This question is not very difficult to decide. A state of trial must be a state of uncertainty. If every thing happened in order - if the battle was always to the strong, riches the reward of virtue, and poverty the punishment of vice, this world would be a state of retribution, not of trial. Uncertainty, therefore, is one mean of making it a state of trial: it throws out to us this grand lesson, in our passage through life, that we must depend on God - not on ourselves, nor on any thing which the world presents to us. Besides, a state of uncertainty puts the whole world in motion. If every one was confined in his expectation, the life of man would stagnate. But the uncertainty of things sets all adventurers at work, calls up a variety of exertions, and opens a field for various virtues and vices, in which human nature is put to many a severe trial. Industry, prudence, and other virtues, are often encouraged; and are indeed the best means of insuring success: but they often fail, while the vices in opposition to them succeed. So that the idea of uncertainty in all worldly affairs is still kept up; and of course this world is considered not as a state of retribution, but as a state of trial.

V.

I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection. 1 Cor. ix. 17.

THIS is a mode of expression very usual in speaking of that compound being called Man. It divides him naturally into two parts:I keep under my body. I is supposed to be one part of the man; the body, the other. This mode of speaking plainly and properly points out the rational and the sensitive parts, and gives the former the superiority, I, the rational part, keep under the body, which is the sensitive.

Having thus settled the dramatis persona of the text, if I may so speak, let us now consider its contents. The great reason, we see, for keeping the body under, is to bring it into subjection, that all its functions may co-operate with reason. The great mean of obtaining this subjection, is self-denial. If we make it our business to indulge ourselves in eating and drinking, in amusements, and other things pleasing to

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the senses, we plainly give the inferior part of our nature the superiority—we bring the man into subjection to the brute. God Almighty hath added a pleasure to the indulgence of all the appetites, necessary for the preservation of life. If eating, for instance, were attended with no pleasure, fasting might be dangerous. This stimulus is common both to man and beast; only there is this difference; the beast never goes beyond its allotted limit; the man turns all his pleasure, beyond the allotted limit, which should be the object of self-denial, into mischief and wickedness. When that is the case, we, instead of our bodies, are brought into subjection.

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VI.

Be mindful of the words, which were spoken before by the holy prophets; and of the commandments of us the apostles of the Lord and Saviour.2 Pet. iii. 2.

WE have here obedience to the Gospel enforced by the proof from prophecies; and there is not, I think, a more convincing proof. Cavils have been made against the miracles of the Gospel-against the purity of its precepts, and the mysteriousness of its doctrines; but I see not how any argument can well lie against prophecy. We have the strongest proof, that the books in which these prophecies are contained, existed many hundred years before the birth of Christ. We are well assured also, that they were ascribed to the Messiah by the ancient Jews. We never heard of any person to whom they could be ascribed, but our Jesus; and with him they coincide as exactly as two parallel lines. I speak not of all the prophecies of the Old Testament;

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ment; many of which are obscure, though easily reconcileable to the great events of the Gospel; but I speak of those prophecies only, which are so plain that no objection can reasonably be made to them. On the strength of these prophecies, therefore, St. Peter founds the obedience of his converts. His argument is, that if you believe the Gospel on this evidence, it follows, that no farther cavil is admissible: the precept, however harsh, must be obeyed; and the doctrine, however mysterious, must be believed.