SERMON XXIV.

PREACHED APRIL 30, 1769.

LUKE XVI. 14.

And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all those things, and they derided him.

BUT what then were those things which our Lord had said in the hearing of the Pharisees, and for which they derided him?

Had he been inveighing against the vice of covetousness in any unreasonable manner? Had he carried the opposite virtue to an extreme, as some moralists have done? Had he told the Pharisees that the possession, and much more the enjoyment of riches, was, universally, and under all circumstances, unlawful? Had he

pressed it as a matter of conscience upon them, to divest themselves of their wealth, and to embrace an absolute and voluntary poverty? Had he even gone so far as to advise these Pharisees, as he once did a rich man, to sell what they had and give it to the poor, and then take up the cross and follow him a ?

Alas, no. He had been saying none of these things. He did not think well enough of the Pharisees to give this last counsel of exalted charity to them; a counsel, which he had addressed to one whom he loved, to one who was a virtuous man as well as rich, and who wanted only this one thing, to make him perfect.

And as for those other precepts, which would have implied, that riches were unlawful in themselves, and the possession of them a crime, he was too sober a moralist to address a lecture of this sort to any of his hearers.

The truth is, he had only been advising rich men to employ their wealth in such a way as should turn to the best account, to make themselves friends of the mammon of unrighteous

a Mark x. 21.

ness; that is, such friends, as should be able to repay them with interest, and, when these houses of clay are overturned; should receive them into everlasting habitations and, to give this advice the greater weight with them, he had concluded his discourse with saying, that such conduct was even necessary, if they aspired to this reward, for that they could not serve God and mammon; that is, they could not serve God acceptably, unless they withdrew their service from mammon in all those cases, in which the commands of two such different masters interfered with each other.

Such, and so reasonable was the doctrine which Jesus had been delivering to the Pharisees. And how then could it provoke their derision?

The text answers this question-THEY WERE COVETOUS. Their life was a contradiction to this doctrine, and therefore they found it unreasonable, and even ridiculous.

Nor let it be thought, that this illusion is peculiar to avarice. It is familiar to vice of every kind, to scorn reproof; to make light of the doctrine, which condemns it; and, when it cannot confute, to deride the teacher.

So that the text affords this general observation, "That, when the heart is corrupted by

any vice, it naturally breeds a disposition to

"unreasonable mirth and ridicule."

And, because this levity of mind, in its turn, corrupts the heart still further, it may be of use to open to you, more particularly, the sources of irreligious scorn; to let you see from how base an origin it springs; how it rises, indeed, on the subversion of every principle, by which a virtuous man is governed, and by which there is hope that a vicious man may be reclaimed.

Now ye will easily apprehend how the sinner comes to cultivate in himself this miserable talent, if ye reflect; how much he is concerned to avoid the EVIDENCE of moral truth.; how insensible he chuses to be to the DIFFERENCES of moral sentiment; how studiously he would keep out of sight the CONSEQUENCES of moral action: And if ye consider, withal, how well adapted the way of ridicule is, to answer all these purposes.

I. FIRST, then, the sinner is much disposed to withhold his attention from the evidence of

moral truth; and the way of ridicule favours this bad disposition.

When a moral lesson is addressed to us, it is but a common piece of respect we owe the teacher of it, and indeed ourselves, to see what the ideas are of which the doctrine is made up; to consider whether there be a proper coherence between those ideas; whether what is affirmed in the proposition be consonant to truth and reason, or not. If upon this enquiry we find that the affirmation is well founded, either from our immediate perception of the dependency between the ideas themselves, or from the evidence of some remoter principle, with which it is duly connected, we admit it thenceforth as a truth, and are obliged, if we would act in a reasonable manner, to pay it that regard which may be due to its importance. This is the duty of a rational hearer in the school of instruction and this, the process of the mind, in discharging that duty. But this work of the understanding, it is plain, requires attention and seriousness; attention, to apprehend the meaning of the proposition delivered to us, and seriousness, to judge of its truth and

moment.

Indeed, if the result of our enquiry be, that the proposition is unmeaning, or false, or fri