, unless he could point out at least an apparent correspondence between what he was, and what he did, and the character and conduct which prophecy had delineated. There would, of course, be an immediate reference to the ancient writings, an immediate comparison of their foretellings with what was now given as their accomplishment; and if the two did not agree, the pretender would be instantly scouted, and no one could for a moment be deceived by his pretensions. Hence the great endeavor of the supposed impostor would certainly be to extract from prophecy a full account of the actions and fortunes of the individual then, as nearly as possible, to make those actions and fortunes his own. Suppose, for example, that an impostor had desired to pass himself off as the Messiah, the deliverer and ruler, so long and anxiously expected by the Jews. He would necessarily have been aware that the national expectation rested on certain ancient prophecies, and that all which could be known beforehand of the Christ was contained in certain books received as inspired. It is not, therefore, to be imagined that he would fail to be a student of prophecy, or to take its descriptions as sketches in which he must exhibit delineations of himself. But, supposing him to have done this, could he have made much way in establishing a correspondence between himself and the subject of prophecy? It is easy, undoubtedly, to find, or fancy predictions of which a man might contrive an appa rent fulfilment in respect of himself. They might be predictions of certain things that should be done, and these, or very similar, the man might be able to perform. They might be predictions of certain things that should be suffered; and these, or very similar, the man might endure. But could the individual, whom we have supposed setting up for the Messiah, have managed to effect a conformity between his actions and sufferings, and those predicted of our Lord? It is allowed on all hands, that the history of Christ, as related in the Gospels, corresponds, with great accuracy, to what prophets had foretold of the Messiah. But is the correspondence such an ingenious impostor, having the prophecies in his hands, and studying to produce their apparent accomplishment, could have possibly effected? This is a question well worth the being asked, though the answer is so easy that you may all give it for yourselves. as There are a few respects in which an impostor might have contrived the fulfilment of prophecy. But most of the predictions referring to Christ are of things over which the individual could have no control: predictions, for example, as to the place and circumstances of his birth, as to the treatment which he should meet with, and the death which he should die. They are predictions which were not to be fulfilled by the actions of the party himself, but by the actions of others; and we need not say how little power the individual could have of making others so act as seemingly to accomplish prophecy, however bent he might be on the apparently fulfilling it himself. And it ought to be further observed, that if an imposter had endeavored, in the time of our Lord, to pass himself off as the predicted Messiah, and, accordingly, had attempted to effect a correspondence between his own history and prophecy, he would never have made himself "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He would have taken the national expectation as the just interpretation of prophecy, and never have thought of making good his pretensions by affecting a resemblance between himself and delineations which those around him either denied or disliked. His pattern would unquestionably have been the Messiah, not as described by seers of old, but rather as described in the popular explanations of their visions and we need not tell you that such a Messiah was not presented in the person of our Lord and Master Christ. Thus there is nothing easier than the showing that the correspondence which may be traced between Jesus of Nazareth, and a mysterious personage of whom ancient prophecy makes frequent mention, is such as could not have been produced by any impostor, however artful or powerful. Even had prophecy been far clearer and more explicit than it was; had it not required, in many particulars which now seem quite plain, the being accomplished in order to the being thoroughly understood; we may fearlessly declare that no pretender, taking it as his guide, and laboring to make his life its illustration, could have succeeded in effecting, even in appearance, the thousandth part of those numerous, striking, and frequently minute fulfilments which are to be traced in the actions and endurances of Him whom we honor as the King of Israel, the Anointed of God. But why have we gone into these remarks on a point which, perhaps, may never have occurred to any of our hearers? for, probably, none of you ever entertained a suspicion that Christ might have contrived those fulfilments of prophecy on which so much stress is laid. Our reason is easily given. We have in our text the record of a thing done by Christ, with the view, or for the purpose, of accomplishing an ancient prediction. The course pursued is precisely that which, according to our foregoing statements, an impostor might have been expected to take. The party claiming to be the Messiah remembers a certain prophecy which has not yet been fulfilled, and forthwith sets himself to procure its fulfilment. It is, you see, expressly stated that Jesus said, “I thirst," in order that he might bring round the accomplishment of a passage of Scripture. had this been the solitary instance in which prophecy found itself fulfilled in the history of Jesus, or had other fulfilments been of the same kind, such, that is, as might possibly have been contrived or planned, we admit that the argument from prophecy would have been of little worth in establishing the Messiahship of our Lord. But we have already sufficiently shown you that no such explanation can be given of the correspondences And |