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dreds and thousands; to stifle them or crush them is impossible. It is certain that they are breeding discontent in families, insubordination in nations; they will combine with elements of discontent and insubordination from sources the most apparently unlike themselves.

Brethren, it is not by talking against Judaical notions that you will escape these great practical dangers. It is much more by looking manfully into Jewish history, and seeing whether it does not contain truths and principles which amidst all changes of circumstances, in the latest stage of growth and development as well as in the earliest, belong to human beings. It tells us that God is the King of the Nation; the real ground of its orders, of its institutions, the real teacher of its wise men, the real author and director of all events that befall it. I hold that whatever else has been changed, that fundamental truth remains; I could not account for any alterations in the outward world, or they would drive me to despair, if I did not believe it. What follows as to the duty of the priest? He comes into a nation. He says he is a witness for something else than mere civil or local or secular government. By all means let him be such a witness. And as a proof that he is, let him do homage to the order which the Eternal Lord has established in a land; let him shew that he does not look upon that as merely civil or secular or earthly; let him make the people who are living under it see that, whatever they think, he thinks, and is ready at all times to declare, that

their society is no work of human hands, no result of vulgar conventions. Let him say further, that God being the author and lawgiver of human society, all its disorders and anomalies are contrary to His will, and that statesmen as well as churchmen, instead of tolerating and excusing them, ought to be labouring day and night for the removal of them assured that if they do not, He will bear the most awful protest against the acts of individual men or official men, of civilians or ecclesiastics, against all diseases of long growth or modern introduction, which affect the well-being of his subjects. A man who takes this course may be very disagreeable to the high or the low wrong-doers of a land; he must lay his account with being so. But he will not and cannot be a disturber of the family or national order of a country; he must be bringing the mightiest help to the preservation of both. For instead of looking upon the universal order of the church as interfering with either of these, he must believe that it stands upon the same divine foundation, that the same Lord who is the Chief Bishop of the universal family, and has endowed it with His Spirit, has called on each nation to be a witness in its own place, within its own limitations, of His Divine authority and Kingship. But since it is the tendency of a mere national organization to become exclusive, to assert the dignity of birth or the sacredness of property above the dignity and sacredness of humanity, the business of the priest in each land will be especially to protect it against this danger; continually to proclaim in the ears

of kings, princes, nobles, rich men, that the glory which they share with the peasant is their highest glory; to tell them that if they set above this any treasures outward or inward, gifts of money or rank or intellect-if they do not reckon these merely as lent them for the sake of the whole land-they will bring upon themselves and upon their country swift destruction. The priest who presents Christ's finished sacrifice for the whole human race, for rich and poor, high and low, is entrusted above all men with this commission. Every subordinate minister of the tabernacle is in his position and degree entrusted with it, and therefore it must be for the ruin of both, they must expect to go down alive into a deeper pit than that which received Korah and his company, if they shew that wealth, honours, distinctions of any kind, are the great objects of their search, that they are fighting for higher places either in man's household or God's; not remembering that he who exalteth himself shall be abased, and he who humbleth himself shall be exalted.'

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May the great High Priest who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many, plead for us within the veil, that we may be delivered from the consequences of our contentions and rivalry, that ecclesiastics of all orders, that civil rulers and people, may understand their several functions, their common, consecration by Him and to Him; that so we may be all one in Him, a family of kings and priests to His and our Father.

SERMON XII.

THE PROPHECY OF BALAAM.

Lessons for the day, Numbers XXIII. XXIV. and XXV.

Preached at Lincoln's Inn, on the Second Sunday after Easter, May 4, 1851.

NUMBERS XXIII. 11, 12.

And Balak said unto Balaam, What hast thou done unto me? I took thee to curse mine enemies, and, behold, thou hast blessed them altogether. And he answered and said, Must I not take heed to speak that which the Lord hath put in my mouth?

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HERE are many particulars in this story of Balaam which remind us of the prophets who are spoken of in the Homeric poems and in the tragedies of Greece. He was summoned by Balak in the full faith that whomsoever he cursed was cursed, and whomsoever he blessed was blessed. He was evidently supposed to have that knowledge of things past, present, and future, which is ascribed to. Calchas, and which gave him his high repute with the Grecian fleet. He is appealed to, just as that seer was appealed to when a pestilence was raging in the host, or when the ships were weather-bound; just as Tiresias was sent for to explain the calamity which had befallen Thebes, and to clear up the mystery which overhung the house of Edipus. Balaam gives offence to the king of Moab just as

they offended the heroes of the classical tales. However legendary these tales may be, all persons admit that they describe accurately a certain state of society. The prophets must have possessed this credit. Some of them must have been willing to incur the risk of displeasing rulers.

In

A mere parallel of this kind would be of little worth for its own sake; nor do I conceive that it is wanted for the proof or illustration of the Scriptures. It becomes important in consequence of the questions which are often asked respecting the reality of the knowledge of these prophets, and the source from which they derived it. On this subject very different opinions have been entertained. old times Heathen seers were often said to be endued with a diabolical sagacity; if they were ever right an evil spirit enabled them to be so. The ordinary opinion in this day would probably be that they were mere deceivers, able to impose upon people somewhat more ill-informed than themselves. The holders of both these opinions are wont to contrast these false prophets with the true Jewish prophet, who received his illumination from God. All infidel schools would of course deny that difference; the most modern one would probably say, that the Hebrew as well as the Gentile prophets were shrewd observers and politicians, who sometimes dishonestly, but often in good faith, proclaimed themselves the receivers of a divine inspiration.

We who acknowledge the Bible as the high and ultimate authority, must desire that our deci

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