plaintive elegy, which perhaps the mother of Sisera may have uttered over her son, it might possibly win a tear from us, even fresh from Deborah's song.

But, on the whole, God works out his own ends. Let us neither irreverently slander, nor scoff at the past; nor yet need we blindly worship it. The Almighty and All-wise has himself taught us at sundry times and in diverse manners, but especially by his only-begotten Son, to rise alike above the manners and the sentiments which are painted in the book of Judges with so lively a pencil. Yet He has nowhere taught us to trample irreverently on the tomb of religious antiquity, any more than human instinct would lead some great conqueror or successful statesman to sneer at the humble cottage where perhaps his father first drew breath. Peradventure the time may come, at least in heaven, when much of what we now believe may appear to those, for whom God has reserved some better thing, as much type, as much parable, as much shadow, as the belief of the Jews of old now appears to ourselves. For it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard. Peradventure then, I say, God is now leading us to heaven by a route, which may hereafter appear to us as strange, and as merely typical, as that of the Israelites through the wilderness on their way to Canaan. Only some things, we know, can never pass away; for the word of the Lord in its highest spirit abideth for ever. To him, our first Father and our great Teacher, be all grateful worship rendered for the many lessons He has hitherto in diverse manners given to his creatures. To him be praise for our instincts, our capacities, our feelings, our reason,

our conscience, our affections; nay, even for our wants, our fears, and our sorrows, which have so often turned us in search of some higher strengthener than any arm of flesh. To him also be glory for all the wonderful course of the world's history, wherein by strange and mysterious providences, good has been brought out of evil, matter has been subdued to mind, brute force has been found inferior to justice, the patriot has trodden down the oppressor, the primeval curse has lost its sting, want has become the stimulus of labour, and labour the instrument of progress. Nor less, but rather more, to God be praise for the religious history of mankind, though the page may be sprinkled with blood. To his providence and his Holy Spirit be ascribed the work of raising up many servants, such as Melchisedec, Moses, and Samuel; and so of keeping alive in the world an elect assembly, of priest, and prophet, and saint; who, however imperfect in their generation, still leavened with the fear of God the perverseness of man's heart; trampling over influences apparently most powerful and most opposed. That a succession of such men has never been extinct, but has rather waxed mightier in persecution; that in the earlier stages of its progress it embodied its own experiences in writing, whereby we possess both a faithful record of the past, and a written voice of the Church, wherewith all subsequent utterances of the Holy Spirit through the reason of man must submit to be compared, so as to be tested thereby; but above all, that in the fulness of time the Prince of peace came, breaking down partition walls, and reconciling Jew and Gentile alike to each other, and to God; so

that henceforward mankind is Israel, and the world is Jerusalem, and all our Deborahs must learn to speak in the language of Mary, seeking the one thing needful, by sitting at the feet of Christ. These things, brethren, are all the work of God, and they ought to be marvellous in our eyes. It ought to be with us an object of no mean ambition to join ourselves on to this company of the servants of the Lord; even to be afflicted, if it must needs be, in their affliction; enduring, as men who see that which is invisible, and smitten with a great desire of no earthly crown. Truly if our light is greater, so also is our responsibility. Deborah may be judged by the standard of her own times. She felt no reproach of conscience as she broke into her strain of triumph, for she spoke according to the light that was in her.

But we, brethren, in proportion as the Fatherly providence and Holy Spirit of God are ever revealing to us more of the eternal mind, are called upon, by every consideration of our soul's health, to act on the highest standard which may be open to our conception. Judge you therefore, I entreat you, candidly for yourselves, whether you are now doing your duty as honestly, by God, and by man the child of God, and by your own immortal souls, as Deborah and Barak did their duty in their day by what they naturally conceived to be the cause of the Lord.

If you see ignorance around you, and do nothing to enlighten it; or want and pain innocent yet pining, and do nothing to relieve it; if you see profaneness and vice, or meanness and falsehood, yet encourage it; if you suffer any favourite sin to make encroachment on your

lives, lurking perhaps in the secret places of your mind, like the archers of Canaan by the watering-places of Israel; if in short you are either consciously doing harm or doing no good, then brethren, it is my duty to say you are in danger of the curse of Meroz-for why?— You come not to the help of the Lord against the mighty.

LAMPETER, June, 1852.

1 It might here be considered, whether those who observe a dangerously growing discrepancy now between the faith of some, and the knowledge of others, and who are aware that it arises in part from the exaggerations of religious teachers, are justified in giving the weight of their own authority to such exaggerations; or in contrasting the divine teachings in general, and those especially termed our two great revealings, more strongly than facts will warrant.

SERMON VIII.

PARENTS AND CHILDREN.

A foolish son is a grief to his father, and bitterness to her that bare him. Proverbs xvii. 25.

No one can read the Book of Proverbs attentively, without observing that it is of a character somewhat different from any other in the Bible. It is neither historical, like the Book of Kings; nor devotional, like the Psalms; nor poetical, like the grand strains in which the Hebrew prophets embodied their inspiration. There is rather something homely and didactic in the air of the whole book. The several proverbs were precisely that sound which we can imagine falling from the lips of old men, as, rejoicing in the summer evening's coolness, they sat in the gate of Hebrew cities. Whether then we look at the precepts themselves, or whether we consider the origin of writings which most nearly resemble them in other countries, we can scarcely doubt that the wise son of king David was as much their collector as their author; and that he brought out of the treasury of his memory things which were old, as well as out of his conception those which were new.

Nor is the above idea inconsistent with the titlepage prefixed to the whole book. I say the title-page;