ities of winning for him the
advancement he deserved. He was happiest in doing his work, of which a
chief part was in his study, where he employed his philosophic mind in
strengthening the foundations of religious faith. Faith in God was
attacked by men who claimed especially to be philosophers, and they were
best met by the man who had, beyond all other divines of his day--some
might not be afraid to add, of any day--the philosophic mind.

H. M.

SERMON I. UPON HUMAN NATURE.

ROMANS xii. 4, 5.

_For as we have many members in one body_, _and all members have not
the same office_: _so we_, _being many_, _are one body in Christ_,
_and every one members one of another_.

The Epistles in the New Testament have all of them a particular reference
to the condition and usages of the Christian world at the time they were
written. Therefore as they cannot be thoroughly understood unless that
condition and those usages are known and attended to, so, further, though
they be known, yet if they be discontinued or changed, exhortations,
precepts, and illustrations of things, which refer to such circumstances
now ceased or altered, cannot at this time be urged in that manner and
with that force which they were to the primitive Christians. Thus the
text now before us, in its first intent and design, relates to the decent
management of those extraordinary gifts which were then in the Church,
{1} but which are now totally ceased. And even as to the allusion that
"we are one body in Christ," though what the apostle here intends is
equally true of Christians in all circumstances, and the consideration of
it is plainly still an additional motive, over and above moral
considerations, to the discharge of the several duties and offices of a
Christian, yet it is manifest this allusion must have appeared with much
greater force to those who, by the many difficulties they went through
for the sake of their religion, were led to keep always in view the
relation they stood in to their Saviour, who had undergone the same: to
those, who, from the idolatries of all around them, and their
ill-treatment, were taught to consider themselves as not of the world in
which they lived, but as a distinct society of themselves; with laws and
ends, and principles of life and action, quite contrary to those which
the world professed themselves at that time influenced by. Hence the
relation of a Christian was by them considered as ne