thority, and prevent the excesses which have actually taken place, by a rational indulgence.

The Sabbath was ordained for a day of public worship, and of refreshment to the common people. It cannot be a day of their refreshment, if it be made a day of mortified restraint. To be a day of worship, it must be a day of leisure from worldly business, and of abstraction from dissipated pleasure: but it need not be a dismal one. It was ordained for a day of general and willing resort to the holy mountain; when men of every race, and every rank, and every age, promiscuouslyHebrew, Greek, and Scythian-bond and free-young and old-high and low-rich and poor-one with another-laying hold of Christ's atonement, and the proferred mercy of the gospel, might meet together before their common Lord, exempt for a season from the cares and labours of the world, and be "joyful in his house of prayer."

SERMON XXIV..

JOHN iv. 42.

We have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

'TWAS in an early period of our Saviour's ministry -in the beginning of the first year of it, shortly after his first public appearance at Jerusalem, that the good people of the town of Sychar, in Samaria, where he made a short visit of two days in his journey home to Galilee, bore that remarkable testimony to the truth of his pretensions, which is recorded in my text. "We have heard him ourselves," they say to the woman of their town to whom he had first revealed himself at the well by the entrance of the city, and who had first announced him to her countrymen. "We no longer rely upon your report: we ourselves have heard him. We have heard him propounding his pure maxims of morality-inculcating his lessons of sublime and rational religion-proclaiming the glad tidings of his Father's peace. We ourselves have heard him; and we are convinced that this person is indeed what he declares himself to be: we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world, the Christ."

This profession consists, you see, of two parts. The terms in which it is stated imply a previous expectation of these Samaritans of a Christ who should come; and

declare a conviction that Jesus was that person. It is very remarkable in three circumstances.

First, for the persons from whom it came. They were not Jews: they were Samaritans,—a race of spurious Israelites, sprung from the forbidden marriages of Jews with heathen families,-a nation who, although they professed indeed to worship the God of Abraham after the rites of the Mosaic law, yet, as it should seem from the censure that was passed upon them by a discerning and a candid judge, "that they worshipped they knew not what," as it should seem, I say, from this censure, they had but very imperfect notions of the nature of the Deity they served; and they were but ill instructed in the true spirit of the service which they paid him. These were the persons who were so captivated with the sublimity of our Saviour's doctrines, as to declare that he who had so admirably discoursed them could be no other than the Christ, the Saviour of the world.

The second thing to be remarked, is the very just notion these Samaritans express of the office of the Christ whom they expected, that he should be the Saviour of the world. In the original language of the New Testament, there are more words than one which are rendered by the word "world" in the English Bible. One of these is a word which, though it properly signifies the whole of the habitable globe, is often used in a more confined sense by those later Greek writers who were subjects of the Roman empire, and treat of the affairs of the Romans. By these writers, it is often used for so much only of the world as was comprised within the limits of the Roman empire. It has been imagined that the evangelists, following in this particular the example of the politer writers of their times, have used this same word to denote what was peculiarly their world, the territory of Judea. Men of learning in these later ages have been much too fond of the practice of framing

expositions of Scripture upon these grammatical refinements. The observation may be partly just: in many instances, however, it hath been misapplied; and I would advise the unlearned reader of the English Bible, wherever the world is mentioned, to take the word in its most natural—that is, in its most extended meaning. This rule will seldom mislead him; and the few instances in which it may be incorrect, are certain pas. sages of history in which exactness of interpretation is not of great-at least not of general importance. In the text, however, at present before us, the original word is not that which is supposed to be capable of a limited interpretation. On the contrary, it is that word which is used by the sacred writers to denote the mass of the unconverted Gentile world, as distinguished from God's peculiar people. Of this world, therefore, and by consequence of the whole world, the Samaritans, as it appears by the text, expected in the Christ the Saviour. It appears, too, from the particulars of our Saviour's conference with the woman at the well, which are related in the preceding part of this chapter,-it appears, that of the means by which the Messiah was to effect the salvation of the world, these same people had a very just, though perhaps an inadequate apprehension. They expected him to save the world by teaching the true religion. "I know," said the woman, "when the Messiah is come, he will tell us all things," -all things concerning the worship of God; for that was the topic in discussion. The circumstances which the evangelist's narrative discovers of this woman's former life, give us no reason to suppose that she had been a person of a very thoughtful religious turn of mind, which had led her to be particularly inquisitive after the true meaning of the prophecies. It is to be supposed, therefore, that the notions which she expressed were the common notions of her country. It

was the notion, therefore, of the Samaritans of this age, that teaching men the true religion would be in great part the means which the Messiah would employ for the general salvation of mankind: and since this was their notion of the means by which the Messiah's salvation should be effected, they must have placed the salvation itself in such a deliverance as these means were naturally fitted to accomplish,—in a deliverance of mankind from the corruptions which ignorance, hypocrisy, and superstition had introduced in morals and religion, and particularly in the rites of external worship. Another thing appears by the woman's profession,-that the Samaritans were aware that the time was actually come for this deliverer's appearance. Jesus had said to her-"The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship him." The woman took this declaration in its true meaning. She answered, "I know"-(these words in the beginning of the woman's answer are opposed to those in which our Saviour had bespoken her attention, "Believe me."). "You have my belief," she said. "I know you tell me what is true: I know that the Messiah is just now coming (that is the precise meaning of the original words): I know that the appointed time is come-that the Messiah must presently arrive; and I know that when that person is come, he will tell us all things." Great and innumerable are the mysteries of godliness. These Samaritans, who knew not what they worshipped, had truer notions of the Messiah's office, and of the nature and extent of the deliverance he was to work, than the Jews had, who for many ages had been the chosen depositaries of the oracles of God. The Samaritans looked for a spiritual, not a temporal-for an universal, not a national deliverance; and, by a just interpretation of the signs of the times, they were apprized, that the