which all the territorial lines and artificial distinctions of society are no longer visible, and where the living landscape presents us with a view of one vast community of immortal beings, claiming the same distinguished origin, involved in a common danger, invited to one grand deliverance, and passing together into the unseen state. While surveying this comprehensive and affecting scene, he would have us especially to remark the mutual action, the certain relation, by which, like the interdependence of the planetary system, the interests of each are co-mingled and blended with the welfare of the whole. From this elevation he points us to the infinite resources he has opened for us in God; reminding us that we have access to more than we want, in order that we may go and instrumentally minister to the wants of others. Then dismissing us again into the vale of life, he would have us to descend and mingle with our race, surcharged with a benevolence like that which brought himself from heaven, and which induces him still to identify our interests with his highest glory.

He would have his disciples to combine in a godlike endeavor to disarm the species; to gather out of his kingdom all the weapons and instruments of revenge, casting them far into the territories of Satan, from which they came; to bring the art of mutual destruction into disgrace and disuse; and to prove their descent from the great Peacemaker of the universe, by binding the whole family of man into one vast confederacy of mutual assistance and brotherly love. 'Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.' The ancient distinction between neighbor and enemy he has annihilated; his disciples are to know no enemy; the very term is banished from the christian vocabulary, or to be inserted only as obsolete. He would have them to supersede the visible employment of angels under the present economy

by becoming themselves his angels and ambassadors to man. By commanding them to imitate his own love, he would have them not only supplant but surpass angelic ministrations; like an orphan family, whose members have attained an age and state of active affection in which the foreign helps they enjoyed in childhood are made unnecessary, by their mutually caring for and aiding each other. The friendships which are cemented in adversity are commonly of a more tender, disinterested, and lasting nature, than those which are formed in any other circumstances that friendship between man and man, of which he has laid the foundation, is to be eternal; and therefore would he see it cemented as closely as possible, by having it commenced while they are here in a state of trial; and commenced, (how wise, how worthy of himself the divine arrangement!) in a reciprocation of christian offices whose issues shall reach through eternity. For not only does he charge them to do all the good they can to each other themselves, he takes them to the throne of God, and invests them with the office of mutual intercessors, empowers them to touch and set in motion an almighty agency for each other; he even puts into their hands the means of mutual salvation, making it at once their honor and office to assist as subordinate agents in training and conducting each other to eternal life.

III. In entering on any of the offices or relations of life, it is an obvious advantage to possess a view of the duties peculiar to that sphere, in as brief, clear, and comprehensive a form as possible; indeed, if they could all be adequately described in a single sentence, they would be so much the more acceptable. It is a distinguished excellence of the Great Teacher, that, in the inculcation of mo ́rality, he preferred comprehensive rules to a distinct spe

cification of duties; though he took the most enlarged view of human obligations, he generalized and enforced them by a few compendious laws, instead of separately legislating for each particular duty. Had he adopted, or rather attempted, the latter method, descending to a minute enumeration of duties, it would have involved this serious evil-that every duty which might have arisen below the point of enumeration would have been in danger of being treated as unobligatory, because not inserted in the specification. Glad of the plausible excuse arising from the omission, men would have regarded every duty not enjoined as omissible, and every sin not prohibited as allowable. But in the hands of Jesus, the science of morality is simplified and complete. A single prohibition is so planted by him, that like a piece of ordnance, it may be said to enfilade and sweep a whole territory of sin; nothing can come within its range without challenging its thunder and courting death. A single rule is found to contain laws for an indefinite number of actions; for all the possible cases, of the class described, which can ever occur. Like the few imaginary circles by which geography circumscribes the earth, he has, by a few sentences, described and distributed into sections the whole globe of duty; so that, wherever we may be on it, we find ourselves encompassed by some comprehensive maxim; and, in whatever direction we may move, we have only to reflect, in order to perceive that we are receding from or approaching to some line of morality.

By thus generalizing morality he has consulted the weakness of the most impaired memory; presented us with a map-like view of the wide region of duty which a single glance can survey; provided rules for all the possible varieties and contingencies of human action; while the consciousness it affords his followers, that they are able to sus

tain the particulars of their life upon great first principles, enables them to advance in the path of holiness with an erect, assured, and dignified carriage of mind; and the demand which it makes on the higher capabilities of nature, in calling them to comprehend such measures of greatness, and to sympathize with such perfection, raises and ennobles them to themselves, and possesses them with the feeling that they are allied to God.

To give a single exemplification, let me advert to the axiom known by the names of the golden rule, and the universal law of equity; 'all things whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them; for this is the law and the prophets.' The Savior himself ascribes to this rule the condensed and comprehensive character for which we have cited it; he pronounces it an abstract of all that had been prescribed by the law and the prophets; all they delivered on the subject is reducible to this, so that, were their writings lost, this summary might be expanded into all they uttered. Notwithstanding its conciseness, it is a maxim of so generic a kind, that, encircling the whole sphere of social virtue, it embraces all things whatsoever that sphere contains. No injury can be done, no reasonable kindness be omitted by man to man, which is not a violation of this royal law; nor can any duty be performed which it does not virtually enjoin. If it needed any other quality to recommend it, we might easily show that it has numerous excellencies fully answerable to its comprehensiveness. It is a rule as portable as our self-love, and identical with it; for what is it but the love of self applied to the destruction of selfishness, by being pressed into the service of universal benevolence? It is the measuring rod, which is never out of the hand of self for its own purpose, legalized, and applied to mete out the same measure for the good of others. It seeks to equalize

vicissitude; to make a community of our joys and sorrows, by distributing them as nearly into equal parts as if we knew not the portion which would fall to us. It aims to transform self into an impartial judge, by giving it an interest in all the decisions which it pronounces on others. By compelling our selfishness to do the work of destruction on itself, it makes us content to number as one, as a mere unit in the sum of the species; and to seek the welfare of the whole as the shortest and the only way of promoting our own individual interest. Let this infallible law be understood and applied, and the trade of the casuist would be gone in the department of social life; for selfinterest, prompt, and even intuitive when it sits in judgment for its own ends, would have only to imagine a mo mentary self-transmigration, and to transfer its judgments for the advantage of others.

We might extend this representation to another particular of a similar kind, showing the comprehensiveness of our Lord's maxims concerning the omission of duty. The line which divides his kingdom from the empire of sin is so fine, that, like the line of geometry, it is length without breadth; it occupies no part of the territories which it defines; it creates no border land, no neutral ground. 'He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad;' a sentence which separates the world into two great classes; assigning over to the dominion of Satan the lukewarm with the hostile ; and leaving them to discover, that whereas they had expected to find themselves standing at least on neutral ground, they are actually and considerably within the frontiers of the kingdom of darkness.

How large a proportion of those, whom custom and courtesy agree to call christins, live and die in self-complacency and hope, from the persuasion that they have been