ed every one of them to be the work of Beelzebub, and the casting out of any of them as a direct triumph of warfare against the prince of the devils. They themselves, it would appear, laid claim to the power of dispossessing these demons, and we have no doubt that the imagination of such a power residing with them and their children, or proselytes, would help to give them that prophetical sanctity in the eyes of the common people, which they so much aspired after. But when the very thing on which they tried to strengthen their own claims to authority, was done by that man, the progress of whose authority among his countrymen, they were determined, at all hazards, to arrest; they went round the whole compass of their principles, and quashed the voice of every one of them, rather than own the hand of God, or submit to the demonstration of his power in the miracle before them. It was indeed a desperate fetch that they made for an argument, when the very work in which they gloried, and on which they founded the credit of their own order, was so maligned and misrepresented by them. They had ever been in the habit of ascribing the possessions of that age to the power of Beelzebub-and now to give a colour to their hatred of Jesus and his claims, they suppose the house of Beelzebub to be divided against itself, and they ascribe to his power a miracle, the doing of which went to dispossess him of a part of his empire. They pretended that their sons or their proselytes had the power of casting out those possessions, and never failed to ascribe this power to the Spirit and the countenance of Godbut now they turned round upon the matter, and

by rearing their argument against the Saviour in the direct face of their own principle, did they prove how firmly they were resolved to lay hold of an anything, rather than admit the claims of one who was so offensive to them. Thus did

they give, perhaps, at this moment, a more conspicuous evidence than they had ever done before, how every proof and every remonstrance would all be wasted upon them. The Spirit of God had gone his uttermost length with them, and on abandoning them for ever, he left behind him their blood upon their own head, and the misery of an irrecoverable condition, that was of their own bringing on. He had long borne with them -and it will be seen in the day of reckoning, when all mysteries are cleared up, how great the patience, and the kindness, and the unwearied perseverance were which they had resisted. For though the Spirit strives long, he does not strive always; and they brought on this crisis in their history, just by the very steps in which every impenitent man brings it on in the present day, by a wilful resistance to the light of their own understanding; by a resolute suppression of the voice of their own conscience.

But we must bring all these explanations to a close. The distinction between speaking against the Son of man, and speaking against the Holy Ghost, may be illustrated by what he says of the difference between bearing witness of himself, and another bearing witness of him. If he had had no other testimony than his own to offer, they had not had sin. If he had not done the works before them which none other man did, and which no mere son of man could do, they had not had sin.

If he had had nothing to show on which to sustain the character that signalized him above the mere children of men, their resistance could have been forgiven-but he had shown the most abundant evidence on this point-he had just performed a deed which their every habit, and their every conception, led them to ascribe to the Spirit and the power of God-he had brought forward what, to their own judgments, was the testimony of the Spirit, and they resisted it. It was no longer now an opposition to man, and a railing of man, and a contemptuous negligence of man-all this is sinful; but it was not that which blocked up the way against the remission of sin-it was when they reviled him who offered to lead them on in that way, that they were ever strengthening the barrier which lay across the path of acceptance. While the last and most conclusive proof that would be given of Jesus having indeed the seal and the commission of the Spirit upon him, was not yet tried, and found ineffectual-all their opposition to him still partook of opposition to one of whom the most decisive evidence that he was any thing more than the Son of man, was still in reserve. It still partook of opposition to a fellowman. But when that decisive evidence was at length offered, and the Spirit interposed with his last and greatest attempt to vindicate his own seal, and to authenticate his own commission on the person of Jesus of Nazareth-then that which was before the speaking evil of the Son of man, became the speaking evil of the Son of God; and that, aggravated to the uttermost length that it now would be permitted to go. And the Pharisees, by smothering the light of all that evidence

which the Holy Spirit had brought forward, both in the miracles that were done, and in the graces of that sinless example which was set so impressively before them, had, by that time, raised in their hearts such an entrenchment of prejudice against the faith of the Gospel, and so discouraged the Holy Spirit from any farther attempt to scale and to surmount it, that all recovery was hopeless, and all forgiveness was impossible.

SERMON XIII.

ON THE ADVANTAGES OF CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE TO THE LOWER ORDERS OF SOCIETY.

ECCLESIASTES IV. 13.

Better is a poor and a wise child than an old and foolish king, who will no more be admonished.

THERE is no one topic on which the Bible, throughout the variety of its separate compositions, maintains a more lucid and entire consistency of sentiment, than the superiority of moral over all physical and all external distinctions. This lesson is frequently urged in the Old Testament, and as frequently reiterated in the New. There is a predominance given in both to worth, and to wisdom, and to principle, which leads us to understand, that within the compass of human attainment, there is an object placed before us of a higher and more estimable character than all the objects of a common-place ambition-that whereever there is mind, there stands associated with it a nobler and more abiding interest than all the aggrandizements which wealth or rank can bestow-that within the limits of the moral and intellectual department of our nature, there is a commodity which money cannot purchase, and possesses a more sterling excellence than all which