strongly and intimately upon the happiness of a whole people.

Though I deprecate the bad effects of fanaticism, earnestly pray that our young sovereign may evince herself to be a person of deep religious feeling: what other cure has she for all the arrogance and vanity which her exalted position must engender? for all the flattery and falsehood with which she must be surrounded? for all the soul-corrupting homage with which she is met at every moment of her existence? what other cure than to cast herself down in darkness and solitude before God-to say that she is dust and ashes-and to call down the pity of the Almighty upon her difficult and dangerous life! This is the antidote of kings against the slavery and the baseness which surround them-they should think often of death-and the folly and nothingness of the world, and they should humble their souls before the Master of masters, and the King of kings; praying to Heaven for wisdom and calm reflection, and for that spirit of Christian gentle. ness which exalts command into an empire of justice,

and turns obedience into a service of love.

A wise man struggling with adversity is said by some heathen writer to be a spectacle on which the gods might look down with pleasure-but where is there a finer moral and religious picture, or one more deserving of divine favour, than that of which, per. haps, we are now beginning to enjoy the blessed reality?

A young queen, at that period of life which is commonly given up to frivolous amusement, sees at once the great principles by which she should be guided, and steps at once into the great duties of her station. The importance of educating the lower orders of the people is never absent from her mind; she takes up this principle at the beginning of her life, and in all the change of servants, and in all the struggle of parties, looks to it as a source of permanent improvement. A great object of her affections is the preservation of peace; she regards a state of war as the greatest of all human evils, thinks that the lust of conquest is not a glory but a bad crime; despises the folly and miscal. culations of war, and is willing to sacrifice every thing to peace, but the clear honour of her land.

THE LAWYER THAT TEMPTED CHRIST.

A SERMON;

Preached in the Cathedral Church at St. Peter, York, before the Hon. Sir John Bayley, Knt., one of his Majesty's Justices of the Court of King's Bench, and the Hon. Sir John Hullock, Knt., one of his Majesty's Barons of the Court of Exchequer, August 1, 1824.

LUKE X. 25.

'AND BEHOLD, A CERTAIN LAWYER STOOD UP, AND TEMPTED HIM, SAYING, "MASTER, WHAT SHALL I DO TO INHERIT ETERNAL LIFE?"

THIS lawyer, who is thus represented to have tempted our blessed Saviour, does not seem to have been very much in earnest in the question which he asked; his object does not appear to have been the acquisition of religious knowledge, but the display of human talent. He did not say to himself, I will now draw near to this august being; I will inform myself from the fountain of truth, and from the very lips of Christ; I will learn a lesson of salvation; but it occurred to him, that in such a gathering together of the Jews, in such a moment of public agitation, the opportunity of display was not to be neglected: full of that internal confi dence which men of talents so ready, and so exercised, are sometimes apt to feel, he approaches our Saviour with all the apparent modesty of interrogation, and, saluting him with the appellation of Master, prepares, with all professional acuteness, for his humiliation and defeat.

Taiking humanly, and we must talk humanly, for our Saviour was then acting an human part, the experiment ended, as all must wish an experiment to end, where levity and bad faith are on one side, and piety, simplicity and goodness on the other: the objector was silenced, and one of the brightest lessons of the Gospel elicited, for the eternal improvement of mankind.

Still, though we wish the motive for the question had been better, we must not forget the question, and we must not forget who asked the question, and we must not forget who answered it, and what the answer was. The question was the wisest and best that ever came from the mouth of man; the man who asked it was the very person who ought to have asked it; a man overwhelmed, probably, with the intrigues, the bustle, and business of life, and, therefore, most likely to forget the interests of another world: the answerer was our blessed Saviour, through whose mediation, you, and I, and all of us, hope to live again, and the answer, remember, was plain and practical; not flowery, not metaphysical, not doctrinal; but it said to the man of the law, if you wish to live eternally, do your duty to God and man; live in this world as you ought to live; make yourself fit for eternity; and then, and then only, God will grant to you eternal life.

The patriot queen, whom I am painting, reverences the national church-frequents its worship, and regulates her faith by its precepts; but she withstands the encroachments, and keeps down the ambition natural to establishments, and, by rendering the privileges of the church compatible with the civil freedom of all sects, confers strength upon, and adds duration to, that wise and magnificent institution. And then this youthful monarch, profoundly but wisely religious, disdaining hypocrisy, and far above the childish follies of false piety, casts herself upon God, and seeks from the Gospel of his blessed Son a path for her steps and a comfort for her soul. Here is a picture which warms every English heart, and would bring all this congre. gation upon their bended knees before Almighty God to pray it may be realized. What limits to the glory There are, probably, in this church, many persons and happiness of our native land, if the Creator should of the profession of the law, who have often asked be in his mercy have placed in the heart of this royal fore, with better faith than their brother, and who do woman the rudiments of wisdom and mercy; and if, now ask this great question, What shall I do to ingiving them time to expand, and to bless our children's herit eternal life?' I shall, therefore, direct to them children with her goodness, He should grant to her a some observations on the particular duties they owe long sojourning upon earth, and leave her to reign over to society, because I think it suitable to this particu us till she is well stricken in years? What glory! lar season, because it is of much more importance to what happiness! what joy! what bounty of God! I tell men how they are to be Christians in detail, than of course can only expect to see the beginning of such to exhort them to be Christians generally; because it a splendid period; but when I do see it, I shall ex-is of the highest utility to avail ourselves of these occlaim with the Psalmist, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation.'

casions to show to classes of mankind what those virtues are, which they have more frequent and valuable opportunities of practising, and what those faults and vices are to which they are more particularly exposed.

It falls to the lot of those who are engaged in the active and arduous profession of the law to pass their lives in great cities, amidst severe and incessant occupation, requiring all the faculties, and calling forth, from time to time, many of the strongest passions of our nature. In the midst of all this, rivals are to be watched, superiors are to be cultivated, connections cherished; some portion of life must be given to society. and some little to relaxation and amusement.

When, then, is the question to be asked, 'What shall | its safety; but yield up trifles to the altered state of I do to inherit eternal life?' what leisure for the altar, the world. Fear no change which lessens the ene what time for God? I appeal to the experience of mies of that establishment, fear no change which inmen engaged in this profession, whether religious creases the activity of that establishment, fear no feelings and religious practices are not, without any change which draws down upon it the more abundant speculative disbelief, perpetually sacrificed to the bu- prayers and blessings of the human race. siness of the world. Are not the habits of devotion gradually displaced by other habits of solicitude, hurry, and care, totally incompatible with habits of devotion? It not the taste for devotion lessened? Is not the time for devotion abridged? Are you not more and more conquered against your warnings and against your will, not, perhaps, without pain and compunction, by the mammon of life? and what is the cure for this great evil to which your profession exposes you? The cure is, to keep a sacred place in your heart, where Almighty God is enshrined, and where nothing human can enter; to say to the world, Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther;' to remember you are a lawyer, without forgetting you are a Christian; to wish for no more wealth than ought to be possessed by an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven; to covet no more honour than is suitable to a child of God; boldly and bravely to set yourself limits, and to show to others you have limits, and that no professional eagerness and no professional activity shall ever induce you to infringe upon the rules and practices of religion: remember the text: put the great question really, which the tempter of Christ only pretended to put. In the midst of your highest success, in the most perfect gratification of your vanity, in the most ample increase of your wealth, fall down at the feet of Jesus, and say, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal

life?'

Justice is found, experimentally, to be most effectually promoted by the opposite efforts of practised and ingenious men, presenting to the selection of an impartial judge the best arguments for the establishment and explanation of truth. It becomes, then, under such an arrangement, the decided duty of an advocate to use all the arguments in his power to defend the cause he has adopted, and to leave the effects of those arguments to the judgment of others. However useful this practice may be for the promotion of public justice, it is not without danger to the individual whose practice it becomes. It is apt to produce a profligate indifference to truth in higher occasions of life, where truth cannot, for a moment, be trifled with, much less callously trampled on, much less suddenly and totally yielded up to the basest of human motives. It is astonishing what unworthy and inadequate notions men are apt to form of the Christian faith. Christianity does not insist upon duties to an individual, and forget the duties which are owing to the great mass of individuals, which we call our country; it does not teach you how to benefit your neighbour, and leave you to inflict the most serious injuries upon all whose interest is bound up with you in the same land: I need not say to this congregation that there is a wrong and a right in public affairs. I need not prove that in any vote, in any line of conduct which affects the public interest, every Christian is bound, most soThe genuine and unaffected piety of a lawyer is, in lemnly and most religiously, to follow the dictates of one respect, of great advantage to the general inte. his conscience. Let it be for, let it be against, let it rests of religion; inasmuch as to the highest member please, let it displease, no matter with whom it sides, of that profession a great share of church patronage or what it thwarts, it is a solemn duty, on such occa is entrusted, and to him we are accustomed to look up sions, to act from the pure dictates of conscience, and in the senate, for the defence of our venerable estab- to be as faithful to the interests of the great mass of lishment; and great and momentous would be the loss your fellow-creatures, as you would be to the interests to this nation, if any one, called to so high and hon-of any individual of that mass. Why, then, if there' ourable an office, were found deficient in this an- is any truth in these obsbrvations, can that man be cient, pious, and useful zeal for the established church. pure and innocent before God, can he be quite harmIn talking to men of your active lives and habits, is it less and respectable before men, who, in mature age, not possible to anticipate the splendid and exalted sta- at a moment's notice, sacrifices to wealth and power tions for which any one of you may be destined. Fifty all the fixed and firm opinions of his life; who puts years ago, the person at the head of his profession, his moral principles to sale, and barters his dignity the greatest lawyer now in England, perhaps in the and his soul for the baubles of the world? If these world, stood in this church, on such occasions as the temptations come across you, then remember the mepresent, as obscure, as unknown, and as much doubt. morable words of the text, What shall I do to inherit ing of his future prospects, as the humblest individual eternal life? not this-don't do this; it is no title to of the profession here present. If Providence reserve eternity to suffer deserved shame among men ; endure such honours for any one who may now chance to hear any thing rather than the loss of character, cling to me, let him remember that there is required at his character as your best possession, do not envy men hands a zeal for the established church, but a zeal who pass you in life, only because they are under less tempered by discretion, compatible with Christian moral and religious restraint than yourself. Your ob charity, and tolerant of Christian freedom. All hu- ject is not fame, but honourable fame; your object is man establishments are liable to err, and are capable not wealth, but wealth worthily obtained; your ob of improvement: to act as if you denied this, to per. ject is not power, but power gained fairly and exerpetuate any infringement upon the freedom of other cised virtuously. Long-suffering is a great and impor sects, however vexatious that infringement, and how tant lesson in human life; in no part of human life is ever safe its removal, is not to defend an establish- it more necessary than in your arduous profession. The ment, but to expose it to unmerited obloquy and re- greatest men it has produced have been at some periproach. Never think it necessary to be weak and od of their professional lives ready to faint at the long childish in the highest concerns of life; the career of and apparently fruitless journey; and if you look at the law opens to you many great and glorious oppor- those lives, you will find they have been supported by tunities of promoting the Gospel of Christ, and of do- a confidence (under God) in the general effects of ing good to your fellow-creatures; there is no situation character and industry. They have withstood the alof that profession in which you can be more great and lurements of pleasure, which is the first and most more glorious than when, in the fulness of years, and common cause of failure; they have disdained the the fulness of honours, you are found defending that little arts and meannesses which carry base men a church which first taught you to distinguish between certain way, and no further; they have sternly reject good and evil, and breathed into you the elements of ed, also, the sudden means of growing basely rich and religious life; but when you defend that church, de- dishonourably great, with which every man is at one fend it with enlarged wisdom, and with the spirit of time or another sure to be assailed; and then they magnanimity; praise its great excellencies; do not have broken out into light and glory at the last, experpetuate its little defects; be its liberal defender, be hibiting to mankind the splendid spectacle of great its wise patron, be its real friend. If you can be great talents long exercised by difficulties, and high princiand bold in human affairs, do not think it necessary ples never tainted with guilt. to be narrow and timid in spiritual concerns; bind yourself up with the real and important interests of the church, and hold yourself accountable to God for

After all, remember that your profession is a lettery, in which you may lose as well as win; and you must take it as a lottery, in which, after every fort

of your own, it is impossible to command success; for | guarded against in the profession of the law, and that this you are not accountable, but you are accountable is, misanthropy, an exaggerated opinion of the faults for your purity; you are accountable for the preserva- and follies of mankind. It is naturally the worst part tion of your character. It is not in every man's pow- of mankind who are seen in courts of justice, and with er to say, I will be a great and successful lawyer, but whom the professors of the law are most conversant it is in every man's power to say, that he will (with The perpetual recurrence of crime and guilt insensibly God's assistance) be a good Christian, and an honest connects itself with the recollections of the human man. Whatever is moral and religious is in your race: mankind are always painted in the attitude of own power. If fortune deserts you, do not desert suffering and inflicting. It seems as if men were yourself; do not undervalue inward consolation; con- bound together by the relations of fraud and crime; nect God with your labour; remember you are Christ's but laws are not made for the quiet, the good, and the servant; be seeking always for the inheritance of im- just; you see and know little of them in your profesmortal life. sion, and. therefore, you forget them; you see the oppressor, and you let loose your eloquence against him; but you do not see the man of silent charity, who is always seeking out objects of compassion: the faithful guardian does not come into a court of justice, nor the good wife, nor the just servant, nor the dutiful son; you punish the robbers who ill treated the wayfaring man, but you know nothing of the good Samaritan who bound up his wounds. The lawyer who tempted his Master, had heard, perhaps, of the sins of the woman at the feast, without knowing that she had poured her store of precious ointment on the feet of Jesus.

I must urge you by another motive, and bind you by another obligation, against the sacrifice of public principle. A proud man, when he has obtained the reward, and accepted the wages of baseness, enters into a severe account with himself, and feels clearly that he has suffered degradation; he may hide it by increased zeal and violence, or varnish it over by simulated gaity; he may silence the world, but he cannot silence himself. If this is only a beginning, and you mean, henceforward, to trample all principle under foot, that is another thing; but a man of fine parts and nice feelings is trying a very dangerous experiment with his happiness, who means to preserve his general character, and indulge in one act of baseness. Such a man is not made to endure scorn and self-reproach; it is far from being certain that he will be satisfied with that unscriptural bargain in which he has gained the honours of the world, and lost the purity of his soul.

Upon those who are engaged in studying the laws of their country, devolve the honourable and Christian task of defending the accused; a sacred duty never to be yielded up, never to be influenced by any vehemence nor intensity of public opinion. In these times of profound peace, and unexampled prosperity, there is little danger in executing this duty, and little It is impossible in the profession of the law but that temptation to violate it; but human affairs change many opportunities must occur for the exertion of like the clouds of heaven; another year may find us, charity and benevolence. I do not mean the charity or may leave us, in all the perils and bitterness of inof money, but the charity of time, labour, and atten- ternal dissension, and upon one of you may devolve tion; the protection of those whose resources are fee- the defence of some accused person, the object of ble, and the inforination of those whose knowledge is men's hopes and fears, the single point on which the small. In the hands of bad men, the law is some- eyes of a whole people are bent. These are the occa times an artifice to mislead, and sometimes an engine sion which try a man's inward heart, and separate to oppress. In your hands it may be, from time to the dress of human nature from the gold of human natime, a buckler to shield, and a sanctuary to save; you ture. On these occasions, never mind being mixed up may lift up oppressed humility, listen patiently to the for a moment with the criminal and the crime; fing injuries of the wretched, vindicate their just claims, yourself back upon great principles, fling yourself back maintain their fair rights, and show, that in the hurry upon God; yield not one atom to violence, suffer not of business and the struggles of ambition, you have the slightest encroachments of injustice, retire not one not forgotten the duties of a Christian, and the feel-step before the frowns of power, tremble not, for a sin. ings of a man. It is in your power, above all other gle instant, at the dread of misrepresentation. The Christians, to combine the wisdom of the serpent with the innocence of the dove, and to fulfil, with greater acuteness and more perfect effect than other men can pretend to, the love, the lessons, and the law of Christ.

great interests of mankind are placed in your hands: it is not so much the individual you are defending; it is not so much a matter of consequence whether this or that is proved to be a crime, but on such occasions, you are often called upon to defend the occupation of I should caution the younger part of this profession a defender, to take care that the sacred rights belong. (who are commonly selected for it on account of their ing to that character are not destroyed, that the best superior talents,) to cultivate a little more diffidence of privilege of your profession, which so much secures their own powers, and a little less contempt for re- our regard, and so much redounds to your credit, is ceived opinions, than is commonly exhibited at the never soothed by flattery, never corrupted by favour, beginning of their career; mistrust of this nature never chilled by fear. You may practise this wickedteaches moderation in the formation of opinions, and ness secretly, as you may any other wickedness; prevents the painful necessity of inconsistency and re- you may suppress a topic of defence, or soften an atcantation in future life. It is not possible that the tack upon opponents, or weaken your own argument, ablest young men, at the beginning of their intellectu- and sacrifice the man who has put his trust in you, al existence, can anticipate all those reasons, and dive rather than provoke the powerful by the triumphant into all those motives, which induce mankind to act establishment of unwelcome innocence; but if you do as they do act, and make the world such as we find it this, you are a guilty man before God. It is better to to be; and though there is, doubtless, much to alter, keep within the pale of honour, it is better to be pure and much to improve in human affairs, yet you will in Christ, and to feel that you are pure in Christ; and find mankind not quite so wrong as, in the first ardour if the praises of mankind are sweet, if it is ever allow. of youth, you supposed them to be; and you will find, able to a Christian to breathe the incense of popular as you advance in life, many new lights to open upon favour, and to say it is grateful and good, it is when you, which nothing but advancing in life could ever the honest, temperate, unyielding advocate, who has enable you to observe. I say this, not to check orig-protected innocence from the grasp of power, is fol inality and vigour of mind, which are the best chat-lowed from the hall of judgment by the prayers and tels and possessions of the world, but to check that blessings of a grateful people. eagerness which arrives at conclusions without suffi- These are the Christian excellencies which the cient premises; to prevent that violence which is not uncommonly atoned for in after-life by the sacrifice of all principle and all opinions; to lessen that contempt which prevents a young man from improving his own understanding, by making a proper and prudent use of the understandings of his fellow creatures.

There is another unchristian fault which must be

members of the profession of the law have, above all, an opportunity of cultivating; this is your attribute to the happiness of your fellow-creatures, and these your preparations for eternal life. Do not lose God in the fervour and business of the world; remember that the churches of Christ are more solemn and more sacred than your tribunals; bend not before the judges of the

SITTEST THOU HERE TO JUDGE ME AFTER THE LAW, AND and the tranquillity of the public disturbed. I am not

talking of the ostentatious display of such feelings; I am hardly talking of any gratification of which the WITH these bold words St. Paul repressed the unjust individual himself is conscious, but I am raising up a violence of that ruler who would have silenced his wise and useful jealousy of the encroachment of those arguments, and extinguished his zeal for the Christian feelings, which, when they do encroach, lessen the faith. Knowing well the misfortunes which awaited value of the most valuable, and lower the importance him, prepared for deep and various calamity, not igno- of the most important men in the country. I admit it norant of the violence of the Jewish multitude, not to be extremely difficult to live amidst the agitations, unused to suffer, not unwilling to die, he had not pre- contests and discussions of a free people, and to repared himself for the monstrous spectacle of perverted main in that state of cool, passionless Christian canjustice; but loosing that spirit to whose fire and firm-dour which society expect from their great magis ness we owe the very existence of the Christian faith, trates; but it is the pledge that magistrate has given, he burst into that bold rebuke which brought back the it is the life he has taken up, it is the class of quali extravagance of power under the control of law, and ties which has promised us, and for which he has reabranded it with the feelings of shame: Sittest thou here to judge me after the law, and commandest thou me to be smitten, contrary to the law?'

I would observe that, in the Gospels, and the various parts of the New Testament, the words of our Saviour and of St. Paul, when they contain any opinion, are always to be looked upon as lessons of wisdom to us, however incidentally they may have been delivered,