SECTION XXXI.

MATT. X. 34, 35.-" Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance with his father, and the daughter against her mother.... and a man's foes shall be those of his own household."

THIS is thought a startling assertion.

Our Lord may be supposed to mean as follows: "I am come to oppose evil men and evil habits, and therefore I and my followers must expect opposition. I am come to oppose false opinions, false notions of religion, and false religions and therefore opposition must arise. For falsehood will ever war against truth, and vice against virtue. And this is not true only as a public matter, but it will operate, as in public, so in private; as in communities, so in families. But let all this go for little: this life is not your rest, nor your peace: here you will be beset with enemies even in

your households; but in heaven will be your friends and your peace."

And is this an objectionable proposition? Must not the fact have been à priori expected? Who ever sets up to correct vice, to enlighten ignorance, to reform abuses, without incurring animosity, ill-will, and opposition? The course of nature runs in this manner, and it cannot be otherwise. Rooted prejudices and established interests concur against setting things on a new and improved basis. So that if there is truth in the objection as applying to Revelation, there is truth in it as applying to every attempt to ameliorate mankind: and there is an end to all such philanthropic endeavours.

Look at rebellions and civil wars,-such I mean in which it is admitted that the inhabitants are driven, by accumulated acts of injury, and injustice, and tyranny, to seek their deliverance. Here you will find an exact parallel to the case in the text. Here you will find the members of the same household arrayed against each other; delivering up and betraying each other; ay, and thinking it a righteous act so to do. We may complain of the barbarities committed in these wars; we may even dare to charge Providence "with folly" for allowing

such wars to ensanguine the fields, and to pull asunder the bonds of society: but these things go on, and will go on: and Christ is merely stating the order of nature, when he asserts, in bold and uncompromising language, the results of his own mission.

So much for attempts at innovating established opinions. And now take the world as it usually is, abstracted from such attempts. See the numberless divisions, quarrels, bickerings, controversies, disputes, distrusts, feuds, enmities, animosities, hostilities, duels, murders, in private life: and see also the seditions, the fights, the battles, the wars, the crusades, the slaughters, in public life, to such a degree that it might seem as if the proper inscription put upon the world would be, " A world not made for peace and union, but for war and discord." And that, as to practical effect, the Creator could justly have said, " Think not that I have made the world to produce peace: I produced it not for peace, but for the sword." So literal is the agreement, if we view the subject in its real bearings, between Nature and Revelation.

I will add, that I entirely agree with the acute Paley, when he observes, that startling

assertions (like that at the head of this section) tend rather to prove the truth of Scripture, as it could not be the object of impostors to disgust and alienate, but to allure and conciliate mankind.

SECTION XXXII.

MATT. xviii. 7.-"It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh !"

HERE is a hard saying, it is urged: Jesus declares that sin must, by the necessity of nature, be committed, and yet announces a woe to him who causes it.

But here is no other person than the Author of Nature expounding His own laws, the established laws of the world, the daily course of His own visible government. For look at our prisoners, criminals, and convicts,-look at our judges, our magistrates, our jailers, our executioners ;-look at our prisons, our penitentiaries, our houses of correction, our hulks, our penal settlements, our stocks, our chains, our gallows, and say if the state of things before us do not precisely correspond to the representation of the declaration of Christ.