A SERMON, &c. 1 MACCABEES, iii. 21. We fight for our lives and our laws. THESE words were addressed by Judas, a distinguished leader of the Jews, to his countrymen, when the Syrians, leagued with the Samaritans, were preparing to oppress them. Their cause was just, their danger was imminent, and the example of their valour may, I should hope, be without impropriety recommended to imitation, even before a Christian audience. The first part, then, of this discourse will be employed in examining, whether or no, the principle of patriotism be warranted by the authority of the gospel; and the second, in conformity to the express language of the text, will be directed to such topics as are more immediately suggested to our minds by the present solemnity. That to love our country ardently is an amiable quality, that to promote the interest of it diligently is a meritorious service, and that to die in the defence of it, voluntarily, is a noble instance of magnanimity, are truths most congenial to the undebauched sentiments of the heart, and supported by the unequivocal concurrence, and the uniform experience of all ages, whether ancient or modern, and of all nations, whether barbarous or civilized. Propositions, indeed, collaterally or incidentally connected with those truths, like many other ques tions which branch out from the wide and complex generality of ethics, may in theory have often been perplexed by intricate subtilties, and in practice often perverted to criminal purposes. Hence the embellishments of rhetoric, and the charms of poetry, have been injudiciously or corruptly lavished upon those actions, which, under the specious colour of a regard for our country, wound the purest feelings of humanity, violate the plainest dictates of justice, and deform the goodly works of our Creator by wild desolation and merciless carnage. But the calm and impartial voice of reason will ever separate the claims of true patriotism from those of the false, by an appeal to principles which unfold the real duties, and ascertain the real interests of society; and, as religion itself is intended for the direction and the benefit of rational and social beings, we may safely infer that, what reason authorizes, religion does not forbid. On the contrary supposition, indeed, we should let loose upon multitudes the same disorders which the unlimited and unqualified application of the rule for the forgiveness of enemies would inevitably bring upon individuals. The interests of the present life would not only be severed from those of the future, but would appear wholly incompatible with them; the analogy which seems to pervade the whole moral world, and to connect obligation with our experience of utility, sympathy with our perception of pain and pleasure in other men, and approbation or disapprobation with our sense of their conduct, as right or wrong, would be obscured; the aggre gate of moral improvement arising from the various relations in which we stand to each other would be diminished; the exercise of passive courage, as it has been called, would become not merely the supreme, but almost the sole duty of man; self-love, which now contains within itself the germ of so many social virtues, and by proper culture adds so largely to the stock of social happiness, would be useless, as a part of our nature co-operating with benevolence in the formation of our social character; self-defence would cease to be vindicated by the plea of self-preservation; the weak would be delivered over as a prey to the strong, the unoffending to the tyrannical; and nations the most enlightened and refined would be exposed to the fierce and sudden incursions of barbarous hordes, who would in a moment destroy all that had been effected by the wisdom and the labour of successive ages, mutilate every monument of art, and efface every vestige of civilization and science. pose It were a gross affront, then, to religion, to supthat it was intended to introduce such a mass of evils; to thwart the suggestions of common sense; to cramp the efforts of common justice; and to throw down every security for that national independence, without which society would resemble a state of nature, and might relapse into it without any visible increase of wretchedness or degradation to our species. Though the first teachers of Christianity, from their peculiar and important office, and the first converts to it, from their peculiar and trying situa tion, were directed to lay down their lives in the cause of their Master, still their attachment to that cause was, from the beginning, perfectly compatible with any other obligations that required them to make a similar sacrifice for any other purpose, by which the real good of mankind could have been promoted. For the frequency, and for the earnestness of those directions we may account, by the extraordinary difficulties which the primitive Christians were to overcome, and the extraordinary severities which they were to undergo. But before we allow the inconsistency of such directions with the general duties of man as a social being, it must be shown that any interdict against those duties was ever pronounced, that any dispensation from them was ever offered, or even any disapprobation of them was ever hinted, by Jesus Christ. The Roman might have fought in the ranks of Cæsar; the Athenian might have peaceably endeavoured to mitigate the servitude of Greece; the Jew might have employed the remains of civil power in his own country, for the advantage of his countrymen; and yet each might have lived a faithful disciple of Jesus, and each might have died an heroic martyr for the honour of his blessed name. If the author of our faith, when arraigned as Cæsar's enemy before the representative of Cæsar, declined all discussion upon the just or the unjust pretensions of earthly potentates, and declared "his own kingdom not to be of this world"-if, in the way of a direct moral answer to a direct political question, he shunned all dispute upon the right of |