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Whether then we reflect on the external condition, or the internal faculties of men; whether we consult our judgment, or our feelings; whether we look to the principles of natural religion, or the principles of revealed, we are led to one and the same result on the duties prescribed in my text. That result has been clearly and forcibly started by St. John, who to a series of directions, in which the most enlarged virtue is combined with the most exalted piety, has subjoined this most instructive and most impressive close-"This commandment have we from the Father, that he who loveth God love his brother also."

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SERMON XXXVIII.

MY MEAT IS TO DO THE WILL OF GOD.

JOHN iv. 34.

Jesus saith unto them, my meat, or (as a very sensible translator has lately rendered the words) my FOOD, is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.

VIRTUE, whether we consider it as a habit in practice, or in disposition-whether we analyze its principles or its obligations-whether we examine its properties by the abstractions of philosophy, or the dictates of common sense, must ultimately be resolved into the will of the Deity, and of course is, in its most perfect state, inseparable from religion. Doubtless, by various writers, intent, as it should seem, upon the establishment of favourite theorems, or heated by their imaginations into undue and undistinguishing fondness for particular terms, it has been described under various denominations. Some

expatiate upon its beauty, and others upon its use

fulness. It has been said to consist in the conformity of our actions to the fitness of things, to rectitude, to truth, to general good. But when the ideas contained under these words are unravelled,

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and the propositions into which they have been introduced are traced to their legitimate consequences, we shall find that they presuppose an established system of causes and effects, from which beauty, or usefulness, or fitness, derive their origin; that they imply an adaptation of the human mind to love that beauty, to discern that usefulness, to approve of that fitness, to assent to that truth, to promote that neral good; or, in other words, such a correspondence between the physical and the moral worldbetween the agency of man, the subjects upon which he acts, and the final causes of his action, as must evidently be ascribed to the ordinary or extraordinary dispensations of the Deity. By the will of that Deity happiness is connected with virtue. By the same will the desire of happiness is interwoven in our very nature; by the same will then we are commanded to be virtuous, in order to be happy; and thus a perfect harmony subsists between the works and the words of God-between the attribute of holiness, and that of benevolence-between the powers and the duty of his moral creaturesbetween their duty and his will. By whatsoever process too the knowledge of our duty be obtained, whether it proceed from natural or revealed religion-whether we be instructed by enlightened sages, or inspired apostles, still the rules on which that duty is contained must be adapted to such visible works of God, as we experimentally find to affect the exercise of our moral faculties, and lead us into the belief of a moral government.

The sanc

tions, which having the force of obligation, communicate to those rules the property of laws exist by the appointment of God, and the ends to which those sanctions are subservient must be the purposes of God. With consummate propriety, therefore, our blessed Lord describes the work which he was sent to do as the will of his Father, and in performing that will, the supernatural powers which he employed were instruments for giving fuller efficacy to the authority of his injunctions, and the influence of his example, and for furnishing him with additional opportunities of showing his perfect obedience to God, and his tender love towards mankind.

In farther discoursing upon the words of my text, I shall first explain some occurrences that are recorded, and some expressions that are employed in the course of the interesting history of which that text makes a part; secondly, keeping in view the metaphorical language of our blessed Lord, I shall unfold the import of it, as it may be generally applied to men, who practising and loving virtue would perform the will of God; and thirdly, I shall consider it as peculiarly illustrated by that purity of conduct, and that sanctity of heart, which are ascribed to the Author and Finisher of our Faith in completing the work assigned to him by his Father. And looking upon this part of the subject as more important than the preceding, I shall make some prefatory observations upon sacred biography, as contrasted with profane, more especially as exemplified in the Gospel of St. John.

Jesus, it seems, had come to a town, that in Hebrew is called Sichem, which means a portion, or as by the Jews it was contemptuously named Sychar, a falsehood, in allusion to what they held to be the false religion of the Samaritans. The Old Testament furnishes us with many similar instances of a play upon words, and for the disposition of the Jews to employ this property of their language to the prejudice of the Samaritans, it were easy enough to account from the activity and malignity of religious intolerance. The disciples had left their Master weary with his journey, and sitting, not as our translation obscurely and improperly says thus, but according to the purport of the original word used by St. John, ourws,* negligently, and as with little

* I am aware that another interpretation is given to the word by respectable scholars, who consider ourws as a consecutive particle, as we say in English narrative "and so" for "and then.” This doubtless is the sense of the word in three passages quoted by Krelsius from Josephus. V. Ant. i. 16. où pòs то μéуεƉos τῆς παρανομίας παραδόντας-πρὸς δὲ τὸ συγγενὲς καὶ τὸ τάχα καὶ λόγοις ἄν σωφρονῆσαι, σκοπήσαντας, οὕτω ποιήσασθαι τὴν πρεσ βείαν; ib. viii. 11. 1. ἐπεὶ σὲ μέγαν ἐκ μικροῦ καὶ μηδὲν ὄντος ἐποίησα οὕτως σε πάλιν καθαιρήσω : B. J. ii. 8, 5. Σωσάμενοι σκεπάσμασι λινοῖς, οὕτως ἀπολούονται τὸ σῶμα ψυχροῖς ὕδασι. Ι admit that the sacred writers have in one instance so used the word, Acts xx. 11. ἀναβὰς δὲ, καὶ κλάσας ἄρτον, καὶ γευσάμενος -OUTшs ¿¿ñλ0€, "so," or "then he went out." But I do not agree with him in applying the same sense of the word either to this verse in St. John's Gospel, or to Acts xxvii. v. 17. and I have the satisfaction to observe, that Abresch and Schlewsner hold "forte" as I do, to be the better explanation. Both the Scholiasts on ourws, in the 1198th line of the Ajax of Sophocles give us eruxer as one meaning of the word ourws. Such

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