so much by regulating the external manifestations of those passions and desires, as by influencing the heart. Self-denial is taught much better by inspiring the love of our neighbor, than by the prohibition of innocent comforts and pleasures. Spirituality is much better taught by making spiritual things the objects of supreme desire, than by commanding an ostentatious avoidance of the enjoyments of life. But while the Gospel thus leaves men free to follow the bent of innocent desires,--to decide, each for himself, what is lawful and expedient,--it lays a powerful restraint on all the passions, and curbs all propensities which are inconsistent with its purity and spirituality. All worldly ambition, all selfish luxury are utterly incompatible with the faith of the Gospel, which disallows every claim founded on itself to distinctions of rank, to abundance of wealth, to power over the possessions of other men, to the indulgence of earthly desires. The Gospel affords no sanction to the accumulation of wealth, or to the assumption of authority. It affords examples, on the contrary, of submission to temporal authority, of the endurance of voluntary poverty in hardship, not because poverty and hardship are in themselves spiritually desirable, but because they were necessary to the attainment of some benevolent end. From the Gospel we learn that Jesus utterly disclaimed all pretensions to authority, except in those matters where his authority was supreme. 'Who made me a judge or a divider over you?' was his remonstrance with those who referred the disposal of an inheritance to him: and his reply respecting the lawfulness of paying tribute was such as ought to have obviated all doubt whether temporal and spiritual power could ever be properly united; 'Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's.' What could be meant by the declaration 'My kingdom is not of this world,' but that his authority was of a spiritual nature only? Why did he strenuously oppose every attempt to make him a king? Why did he send forth the seventy disciples without gold and silver and changes of raiment? Why did he recommend to the rich man to sell his possessions, if wealth and power can be made the means of serving the interests of the Gospel? Why was his indignation so perpetually roused by the spiritual assumptions of the Pharisees, but because religion was in them disgraced by its connexion with worldly greatness? Yet not a few Christians have loved the chief seats in public assemblies, and homage in the streets; not a few have made proclamation when they dispensed their alms, and prayed in the high ways; not a few have taken on themselves to appoint places in the Messiah's kingdom which the Messiah himself refused to promise, because such power belonged to God alone. While he declined all interference in matters of temporal concern, and rejected all support to his Gospel from magisterial authority, and all