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our attention to the sensible media of the Almighty's goodness, or "to stop at second causes," when that goodness is exhibited in a manner that suggests no idea of a miraculous interposition in our behalf? Were we recovered from a disease in such a manner as to assure us of the working of a preternatural energy within us; were our limbs, after having been long imprisoned in paralysis, set at liberty, in an instant, at the utterance of a word; or were our eyes, after years of blindness, to open, at a touch, upon the objects around us;- we should hardly, at such a moment, restrain our attention to the person whose voice we heard, or whose touch we felt-the immediate, sensible cause of our restoration. The mind would merely glance at the human vehicle of strength or sight, and fix its full and undistracted gaze on God. Yet are we certain that such a miraculous cure of our infirmity would be but a specific example of the self-same goodness, which "healeth all our diseases, and redeemeth our life from destruction."

No other reason, we presume, can be assigned for this comparative inattention to the manifestations of the divine beneficence in the order of nature, than that the uniform

appearance, and frequent recurrence of objects, tend to harden the mind to the impressions which they are adapted to produce; and that it is not the value or excellence of things, which, for the most part, attracts attention to their causes; but the surprise or wonder which they may happen to awaken. The understanding immediately assents to the proposition, that the works of nature and the works of God are the same: that, in these forms of speech, God and Nature are strictly synonymes: but the edge of this convictionas of a thousand other convictions by a similar cause is blunted by a long, unbroken familiarity with the natural media of good; with the instruments, animate and inanimate, by which, in the order of nature, the Almighty effects the deliverance, or upholds the wellbeing of his creatures. In the instance of bodily cure, not Christians only, but theists in general, would concur with the Psalmist, in acknowledging that it is God who "healeth our diseases, and redeemeth our life from destruction:" but he healeth them by identical or analogous means and processes-in a manner which moves no astonishment, as would a miracle; and, consequently, the devout ascription of our redemption from the

grave to the Supreme Restorer, is apt to degenerate into a tardy, inert deduction of the understanding. If, therefore, there was any circumstance of peculiar enormity in the ingratitude of the lepers, it was that, in the miraculous nature of their cure, the compassion of the Almighty towards them, though not more clearly demonstrated to reason, was more immediately and vividly presented to their minds. The heedlessness and inattention consequent on the recurrence of the same or similar sensations, was, in their case, done away; and no excitement of wonder was wanting to stimulate their devotional feelings. They were called to no effort, no duty of consideration, in order to raise their conceptions to the Author of all good, and to fill their hearts with grateful adoration. The Almighty had superseded the necessity, anticipated the process of reflection, and rendered the conviction of his interposition to heal them as instantly and inevitably palpable as the extinction of their leprosy-simultaneous with the strength which suddenly begirt their limbs, and the hue of health which, in a moment, overspread their frame. A persuasion of the hand of God in their restoration, so irresistibly forced upon their minds,

demanded a sentiment of gratitude correspondingly energetic and profound; and, accordingly, the unthankfulness of these lepers evinced an extreme induration of soul; and their omission" to give glory to God" was aggravated to a glaring hue of impiety.

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Nor is that all. The astonishment which necessarily seized them must have heightened, inexpressibly, the joy excited by their cure. Surprise or wonder not only stimulates the understanding, but is a mighty element in all the movements of the heart. It lends an impetus to all the passions; it strikes an intensity into every feeling into which it enters the exultation of success-the shame of defeat and failure-the dejection of calamity. Every evil and every good is notoriously magnified to our experience by its unexpectedness, or by the emotion of astonishment. Disease is invariably imbittered to us by the suddenness of its irruption; and the natural fear of the last enemy is exasperated to horror, when he comes upon us without foretoken or harbinger, and in the manner of a prodigy. In like manner, the joy which animates the heart on the cure of a distemper, is carried to ecstasy by the rare or unprecedented efficacy of the means employed to

effect it, or by the wonderful rapidity of its accomplishment. The subject of such a cure, it were reasonable to infer, like one who had been saved from a shipwreck, in which a multitude had perished, would be affected with peculiar emotions of gratitude to the Divine Being; and should he afterwards consent to the instigations of evil, would be encoun tered by a sterner resistance from his conscience, and be overtaken with a keener remorse. The instantaneous cure of the lepers-their emancipation, in a moment, from the filthy and oppressive chain which had hung upon them, must have awakened a transport of exulting emotions, which none but such as have been the subjects of a similar miraculous renovation of their frame, can be supposed to have experienced; and, agreeably to the constitution of our nature, it was fitted to exalt to the utmost their conception of the favour which God had shown them. That, notwithstanding, they proved ungrateful, and, while the Samaritan, "when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at the feet of Jesus, giving him thanks," they, on the contrary, slunk away, and kept aloof from their Omnipotent healer

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