the assured hope of a blessed immortality. The conflicts of virtue may be sharp; they cannot be long; and to him that overcometh, it shall be given to eat of the tree of life. If, like Paul, we endure reproach and hardness, as good soldiers of Christ, like him also we shall be able, when our warfare is ended, to rejoice in hope, and to say with all the assurance of faith, "I know in whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that good thing, which I commit to him till that day." Enviable superiority over the terrors of death! Glorious reward of a wellsustained integrity! O let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his! 371 SERMON XV. ON THE CHARACTER OF THE BELOVED DISCIPLE. John xiii. 23. Now there was leaning on Jesus bosom one of his disciples, whom Jesus loved. VARIETY is a striking feature in the moral as well as in the natural world. If the bodies of men are distinguished by a wonderful diversity of physical conformation, their minds are not less distinguished by a corresponding diversity of intellect and temper; so that with the same general outline of reason, imagination, and passion, there never existed, perhaps, any two individuals, whose minds were precisely alike in all their qualities. Indepen dently of that pleasing effect, which this varied temperament produces, by relieving us from a sameness, which would render the intercourses of life insipid and fatiguing; it is absolutely 2 B2 absolutely necessary to the great purposes both of worldly pursuit and of moral probation. It is that appointment, by which alone the numerous departments of the social state can be filled with any advantage; by which one man is fitted to plan, another to execute; one to excel in mental, another in mechanical operations; so that the diversity of endowments may furnish an adequate supply to the diversity of occupation. This is so decidedly the plan of Providence, that even in its most extraordinary interpositions, it departs from it as little as possible. The apostles, who were chosen by our Lord to publish his gospel, and gifted with miraculous powers for that end, retained those distinctive features of character, by which they were discriminated previously to this election; and the difference was necessary, to render each of them, in his own department, subservient to the general purpose, which their united exertions were intended to promote. In accomplishing a great moral change, from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, all minds are not to be affected by the same means. means. Some must be awed into salutary. terror; some overcome by strength of argument and warmth of expostulation; some melted into contrition by a vigorous appeal to conscience; and some gained to the love of God and goodness, by the display of a gentle spirit, and by all the softer arts of a winning address. How seldom does any one mind possess the opposite qualities, that are necessary to the production of these different effects! And how obvious the advantage of employing men with intellects and tempers so varied, as to suit the various dispositions of those to whom their preaching was addressed! There must be a diversity of gifts, but the same spirit; a general result of good, from the combination of talents and tempers unlike in particular qualities, yet all concurring to the advancement of the same great object. In three of those apostles, who were the most eminently distinguished for their zeal and exertions in the publication of the gospel, this diversity is obvious and striking. We behold in the mind of Paul the rare union of comprehension and ardour; of a vigorous understand |