And who shall disparage this, or overlook it, or deny the gifts and treasure of and in those who bear it, though they be but as earthen vessels; though they look simply like other men; though they are “men of like passions;” though they have few or no high marks or tokens, to be discerned by man’s eye, of the greatness of the treasure which nevertheless they bear? This thought, this warning against denying God’s gifts when lodged in earthen vessels, and so speaking against them as actually to make a new Gospel totally unlike to that which has been from the beginning, is especially a danger of our day: a day when men live so much by sight, and, alas, so little by faith; when restless and free enquiry ranges over every subject, and men pride themselves upon their refusal to submit to any authority but their own reason, or their own mere opinion, or to receive anything beyond that of which they can understand the mode and assign the use. Not, perhaps, the most unfrequent of these attacks of the present time is directed against almost the very subject of our text: the reality of the treasure or gifts bestowed upon the ministers and stewards of Christ’s mysteries, because they are contained in earthen vessels. Whereas St. Paul fully claims and asserts that there is this treasure, and gives as the sufficient reason for its being so lowlily enshrined, that thereby it would be seen indeed that “the excellency of the power is of God, and not of man;” {6} these objectors deny there can be any such treasure as it is asserted there is, because it is not to their eye exhibited in or by, glorious, or sufficiently distinctive, instruments.