the alarm after the commission of sins, which, separately considered, are less than was the sin of Herod, but which, from their number, may involve you in greater guilt than was the guilt of Herod. He was at last roused to a sense of his wickedness; and you, my brethren, one day or other, may be compelled to look back, with shame and with anguish, upon the aggregate of your own offences against justice, candour, mercy, and piety.

SERMON XIX.

MATTHEW xiv. 12.

At that time Herod the Tetrarch heard of the fame of Jesus, and said unto his servants, "This is John the Baptist: he is risen from the dead; and therefore mighty works do shew forth themselves in him."

IN my first discourse upon the foregoing text, I explained to you the import of the term conscience. I made some general remarks upon the power of it in regulating or reforming our moral conduct; and I endeavoured to shew the real properties of remorse, the nature of which had, in my opinion, been misrepresented by some metaphysical writers of our own age. In my second discourse, I selected from writers, both profane and sacred, some striking instances, in which the operations of conscience were sometimes immediate, and sometimes late, after the commission of sin. In my third discourse I entered fully into the case of Herod, as related in the New Testament-I endeavoured to throw a kind of sidelight upon it by some parallel circumstances in a narrative, which Plutarch has inserted in the life of Artaxerxes; and from such various topics as then presented themselves to my mind, I drew some

practical inferences upon the danger, to which we are ourselves exposed from the temporary suspensions of conscience after misdeeds, which, in the ordinary course of human life, we may ourselves be tempted to commit. From the history of Herod, as I explained it to you, and applied it to situations, in which our own innocence may be lost, while for a time we are not visited by remorse, let me now turn your attention to other sinners, whose outrages against common justice and common humanity may sometimes have been equally, if not more loathsome, and more pernicious.

There are false tongues, which not only speak, but in the language of the psalmist, "love to speak all words which may do hurt." There are tyrants, who, as we read in another psalm, not only watch the steps of their prey, and in all they imagine, mean to do evil, but who even boast of themselves that they can do it. There are men, who hate and harass their fellow-creatures without poignant provocation, such, for instance, as most men feel from the exposure of their faults by the mouth of an inferior, and such as must have stung Herod to the quick from the rebukes of John upon his adulterous intercourse with Herodias, the wife of his brother Philip. There are men, who, when suffered to indulge their own lewd appetites without disguise, without restraint, without rebuke from the observer, without a murmur from the wronged, suddenly stand forth as champions, forsooth, in the cause of virtue, array themselves in armour offensive and defensive, and heroically profess to vindi

cate the honour, which their own misconduct had sullied, and to punish the supposed irregularities, which their own real examples may have occasioned. There are men, who act wickedly, not, like Herod, from the subtle, or the capricious, or the angry suggestions of a favourite female, but from the direct impulses of their own hearts. There are men, who perpetrate systematically, what Herod committed suddenly-committed upon one occasion onlycommitted, with perhaps little opportunity for reflection at the moment-committed without any inveterate hatred, in his own mind, towards the sufferer-committed, as it plainly appears, for the purpose of redeeming a pledge, hastily given in a luckless hour of festivity and libidinousness. There are men, who, both in the success and the disappointment of their own cruel measures, find fresh incentives to cruelty-YES, the religionist, who is a serious observer of facts, and an impartial discerner of spirits, will exclaim-to cruelty, wanton to-day, slow to-morrow, infuriate the next day, according to the fluctuating convenience, or the obscure and crooked policy, or the changeable and intractable temper of the miscreants. There are men, to whom the endearments of consanguinity, the delicacies of sex, the privileges of birth and station, and the graces of manners, accomplishments, and talents, present no obstacle in the career of vengeance. There are men, who, from day to day, sin as Herod once sinned; and who, in various places, and by various expedients, and with the aid of various accomplices, and in various forms of mischief, perse

vere in gratifying their own wayward humours and vindictive passions. There are men, who lull their consciences asleep by the perverse use of words accommodated to their own evil wishes and evil projects, and who, not only miscall, but by a nod, by a glance, by a hint, direct their dependents to miscall treachery by the name of wisdom, obstinacy by the name of firmness, audacity by the name of fortitude, and inhumanity itself by the hallowed name of justice. There are men, whom the prospect of merited indignation for the present, and recorded infamy in the future, will not deter from their nefarious purposes; the fire from heaven has not consumed them-the earth has not opened to swallow them up-disease has not seized upon them-the hand of public justice has not been uplifted against them-they are accustomed to dwell in lofty mansions, to recline on soft couches, to glitter in costly apparel, to hear the sweet music of applause from servile dependents; and, with impunity, to squander the day in trifles, and the night in revelling. Conscience, in such men, seems to slumber entirely; or, if by any unexpected event it begins to remonstrate, soon is it silenced by sophistry in the agent, and adulation in his associates. There are men, who do not follow the example of Herod, even in his momentary contrition, but who go on from outrage to outrage with little consciousness of guilt, and little apprehension of peril. Perhaps, in the gloom of night, or in the stillness of solitude, they may now and then writhe under an unseen pang, or may heave a sigh, which they would be unwilling for