What shall we say of this strange boast? Was it enthusiasm, or the pride of virtue, that drew it from him? This honest man, we will say, might believe himself, when he talked at this rate: but then we must conclude, that nothing but the most intemperate love of praise could have wrought him up to so frantic a persuasion.

I suppose, it may now appear how easily we become the dupes of any favourite passion; and how perfect an insight our Lord had into the nature of man, when he asserted in the text-that we cannot believe, if we will receive honour one of another. We cannot, you see, believe; because, if that honour be the ultimate end and scope of our ambition, the best faculties we possess, the fairest virtues of our hearts, will pervert, and, in a manner, force us into infidelity.

Let this humiliating consideration have its full effect upon us. Above all, let it check, or rather regulate that ardent desire of fame, which is so predominant in young and inge

en toute chose, d'être le seul auteur de mon siecle, & de beaucoup d'autres, qui ait ecrit de bonne foi.

Rousseau, Lettre à M. de Beaumont.

nuous minds. Let such learn from it to mistrust their passions, even the most refined and generous, when they would inquire into the evidences of their religion. Let them remember that reason, pure impartial reason, is to direct them in this search; that the passion for honour is in all cases, but particularly in this (where it is so seducing) an unsafe and treacherous guide; and that, to escape the illusions of infidelity and a thousand other illusions, to which they will otherwise be exposed in common life, one certain method will be, To controul their love of fame, by the love of truth; which is, in other words, to seek the honour, that cometh of God, only.

SERMON XVIII.

PREACHED APRIL 23, 1769.

JOHN, ix, 41.

Jesus saith to them, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say we see, therefore your sin remaineth.

THESE words were spoken by our Lord on occasion of a great miracle performed by him, in restoring a man born blind to his sight. This wonderful display of power had its natural effect on the man himself, in converting him to the faith of Jesus; while the Pharisees, who had the fullest evidence laid before them of the fact, persisted obstinately in their infidelity. Yet the blind man, on whom this

miracle had been wrought, was one of those whom the Pharisees accounted blind in understanding, also; in other words, he was a plain unlettered man; whereas they themselves were guides to the blind, that is, they pretended to a more than ordinary knowledge of the law and the prophets, by which they were enabled to conduct and enlighten others.

Jesus, therefore, respecting at once his late restoration of the blind man's sight, and the different effects of that miracle on the minds of the two parties, applies, with singular elegance, to himself, the famous prediction of Isaiah For judgment, says he, am I come into this world, that they, which see not, might see; and that they who see, might be made blind. The Pharisees were, indeed, sharp-sighted enough to perceive the drift of this application, and therefore said to him, in the same figurative language, Are we blind also? To whom Jesus replied in the words of the text, If ye were blind, ye should have no sin; but now ye say we see, therefore your sin remaineth. As if he had said, “If ye were indeed ignorant of the law and the prophets, as ye account this poor man to be, ye might have some excuse for not believing in me, who appeal to that law and those prophets for the proof of my

mission; but being so skilled in them, as ye are, and profess yourselves to be, ye are clearly convicted of a willful, and therefore criminal, infidelity."

It is implied, we see, in this severe reproof of the Pharisees, that knowledge and faith very well consist together, or rather that, where knowledge is, there faith must needs be, unless a very perverse use be made of that knowledge.

But to this decision of our Lord, the unbelieving world is ready to oppose its own maxims. "It sees so little connexion between faith and knowledge, that it rather concludes them to be incompatible: It allows the ignorant, indeed, who cannot walk by sight, to walk by faith; but, as for the knowing and intelligent, the men of science and understanding, it presumes, that faith cannot be required of these; and that, BECAUSE they see, it is too much to expect of them, to believe in Jesus."

It is true, the persons, who speak thus slightly of faith, are not the most distinguished in the world by their own parts, or knowledge. But a certain mediocrity of both, inflated by vanity, and countenanced by fashion, is forward to in