mercy impenetrable to us. God has, perhaps, laid up for us in heaven that friend whom we might have lost in eternity, had he been restored to our prayers here. But if the affliction be not improved, it is, indeed, unspeakably heavy. If the loss of our friend does not help to detach us from the world, we have the calamity without the indemnification; we are deprived of our treasure without any advantage to ourselves. If the loss of him we loved does not make us more earnest to secure our salvation, we may lose at once our friend and our soul. To endure the penalty and lose the profit, is to be emphatically miserable. Sufferings are the only relics of the true cross, and when divine grace turns them to our spiritual good, they almost perform the miracles which blind superstition ascribes to the false one. God mercifully takes from us what we have not courage to offer him; but if, when he resumes it, he sanctifies the loss, let us not repine. It was his while it was ours. He was the proprietor while we were the possessors. Though we profess a general readiness to submit to the divine will, there is nothing in which we are more liable to illusion. Self-love is a subtle casuist. We invent distinctions. We too critically discriminate between afflictions which proceed more immediately from God, and disappointments which come from the world. To the former we acknowledge, in words at least, our willingness to submit. In the latter, though equally his dispensation, we seem to feel justified in refusing to acquiesce. God does not desire us to inflict punishments on ourselves; he only expects us to bear with patience those he inflicts on us, whether they come more immediately from himself or through the medium of his creatures. Love being the root of obedience, it is no test of that obedience, if we obey God only in things which do not cross our inclinations, while we disobey him in things that are repugnant to them. Not to obey except when it costs us nothing is rather to please ourselves than God, for it is evident we should disobey him in these also if the allurement were equally powerful in these cases as in the others. We may, indeed, plead in apology that the command we resist is of less importance than that with which we comply; but this is a false excuse, for the authority which enjoins the least, is the same with that which commands the greatest; and it is the authority to which we are to submit, as much as to the command. There is a passage in St. Luke which does not seem to be always brought to bear on this point as fully as it ought: 66 "Unless a man forsake all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple." This does not seem to be quite identical with the command in another place, that "a man should sell all that he has," &c. When the Christian world, indeed, was in its infancy, the literal requisition in both cases was absolutely necessary. But it appears to be a more liberal interpretation of the command, as forsaking" all that we have, extends to a full and entire consecration of ourselves to God, a dedication without reserve, not of fortune only, but of every desire, every faculty, every inclination, every talent; a resignation of the whole will, a surrender of the whole soul. It is this surrender which alone sanctifies our best actions. It is this pure oblation, this offering of unshared. affection, this unmaimed sacrifice, which is alone acceptable to God, through that full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, made for the sins of the whole world. Our money he will not accept without our good will, our devotions without our affections, our services without our hearts. Like the prevaricating pair, whose duplicity was punished by instant death, whatever we keep back will annihilate the value of what we bring. It will be nothing if it be not all.* CHAP. V. On Parable. It is obvious, that the reason why mankind, in general, are so much delighted with allegory and metaphor, is, because they are so proportioned to our senses, those first inlets of ideas. Ideas gained by the senses quickly pass into the region of the imagination; and from thence, more particularly the illiterate and uninformed, fetch materials for the employment of their reason. Little reaches the understanding of the mass but through this medium. Their minds are not fitted for the reception of abstract truth. Dry argumentative instruction, therefore, is not proportioned to their capacity; the faculty by which a right conclusion is drawn, is, in them, the most defective; they rather feel strongly than judge accurately and their feelings are awakened by the impression made on their senses. : The connection of these remarks with the subject of instruction by parable, is obvious. It is the nature of parable * Acts, chap. v. to open the doctrine which it professes to conceal. By engaging attention and exciting curiosity, it develops truth with more effect than by a more explicit exposition. By laying hold on the imagination, parable insinuates itself into the affections, and, by the intercommunication of the faculties, the understanding is made to apprehend the truth which was proposed to the fancy. There is commonly found sufficient rectitude of judgment in the generality to decide fairly on any point within their reach of mind, if the decision neither opposes their interest nor interferes with their prejudice. If you can separate the truth from any personal concern of their own, their verdict will probably be just; but if their views are clouded by passion, or biased by selfishness, that man must possess a more than ordinary degree of integrity who decides against himself and in favor of what is right. In the admirably devised parable of Nathan, David's eager condemnation of the unsuspected offender is a striking instance of the delusion of sin and the blindness of self-love. He who had lived a whole year in the unrepented commission of one of the blackest crimes of the decalogue, and who, to secure himself the object for which he had committed it, perpetrated another almost more heinous, and that with an hypocrisy foreign to his character, could in an instant denounce death on the imaginary offender for a fault comparatively trifling. The vehemence of his resentment even overstepped the limits of his natural justice, in decreeing a punishment disproportioned to the crime, while he remained dead to his own deep delinquency. A pointed parable instantly surprised him into the most bitter self-reproach. A direct accusation might have inflamed him before he was thus prepared; and, in the one case, he might have punished the accuser, by whom, in the other, he was brought to the deepest self-abasement. The prudent prophet did not rashly reproach the king with the crime he wished him to condemn, but placed the fault at such a distance, and in such a proper point of view, that he first procured his impartial judgment, and afterwards his self-condemnation. An important lesson, not only to the offender, but to the reprover. He "who knew what was in man," and who intended his religion, not for a few critics to argue upon, but for a whole world to act upon, frequently adopted the mode of instructing by allegory. Though he sometimes condescended to unveil the hidden sense, by disclosing the moral meaning, in some short, but most significant comment; yet he usually left the application to those whom he meant to benefit by the doctrine. The truth which spoke strongly to their prejudices, by the veil in which it was wrapped, spared the shame while it conveyed the instruction; and they probably found a gratification in the ingenuity of their own solution which contributed to reconcile them to the sharpness of the reproof. The most unjust and prejudiced of the Jews were, by this wise management, frequently drawn in to give an unconscious testimony against themselves; this was especially the case in the instance of the householder and his servants. Had the truth they were led to deduce from this parable been presented in the offensive form of a direct charge, it would have fired them with inexpressible indignation. Christians who abound in zeal, but are defective in knowledge and prudence, would do well to remember that discretion made a remarkable, though not disproportionate part of the Redeemer's character; he never invited attack by imprudence, or provoked hostility by intemperate rashness. When argument was not listened to, when persuasion was of no avail, when even all his miracles of mercy were misrepresented, and his divine beneficence thrown away, so that all farther attempts to do good were unavailing, he withdrew to another place; there, indeed, to experience the same malignity, there to exercise the same compassion. The divine Author of our religion gave also the example of teaching, not only by parable, but by simple propositions, detached truths, pointed interrogations, positive injunctions, and independent prohibitions, rather than by elaborate and continuous dissertation. He instructed, not only by consecutive arguments, but by invitations, and dissuasives adapted to the feelings, and intelligible to the apprehensions of his audience. He drew their attention by popular allusions, delighted it by vivid representations, and fixed it by reference to actual events. He alluded to the Galileans, crushed by the falling tower, which they remembered to local scenerythe vines of Gethsemane, which they beheld, while he was descanting respectively upon repentance, and upon himself, as the "true vine." By these simple, but powerful and suitable methods, he brought their daily habits, and every-day ideas, to run in the same channel with their principles and their duties, and made every object with which they were surrounded contribute its contingent to their instruction. The lower ranks, who most earnestly sought access to his person, could form a tolerably exact judgment on the things he taught, by the aptness of his allusions to what they saw, and felt, and heard. The humble situation he assumed, also, prevented their being intimidated by power, or influenced by authority. It at once made their attendance a voluntary act, and their assent an unbiased conviction. The questions proposed with a simple desire of instruction, were answered with condescending kindness; those dictated by curiosity or craft, were repelled with wisdom, or answered, not by gratifying importunity, but by grafting on the reply some higher instruction than the inquirer had either proposed or desired. Where a direct answer would, by exciting prejudice, have impeded usefulness, he evaded the particular question by enforcing from it some general truth. On the application of the man whose brother had refused to divide the inheritance with him, in declining to interfere judicially, he gave a great moral lecture of universal use against avarice, while he prudently avoided the subject of the particular litigation. His answer to the entangling question, "And who is my neighbor?" suggested the instructive illustration of the duty to a neighbor, in that brief, but highly finished apologue of the good Samaritan. The Jews, who would never have owned that a Samaritan was their neighbor, were, by this pious management, drawn in to acknowledge, that every man, without regard to country, who was even of a hostile country, if he needed their assistance, was their neighbor. In this slight outline, three characters are sketched with so much spirit and distinctness, that, as Mr. Boyle says of Scripture truths in general, they resemble those portraits, whose eyes, every one who enters the room, fancies are fixed on him. False zeal, which he generally found associated with pride and hypocrisy, was almost the only vice which extorted from him unmitigated severity: if he sometimes corrected presumption and repelled malicious inquisitiveness, he uniformly encouraged distress to approach, and penitence to address him. The most indirect of his instructions inculcated or encouraged goodness. The most simple of his reasonings were irrefragable without the formality of syllogism; and his brief, but powerful persuasions went straight to the heart, which the most elaborate discussions might have left unmoved. Every hearer, however illiterate, would at once seize his meaning, except those who found themselves interested in not understanding it; every spectator, "if they believed not him, would believe his works," if pride had not blinded their eyes, if prejudice had not barred up their hearts. Thus, if in the gospels the great doctrines of religion are not always conveyed in a didactic form, or linked with logi |