tions, and not unfuitable to humble candidates for pardon, acceptance, and immortal happiness.

Is this too great a burden to be impofed upon us for a few days; is it too great a facrifice of our time, our thoughts and our amufements to an invisible world and a reverfionary inheritance of ineftimable value? It certainly is if the gofpel be all a fabricated tale. But if it contain the words of fobernefs and truth; if its divine authority is established by fuch an accumulation of evidence of various kinds as never before concurred to prove any other facts or events in the hiftory of the world, by eviden ces fpringing from different fources, yet all centering in the fame point, and converging to the fame conclufion; if even the few incidental proofs that have been offered to your confideration in the course of these Lectures have produced that conviction in your minds which they seem to have done, what then is the confequence? Is it not that truths of fuch infinite importance well deferve all that confideration for which I am now contending; and that we ought to embrace with eagerness every appointed means and every favorable opportunity that is thrown in our way, of demonftrating our attachment and our gratitude to a crucified Saviour, who died for our fins and rofe again for our juftification, and will come once more in glory to judge the world in righteousness, and to distribute his rewards and punishments to all the nations of the earth affembled before him? At that awful tribunal may we all appear with a humble confidence in the merits of our Redeemer, and a trembling hope of that mercy which he has promised to every fincere believer, every truly contrite and penitent offender!

་་་

LECTURE XIII.

MATTHEW xiii. continued.

THE

HE Lectures of the last year concluded with an explanation of the parable of the fower; and immediately after this follows in the Gospel the parable of the tares, which will be the fubject of our prefent confideration*.

The parable is as follows: "The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good feed in his field; but while men flept, his enemy came and fowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was fprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares alfo. So the fervants of the householder came and faid unto him, Sir, didft thou not fow good feed in thy field; from whence then hath it tares? He faid unto them, an enemy hath done this. The fervants faid unto him, wilt thou then that we go and gather them up. But he faid nay, left while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together unto the harvest; and in the time of harvest I will fay to the reapers, gather ye together firft the tares, and bind them up in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheet into my barn."

After our Lord had delivered his parable, and one or two more very fhort ones, we are told that he fent the multitude away, and went into the house; and his disciples came unto him faying, "Declare unto us the parable of the tares of the field. He anfwered and faid unto them, he that foweth the good feed is the Son of man. The field is the world; the good feed are the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked

Matth. xiii. 24.
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one.

The enemy that fowed them is the devil.

The harveft is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire, fo fhall it be in the end of this world. The Son of man fhall fend forth his angels, and they fhall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity, and fhall caft them into a furnace of fire, there fhall be weeping and gnathing of teeth. Then shall the righteous fhine forth as the fun in the kingdom of their Father who hath ears to hear let him hear."

This parable well deferves our most serious confideration, as it gives an answer to two questions of great curiofity and great importance, which have exercifed the ingenuity and agitated the minds of thinking men from the earliest times to the prefent, and perhaps were never, at any period of the world, more interefting than at this very hour.

The firft of thefe queftions is, how came moral evil into the world?

The next is, why it is fuffered to remain a fingle moment; and why is not every wicked man immediately punifhed as he deferves?

The first of thefe queftions has, we know, in almost all ages, and in all countries, been a conftant fubject of inveltigation and controverfy among metaphyficians and theologians, and has given birth to an infinity of fanciful theories and fyftems, to one more particularly in our own times, by a man of very diftinguished talents*; all which however have failed of folving the difficulty, and have proved nothing more than this mortifying and humiliating truth, namely, the extreme weaknefs of the human intellect, when applied to fubjects fo far above its reach, and the utter inability of man to fathom the counfels of the Moft High, and to develop the myfterious ways of his providence, by the fole ftrength of unafliited rea

Soame Jenyns.

fon*. That those who were never favored with the light of revelation fhould indulge themselves in fuch abftrufe fpeculations, can be no great wonder, but that they who have access to the original fountain of truth, and can draw from that facred fource the most authentic information on this point, fhould have recourse to the fallible conjectures of human ingenuity, and fhould hew out to themselves "cifterns, broken cifterns, that can hold no water," is a moft unaccountable error of judgment, and a ftrange mifapplication of talents, and wafte of labor and of time. We are told in the very beginning of the Bible, that he who firft brought fin or moral evil into the world, was that great adverfary of the human race, the devil, who firft tempted the woman, and fhe the man, to act in direct contradiction to the commands of their Maker.

This act of disobedience destroyed at once that innocence and purity and integrity of mind, with which they came out of the hands of their Creator; gave an immediate and dreadful fhock to their whole moral frame, and introduced into it all thofe corrupt propenfities and difordered paffions which they bequeathed as a fatal legacy to their defcendants; of which we all now feel the bitter fruits, and have, I fear, by our own personal and voluntary tranfgreffions, not a little improved the wretched inheritance we received from our ancestors. This is the true origin of moral evil; and it is exprefsly confirmed by our Saviour in the parable before us; in which, when the fervants of the householder exprefs their surprise at finding tares among the wheat, and afk whence they came, his anfwer is, an enemy hath done this; and that enemy our our Lord informs us is the devil; that inveterate implacable enemy (as the very name of Satan imports) of the human race, the original author of all our calamities, and

Among the differtations of Plutarch (which go by the name of his morals.) there is a very curious and ingenious one, intitled peri tōn upo tou thelou brads timüroumenon, concerning thofe whom the Deity is flow in punishing. In this, among other juft remarks, he obferves, "that many things which great generals, ard legiflators, and flatefmen do, are to common obfervers incomprehenfible. What wonder is it then, fays he, if we cannot understand why the gods inflict punishment on the wicked, fometimes at an earlier, fometimes at a later Feriod? Plut. Ed. Xyland. v. 2. p. 549. F.