of those who have neglected him to that last hour: the death of sinners is abominable in the eyes of the Lord equally as their life. If you live in sin, you will die in all the horrors and in all the useless regrets of the sinner, and your death shall be an eternal death. If you live in righteousness, you will die in peace, and in the confidence of the just, and your death will be only a passage to a blessed immortality.
Now, to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, now, henceforth, and for evermore. Amen.
SERMON XI.
ON CHARITY.
"And Jesus took the loaves, and, when he had given thanks, he distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down." — John vi. 11.
It is not without design that our Saviour associates the disciples, in the prodigy of multiplying the loaves, and that he makes use of their ministry in distributing the miraculous food among a people pressed with hunger and want. He might again, no doubt, have made manna to rain upon the desert, and saved his disciples the trouble of so tedious a distribution.
But might he not, after raising up Lazarus from the dead, have dispensed with their assistance in unloosing him? Could his almighty voice, which had just broken asunder the chains of death, have found any resistance from the feeble bands which the hand of man had formed? It is because he wished to point out to them, beforehand, the sacred exercise of their ministry; the part they were afterward to have in the spiritual resurrection of sinners; and that whatever they should unloose upon the earth should be unloosed in heaven.
Again, when there was question of paying tribute to Csesar, he needed not to have recourse to the expedient of Peter's casting his hook into the sea for the purpose of producing a piece of money out of the bowels of a fish: he who, even from stones, was able to raise up children to Abraham, might surely with greater ease have converted them into a precious metal, and thereby furnished the amount of the tribute due to Ceesar. But, in the character of the Head of the Church, he meant to teach his ministers to respect those in authority; and, by rendering honour and tribute to the powers established by God, to set an example of submission to other believers.
Thus, in making use, upon this occasion, of the intervention of the apostles to distribute the loaves to the multitude, his design is, to accustom all his disciples to compassion and liberality toward the unfortunate: he establishes you the ministers of his providence, and multiplies the riches of the earth in your hands, for the sole purpose of being distributed from thence among that multitude of unfortunate fellow-creatures which surrounds you.
