may be perpetual;

grant that it dedicated for ever, as it is opened, for the first time, this day, to Charity and to Prayer. May he pour down the sweet influence of his loving spirit on the appointed teachers, causing the instructions to be afforded from this place, to diffuse universal philanthropy among the sons of men, in every clime and of every colour; persuading them to love one another, as Christ has loved us, to conciliate, to pacify, to relent, to forgive; and to say to the sword, in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, O THOU SWORD, HOW LONG WILL it BE ERE THOU ART QUIET; PUT UP THYSELF INTO THY SCARBARD, REST AND BE STILL. May the example of this Institution, and the doctrines taught from this pulpit, proceed auspiciously from age to age, to convince the world that all men, however divided by oceans, ought to be philanthropists; that man, born of woman, who hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery, was not formed to be the enemy of man; but the brother, the friend, the protector, the guardian, and the guide. May the prayers, together with the alms now offered, and to be for ever offered, from this sanctuary, ascend to heaven, as incense; and, while they bring down blessings on the institutors, blessings on the worshippers, and blessings on the poor objects of their charity, open the gates of that celestial mansion, where shall be no more misery to relieve, and where philanthropy shall be completely gratified, in finding all moral and all natural evil cease, under the eternal reign of the supreme lover of men, Jesus Christ, our Saviour and Redeemer.

SERMON XXVII.

THE SUPPORT OF THE MAGDALEN HOSPITAL RECOMMENDED.

[Preached at the Chapel of the Magdalen Hospital on the Anniversary, 1812.]

JOHN, Xi. 33.-When Jesus saw Mary weeping, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled.

THIS remarkable emotion in the mind of our Saviour terminated in a flood of tears; and some interpreters in ancient times, have been greatly perplexed by the passage; conceiving that tears, the natural effect of grief and pity, were unworthy the character of their Lord, and detracted much from his personal dignity. In their zeal for the honour of Christ some of them had been presumptous enough to erase from the New Testament, not without sentiments of indignation, the disgraceful verse, as they conceived it, in which it was related that "Jesus wept ;" thus, with the awkward hand of officious correction, defacing that beautiful picture of our Saviour which the spirit of God had delineated, with perfect simplicity, in the Gospel. They knew not that tears of compassion can never be symptoms of an unbecoming debility, and that the sacred fountain which flows from the heart, through the channel of the eyes, is among the most honourable distinctions of human nature. But the mistake of those who thus took offence at a weeping Saviour arose from considering him solely in the high character of his unblended Divinity. It may be proper therefore to premise a remark on the divinity and humanity of Christ, before we consider that propensity to pity and sym

pathetic feeling which distinguished his ministry, and which may furnish an appropriate topic for our present contemplation; because it was an humble imitation of that sympathy which raised the roof under which we are now assembled.

The union of divinity and humanity in our Lord is indeed a high and mysterious point in Christian theology; but not effected in him, as certain heretics of antiquity supposed, by substituting the divine spirit in the place of the rational soul of man; for such a substitution would indeed have degraded his divinity, by rendering it obnoxious to passion, and at the same time overwhelmed or absorbed his humanity. The true doctrine seems therefore to be, according to our excellent church, founded on the Scripture, that the human nature in our Lord was complete; that he was truly a man; consisting of a rational soul and a human body; and that his divinity was superadded by the communication of the holy spirit; superadded in a degree infinitely greater than in any son of Adam, so that while it was compatible with real and complete humanity, it exempted him from the possibility of sin, and rendered him capable of the finest sensibilities of human nature without a participation of its infirmity.

To him the Holy Spirit of God was communicated, not as to us, by measure, but in unlimited plenitude; and indeed this union in our Lord of the spirit of God with the rational soul of man, differed only in degree, from that communion of the same spirit, which is the acknowledged privilege of every believer under the operation of divine grace.

So that Jesus, elevated as he was to divinity, by a superior participation of the Holy Spirit, was still completely a man; and, as we learn from the sacred

history, felt as a man the sentiment of compassion. This clearly appears from the tenor of his life narrated in the gospel; and we are expressly told by the Apostle to the Hebrews, that he was touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. He felt pity; pity is a lovely sentiment, yet most truly a passion; and the gospel records instances enough to prove that our Saviour indulged this passion in its fullest force. He said himself, on one occasion, I have compassion on the multitude; and performed a stupendous miracle to gratify the impulse; again we are told, Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand to the kneeling leper, and saith to him, Be thou clean. On many other occasions he felt and acted so as to combine with the tenderness of a human philanthropist the power of the great God Almighty.

Never, surely, did the adorable Author of our religion appear in a light more amiable than when his humanity sympathized with the suffering of some wretched mortal in this vale of woe. And we must remember, that he came to teach us by his example as well as by his doctrine; and who is there among his faithful followers, looking down from the superior height of fortune, rank and education, on the miseries of the wandering multitude below, but must feel a sentiment of pity, and wish to relieve their distresses; to rectify their errors, to call them home to the good Shepherd, who has promised to feed and refresh them in the green pasture by the side of the waters of life?

In humble imitation of our Saviour's example, and in obedience to his precepts, we are this day ́assembled to promote a charitable institution which takes compassion on those whom we have every

reason to believe He, with all his purity and superiority, would have pitied and relieved. There is a well-known fact related in the gospel, from which the Institution derives its name, and which justifies our belief, that the penitents of this house would have excited his compassion. This Institution has indeed now stood the test of time, has often been powerfully recommended to you from this place, and is still well and wisely supported. An address indeed is required on these annual solemnities; but it is now made rather in conformity to a laudable practice at the commencement of it, than from any conviction of its absolute necessity at present; rather to remind you of what you know than with the hope of throwing new light on an exhausted subject, or of suggesting fresh topics of persuasion to the minds of those whose fostering bounty and parental patronage most clearly evince that they are already and most completely persuaded.

Nevertheless, it is at all times meet and right, and our bounden duty, to teach and preach the prime indispensable evangelical doctrine of Christian charity, previously therefore to adverting to the particular Institution for which I am this day to solicit your additional support, I shall exhort you to improve the fine feelings of sympathy, which you derive from a kindly nature, to a gospel virtue; to meliorate the wild stock of native sensibility by grafting upon it the grace of charity, by refining and subliming it with the spirit of Christian love, and by advancing a capricious sentiment to the dignity of a religious principle. Thus will your affections become auxiliaries to virtue, and nature lead directly to grace.

The life, the very soul and essence of the Christian religion, as you well know, is benevolence and love;