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exertions of a godly charity, their interests, secular and eternal, are secured: it is no weakness to rejoice, that, without breaking the order of society, religion can relieve the condition of poverty from the greatest of its evils, from ignorance and vice: it is no weakness to be liberal of your worldly treasures, in contribution to so good a purpose. The angels in heaven participate these holy feelings. Our Father which is in heaven accepts and will reward the work, provided it be well done, in the true spirit of faith and charity; for of such as these as these who stand before you, arrayed in the simplicity and innocence of childhood, in the humility of poverty,—of such as these, it was our Lord's express and solemn declaration, “ of such is the kingdom of God!”

SERMON X.

MARK Vii. 37.

And they were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.*

It is matter of much curiosity, and affording no small. edification, if the speculation be properly pursued, to observe the very different manner in which the various spectators of our Lord's miracles were affected by what they saw, according to their different dispositions.

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We read, in St. Luke, that our Lord "was casting out a devil, and it was dumb; and it came to pass, that when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake;" and the populace that were witnesses of the miracle wondered." They wondered, and there was an end of their speculations upon the business. They made no farther inquiry, and their thoughts led them to no farther conclusion than that the thing was very strange. These seem to have been people of that stupid sort, which abounds too much in all ranks of society, whose notice is attracted by things that come to pass, not according to the difficulty of accounting for them,-a concern which never breaks their slumbers,-but according as they are more or less frequent. They are neither excited, by any scientific curiosity, to inquire after the established

* Preached for the Deaf and Dumb Asylum, 1796.

causes of the most common things, nor, by any pious regard to God's providential government of the world, to inquire after him in the most uncommon. Day and night succeed each other in constant vicissitude; the seasons hold their unvaried course; the sun makes his annual journey through the same regions of the sky; the moon runs the circle of her monthly changes, with a motion ever varying, yet subject to one constant law and limit of its variations; the tides of the ocean ebb and flow; heavy waters are suspended at a great height in the thinner fluid of the air, they are collected in clouds, which overspread the summer's sky, and descend in showers to refresh the verdure of the earth, or they are driven by strong gales to the bleak regions of the north, whence the wintry winds return them to these milder climates, to fall lightly upon the tender blade in Aakes of snow, and form a mantle to shelter the hope of the husbandman from the nipping frost. These things are hardly noticed by the sort of people who are now before us: they excite not even their wonder, though in themselves most wonderful; much less do they awaken them to inquire by what mechanism of the universe, a system so complex in its motions and vicissitudes, and yet so regular and orderly in its complications, is carried on. They say to themselves, “ These are the common occurrences of nature," and they are satisfied. These same sort of people, if they see a blind man restored to sight, or the deaf and dumb suddenly endued, without the use of physical means, with the faculties of hearing and of speech, wonder,-i. e. they say to themselves, “It is uncommon,”—and they concern themselves no farther. These people discover God neither in the still voice of nature, nor in the sudden blaze of miracle. They seem hardly to come within that definition of man which was given by some of the ancient philosophers, that he is an animal which contemplates the objects of its

senses. They contemplate nothing. Two sentences, "It It is very common," or, "It is very strange," make at once the sum and the detail of their philosophy and of their belief, and are to them a solution of all difficulties. They wonder for a while; but they presently dismiss the subject of their wonder from their thoughts. Wonder, connected with a principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discovery, and it is a principle even of piety; but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wondering, is the quality of an idiot.

This stupidity, so common in all ranks of men,-for what I now describe is no peculiarity of those who are ordinarily called the vulgar and illiterate, this stupidity is not natural to man: it is the effect of an over-solicitude about the low concerns of the present world, which alienates the mind from objects most worthy its attention, and keeps its noble faculties employed on things of an inferior sort, drawing them aside from all inquiries, except what may be the speediest means to increase a man's wealth and advance his worldly interests.

When the stupidity arising from this attachment to the world is connected, as sometimes it is, with a principle of positive infidelity, or, which is much the same thing, with an entire negligence and practical forgetfulness of God, it makes the man a perfect savage. When this is not the case,-when this stupid indifference to the causes of the ordinary and extraordinary occurrences of the world, and something of a general belief in God's providence, meet, as they often do, in the same character, it is a circumstance of great danger to the man's spiritual state, because it exposes him to be the easy prey of every impostor. The religion of such persons has always a great tendency towards superstition; for, as their uninquisitive temper keeps them in a total igno-rance about secondary causes, they are apt to refer every

thing which is out of what they call

' the common course of nature,-that is, which is out of the course of their own daily observation and experience,--to an immediate exertion of the power of God: and thus the common sleight-of-hand tricks of any vagabond conjurer may be passed off upon such people for real miracles. Such persons as these were they, who, when they saw a dumb dæmoniac endued with speech by our Lord, were content to wonder at it.

The Pharisees, however, a set of men improved in their understandings, but wretchedly hardened in their hearts, were not without some jealousy even of this stupid wonderment. They knew that the natural effect of wonder, if it rested on the mind, would be inquiry after a cause; and they dreaded the conclusions to which inquiry in this case might lead. They would not, therefore, trust these people, as perhaps they might have done with perfect security, to their own stupidity; but they suggested a principle to stop inquiry. They told the people, that our Lord cast out devils by the aid and as sistance of Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. This extraordinary suggestion of the Pharisees will come under consideration in its proper place.

We read again, in St. Matthew, that our Lord, upon another occasion, restored a dumb dæmoniac to his speech; and the multitude assembled upon this occasion marvelled, saying, “ It was never so seen in Israel.” These people came some small matter nearer to the ancient definition of man, than the wondering blockheads in St. Luke, who had been spectators of the former miracle. They not only wondered, but they bestowed some thought upon the subject of their wonder; and in their reasonings upon it they went some little way. They re. collected the miracles, recorded in their sacred books, of Moses and some of the ancient prophets: they compared this performance of our Lord with those, and

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