The Third Sunday after the Epiphany.

USE OF OPPORTUNITIES.

S. MATTHEW viii. 5.

There came unto Him a Centurion.

IN a short Sermon on one of our LORD'S miracles, it is necessary to shade our eyes from the blaze of glory which surrounds the entire transaction, and to take one little feature only in the story,-one aspect of it,-or one out of the many sayings which are recorded in connexion with it. Reserving for another occasion some remarks on the healing of the Centurion's Servant, and a proof that the two accounts of that miracle harmonize divinely, (like parts of a skilfully constructed song,) I invite your attention now to the illustration which the narrative affords of a good man's use of his opportunities, -the revelation which it becomes of the hidden network of God's Providence in the shaping of each man's private life.

K

Let me preface what I have to say, by two remarks. First, That Scripture is perhaps never read in a more instructive and affecting,-never certainly in a more interesting light, than when we regard it as a lifting up of the veil from off the transactions of our daily lives, and a discovering to us of God's Hand at work there,-invisibly but certainly, for our own truest good. . . . The other remark is this,-That we are altogether mistaken if we have ever allowed ourselves to think of the Gospel Saints as men blessed with peculiar privileges and extraordinary opportunities. Their privileges, (I venture to surmise,) were, on the contrary, inferior to our own: their opportunities not greater than yours and mine. With these two thoughts before us, I proceed to remind you how it fared, from first to last, with the good Centurion,-the Roman soldier who was quartered at Capernaum in the days of the Gospel.

His name we know not. Whether, like the other Centurion, Cornelius, he was of a noble house or not, does not appear. But if it be allowable, when we stand here in England upon the site of a Roman camp, to tell oneself that noble spirits must on that spot once have languished for the sights and sounds of Imperial

Rome;-wafted many a sigh across the Alps towards the pleasures, and the pomps, and the luxuries, and all the nameless delights of that capital of the ancient World;-surely, even more reasonably may we insist that a Soldier of that nation must have felt annoyance at being ordered to repair into Judæa, to take up his abode among a despised and hated people, the Jews, whose very name was a byword of ridicule and a reproach.

To Judæa the Centurion was ordered; and to a city of Judæa so depraved that our SAVIOUR foretold that very extinction of it which has since so memorably come to pass. And yet, at Capernaum the Centurion learned the elements of the Jews' Religion: had grace to discern its transcendent purity and grandeur: its supe riority to the superstitious worship of his own country. He further conciliated the personalregard of the ministers of that Religion which he had adopted; and at last, as an abiding token of his earnestness and zeal, he erected the Synagogue of Capernaum at his own cost.

Meanwhile, take note that at this very juncture CHRIST Himself came to dwell in this same city.... It was a dark time. Faith itself was suffering a dire eclipse; and the district in which

Capernaum stood was especially benighted. But now was fulfilled what was spoken by Isaiah the prophet:-"The land of Zabulon, and the land of Nepthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles; the people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up." Wondrous blessedness there was to the Centurion doubtless, in this dispensation—yet not greater, not so great, as in the case of all the other inhabitants of Capernaum, at the same season. For these, being members of His own nation, were better able to appreciate His claims, and understand His teaching. They, at all events, despised His teaching, disregarded His miracles,-" would none of His reproof." The Centurion not so! It is plain that he had heard,-had loved,—had feared, had believed.

Behold, already his reward! In that very Synagogue which he had erected, he beholds CHRIST sitting, standing, teaching,-Sabbath after Sabbath. He even beholds our SAVIOUR working miracles within the walls which himself had reared: for it is expressly recorded that the casting out of the unclean spirit,—and the healing of the man with a withered hand,-both

took place within the Synagogue of this city".-In the same Synagogue the memorable Discourse on the LORD's Supper, (contained in the sixth chapter of S. John,) was delivered. . . . Can a grander consequence of a single act be conceived,—than that a House raised for God's honour and glory, should be weekly visited by GOD Himself made flesh ?

And now, sickness visits the good man's dwelling. He beholds his favourite slave struck with paralysis, and at the very point to die. The sorrow weighs him to the dust: but his crushed spirit, like some choice herb, yields fragrance by its bruising; and there is nothing so vividly brought to him in his distress as the recollection of CHRIST; the thought of Him whose voice of sweetness and whose words of power he had listened to so often, delighted and awestruck, in that Synagogue,-which many a time since the day he built it he has wished had been constructed of costlier materials, that it might have proved a worthier shrine! . . . The recollection of our LORD's miracles, especially His famous cure of the paralytic borne of four, determines him to seek the aid of the great Physician;-and the result, we all remember with delight. That

a S. Mark i. 21, 23: iii. 1.