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things for little reasons. Thus, of Christianity in its whole substance, there have been zealous advocates, just on this ground, that it is conducive to the temporal well-being of a state! By innumerable persons, some one model of Christian faith is zealously maintained, chiefly, because it has been maintained by their ancestors! In individual instances, we have known persons zealously holding some important doctrine, chiefly, because it has happened to coincide with some particular fancy or impression of the person's mind; not from a consideration of its own great evidences. This is a gross desertion of the rule-that zeal should be " according to knowledge."

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There is also a zeal for single, exclusive points in religion, -whether of greater or less importance-especially the most controverted ones; as if the whole importance of religion converged to those points, and were to be found there alone. (Example in the most strenuous Calvinists and Arminians.) Such zeal miserably impoverishes the interest for religion as a grand comprehensive whole, and for all the parts of it but the one. And thus the very knowledge" itself will dwindle from taking account of the whole.

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We hardly need mention the excessive zeal for a religious sect or party; often for it absolutely as such, and wit' a feeling which goes much beyond even their own estimate of the importance of the articles in which they differ; a merely worldly spirit of competition and jealousy. When it goes this length it is " according to knowledge," of a certain kind -the "wisdom that the apostle James describes as coming from below. Yet even this is put to the account Christian zeal.

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Our text would censure, also, some Christians who pertinaciously will expend their zeal in some one way of attempting to serve religion, when they might apply it to

better purpose in another. Thus, able men have exhausted their talents and labours upon some comparatively trifling things relating to religion, when, with the same exertion, they might have served it in its greatest interests. And Christians of inferior order have been seen invincibly set on serving the cause of God, in ways foreign to their attainments and situations, when there were plainly before them other ways of certain usefulness.

We may add to the enumeration, that zeal which, in attempting to do good, takes no account of the fitness of season and occasion. It is quite enough that the thing and the intention be good in themselves,-never mind when, how, or where. There is no attention to the particular circumstance of the situation; no consideration of the things likely, in a particular instance, to fall in to pervert and frustrate; no selection of opportunity; no judicious policy respecting men's prejudices, or the circumstances that influence them. Of what value is knowledge, as thus illustrated by the want of it! Knowledge would show the adaptation of means to ends, the laws and working of human minds,— the favourable conjunctures. Knowledge would point to consequences. And zeal should not fancy itself the more noble and heroic for setting all consequences at defiance.

As the last thing in the description, we might note that zeal which seems willing to let its activity in public plans and exertions to serve religion, be a substitute for personal religion. It is pleasing to believe "better things" of the majority of such active persons, but the exceptions are too many and obvious. In such zeal, where is the man's knowledge, if it does not strike him-glare upon him, with irresistible conviction, how indispensable is religion to his own self?

And this may suggest, as the concluding observation, (what ought to have been noticed much sooner) that for

the right qualification of religious zeal, mere knowledge, mere correct notional apprehension, will not suffice. As mere knowledge, indeed, it will prevent or repress some of the absurd and mischievous kinds of zeal; but it will not kindle the true zeal for divine things. It must be a knowledge combined with the vital experience of Christianity.

February 20th, 1823.

LECTURE XXVII.

THE WRATH OF MAN OVERRULED.

PSALM lxxvi. 10.

Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee.”

Ir is humiliating to contemplate the glory of God as connected with the ignominy of Man; that Man should be such, that if his righteous Governor is to acquire glory from him, it must be by an exercise of the Divine attributes against him.

It were an easy, but an useless and even melancholy employment of thought, to figure out a splendid vision of what the state of our world might have been if sin had not entered,—a state in which the glory of God should have been also, in its degree, the glory of Man; in which it should have been a willing “praise" that arose to the Most High from the virtues of Man,—his conformity, devotion, gratitude, and delightful obedience. Vain musings! But, it may be sometimes a pleasing and rational employment of thought to go forward to the future age in which the vision will, in a glorious degree, be realized.

But, thus far, through the long sad history, the glory of God has very much arisen from the display of his power in contest with human iniquity. How the human nature could come into such a state, and why the sovereign Lord of all things suffered it to do so, have been the fruitless inquiries of innumerable speculating minds,-inquiries totally in vain. How such an awful fact is to answer, ultimately a good end, is a matter to be surrendered to the wisdom and power of

an Infinite Mind. And methinks it is a glorious thing that there should be a Mind to which all this is no difficulty either to comprehend or to accomplish. For ourselves, all we can say is, that the Universe is vast-that Eternity is long; and that it is perfectly conceivable, that under such a government, acting and combining on such an immensity of space and duration,-it is perfectly conceivable (though not the manner how) that so much evil may answer a glorious end. And no doubt, the redeemed and holy spirits will hereafter have a revelation, in part, and by degrees, of this great mystery.

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In the meantime, we clearly see God in opposition to man. And also we most clearly see that He is right. For wherein has he, through all ages, maintained this opposition? What has he declared and acted against in man? the things that we see and know to be in themselves pernicious and hateful;-idolatry,-disregard of true religion, -delusion,- all the destructive passions,-all crime and vice, all injustice among men,— oppression, — rapacious selfishness, cruelty, - fraud. And therefore it is right that he should gain to himself glory, or "praise," in this opposition. It is not the praise or glory of a powerful tyrant, but of a most righteous Governor. Should he surrender to itself,-let go from his jurisdiction, a world that is careless of him, alienated, irreligious, rebellious? Should he give it up as a province of his dominion from which no tribute of honour can be gained, because it is averse to render him such tribute? Should he keep it in his great system, under a grand economy of Nature and Providence, as a portion entirely waste, as a planet not belonging to his dominion? May he not righteously extort by his power, from the very wickedness of his perverse subjects, a glory which their homage, their love, their obedience, will not yield him? And the whole spirit and avowal of his decla

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