I need not take up your time,--my brethren, in endeavouring to ascertain the peculiar and characteristical gifts of these several Apostles: this would neither augment, nor diminish the weight of the argument. Whatever these gifts were, they were not their own, but only intrusted to them by JESUS CHRIST, for accomplishing his own wise and salutary purposes towards the children of men. Some might be eminent for one kind of usefulness, and some for another. But it is probable, that those who possessed such talents, as most captivated the attention and affections of animal nature, were most followed; and this merely on account of the talents themselves, without any respect to those spiritual salutary truths, which, through them, were intended to be conveyed to the hearers. This conduct, however, is not peculiar to the Corinthians. The same evil carnal principle, that raised so many unchristian animosities in that infant church, has ever since been working in every part of Christendom. It is the fatal source of all that variety of sects, opinions, and doctrines, into which the outward church has been, and is still, sadly divided. But Truth is One--it has been so from the beginning, and will continue so for ever. The different sentiments and conceptions of mankind about Truth, can no more alter its nature, or make it cease to be what it is, than the looking through a variety of glasses of different colours, forms, and densities, can change the real colour, form, and proportion of objects. Every man admires and esteems his own glass most; and not content with this, quarrels with his neighbour, because he does not make use of it as well as himself. This is but too true a picture of the present state of Christianity--while its professors are disputing and differing about their own peculiar opinions and notions of Truth, which are no better than the glasses through which they contemplate it, they lose sight of the fair and beauteous object itself.