for working out what is in their hearts, whether it be to behead a prophet or to crucify a Saviour. Sinful men are everywhere on this globe carrying out their wishes and giving full play to all their intentions. The liberty thus afforded to the sinner (1) Serves to show the depth of human depravity. To the extent in which men use this liberty is the revelation of moral corruption. What streams of pollution emanate every day from the free working of the corrupt heart! As we watch the actions of the sinner we feel the truth of inspiration, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked." (2) It serves to show the efficacy of the Gospel as the only remedy. What can purify a heart so vile as that which Herod here displays? Law, science, education, poetry, philosophy, all these have tried in vain. The Gospel can do it. In thousands of instances it has done so. It has turned the lion into the lamb, it has made the sensual spiritual, the high-minded humble, the profligate religious, the cruel kind,-transformed the demon into a saint. It is indeed, then, "The power of God unto salvation." We value it as the only antidote to our evils, the only balm for our wounds, the only purifier of our souls. (3) It serves to show that there must come in the government of God a rectifying period. It can never be that evil will always have such a scope. It can never be that under the government of a righteous being the wicked shall for ever tyrannize over the good. There must come a day when "the rod of the oppressor shall be broken;" when the martyred Johns shall be raised to honor and to immortality, and the persecuting Herods visited with everlasting destruction "from the presence of the Lord, and the glory of his power." (4) It serves to show what sin will lead to when all restrictions are removed. Great as is the scope allowed for human action in this world, there are, nevertheless, checks and restraints existing in all civilized countries. There is the check of holy example ;-evil ever grows faint in the presence of virtue; there is the check of public sentiment;in such a country as ours, whatever may be the amount of

practical depravity, the general sentiment amongst us is in favor of morality, and the public sentiment is like a spell on the heart of vice. There is the check of wholesome legislation. We say not that legislation can create virtue, nor that it can destroy vice, but that it can prevent it from coming out in such diabolical forms as that which the conduct of Herod exhibits. When we remember all the restraints here set on sin, we heartily adopt the words of Herbert, not the least of Britain's sacred bards:

LORD, with what care hast thou begirt us round!
Parents first season us: then schoolmasters
Deliver us to laws; they send us bound

To rules of reason, holy messengers,

Pulpits and Sundays, sorrow dogging sin,
Afflictions sorted, anguish of all sizes,
Fine nets and stratagems to catch us in,
Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,

Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,

The sound of glory ringing in our ears;
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.

Let these checks be removed and the imagination stands appalled at the array of evils that must be developed. These checks are to the corrupt heart, what the embankments are to the ever-accumulating waters; they shut them up for a time but let those embankments be broken down, and the long pent-up waters shall rush forth as a flood, spreading devastation and ruin through the whole district. There is a world where these checks exist not; a world where there is no holy example, no public opinion for morality, no wholesome legislation; but where the spirits are let loose in all the fury of their passions, to prey with vulture appetite on the peace of each other, and to rebel with a demon's rage against the righteous authority of the universe.

II. THE WEAKNESS OF SINFUL MAN. This Herod, though he had the power to rise to civil authority, to use that

authority in destroying the greatest servant of God, and doing so simply on account of his virtuous conduct;-I say though he had all this scope of action, he was, nevertheless, in the most emphatic sense, a slave.

First: He was a slave to his own lusts. The man who could make such a promise as Herod made to the wretched and worthless woman that danced before him, must be regarded as the mere creature of corrupt affections. His reason, his conscience, all the great elements that made him a man, were led captive by the very lowest of animal instincts. His soul was submerged in the hot, rolling, tide of sensual feeling. Here was a man who arrogantly and unrighteously presumed to rule a country, who was too powerless to rule his own low lusts. He was "carnal, sold under

sin." Is not this a too true representation of men? We look around us, and we see men everywhere governed by some lust ;-some by the lust of sensuality, some by that of power, some of fame. "He that is born of the flesh is flesh." Far be it from me to libel my species or to judge my contemporaries uncharitably, but I cannot shut my eyes to the fact that everywhere the body reigns;—" the old man," with his corruptions and lusts, is everywhere on the throne. Animalism is enthroned in politics, and the universal law is not the absolute right, which alone can give true freedom to man for ever, but the temporally expedient, which may serve his material interests for a day. It is enthroned on the exchange, and "What shall we eat, and what shall we drink, and wherewithal shall we be clothed?" are the questions which determine the movements of manufacturers and merchants. It is enthroned too, in our literature; far more than half of the literature of the present day is for the animal, not for the moral, in man. The poetry and the fictitious prose read by those who are regarded as persons of taste and refinement, if analyzed, would be found to have but little in them that did not minister to the low passions of humanity. Thus man's fleshy lusts are ever warring against the soul.

Regeneration is a dethroning of the animal and the raising "He that is born of the spirit

of the spiritual into power.

is spirit;" his soul is resuscitated, &c.

Secondly: He was a slave to public sentiment. We learn from this narrative, that public opinion at first prevented him from putting John to death. "He feared the people." But after that he gave his word, his "oath," to do so, and public opinion then seemed to act upon his mind to propel him to the deed. "His word's sake." What matters thy word, Herod? If thou hast made an improper vow or "oath," the sooner thou breakest it the better. Ah! but it was not because he feared the wrongness of breaking his oath, but the unpopularity of it. It might be laid down as a general truth that all men without religion are very much the creatures of popular thoughts and opinions. They are swayed and moulded by the general sentiment that prevails around them. They follow the mass, they think as others think, they are more ruled by the applause of men than the claims of conscience and of God. They give alms, they keep fasts, and pray to be seen of men. "How can ye believe," says Christ, "which receive honour from man?" This is slavery; a slavery from which true religion emancipates us. great question of a religious man is, "What wilt thou have me to do?" not, What will people think, what will meet with the public patronage? The Hebrew youths, and Peter and John, are examples of superiority to this.

The

Thirdly: He was a slave to his own conscience. "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." What was it that led Herod to this conclusion? Was it his creed? It is generally supposed that he was a Sadducee, and that therefore he, theoretically, denied the doctrine of the body's resurrection. But were this not the case, supposing that he believed in the doctrine of the general resurrection, that belief by no means involved the belief that any one man would rise before

another. His creed, therefore, could not have led him to this conclusion. Was it his wish? Had he a strong desire that John should rise again? That he, whom at one time he was delighted to hear, but whom he murdered, should visit his courts again as the Prophet of the Lord? It is proverbial that a man is very anxious to believe what he enthusiastically desires. But Herod could not have had this desire. His desire must have been never to see his face againto bury the very memory of him, if possible. Let all the buried generations start to life, but let John sleep on for ever in his grave. This would be his feeling. The only way to account for this is, the guilty conscience. The tidings of a mighty worker that was again treading the region. of Galilee startled the conscience of the monarch, with the memory of John.-"This is John the Baptist, whom I beheaded." The guilty conscience evoked from the regions of death his murdered victim, brought him to his eye, and made his prophetic voice to fall again upon his ear; the mountains around him seemed to ring with the prophet's voice. (1) An awakened conscience will preach to a man doctrines which he never believed before. There is something in man mightier than poetry, philosophy, or logic; it is CONSCIENCE. (2) An awakened conscience will bring scenes the most repulsive to your view. It will haunt you with the ghosts of forgotten crimes. It will open the grave of the past, bring old sins to life, and make them look us in the face.