scend: he took the little children up in his arms, and blessed them; he went about seeking the lost sheep of the house of Israel; he collected together and ordered the fold of his church; he has appointed other shepherds under him to take the charge of his flock, and is with them as the chief shepherd to the end of the world, when he shall still appear and act in the same character, separating the sheep from the goats in the day of judgment.

All the natural relations subsisting amongst mankind are applied to illustrate their spiritual interests. God is our heavenly Father, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named: the Church is the daughter of God; the spouse of Christ, and the mother of us all. Christ is the first-born, and all christians are brethren in him; constituting together what is called the household of faith, as distinguished from the world of unbelievers. The Jew and Gentile are two brethren, the sons of their father; the Jew, the elder, the Gentile the younger, whose apostacy and repentance are both described in the history of the prodigal son.

The union betwixt Christ and the Church is considered as a marriage, signified and foreshewn by the first sacred union of Adam and Eve in paradise. The followers and friends of Christ are now waiting in expectation of being called forth to meet this bridegroom, and join in the glorious procession that shall ascend, under the conduct of a train of angels, to meet the Lord in the air, when he shall return from the wedding; with which expectation they are to keep their loins girded up, and their lights burning. Woe be unto the foolish, whose lamps shall be gone out when the cry shall be raised at midnight, behold, the bridegroom cometh, go ye out to meet him.

As the author of our faith, Christ is our master or teacher and that in so strict a sense, that we are to call no other by that name in comparison of him; much less are we to receive any other form of doctrine, from those who assume a right of teaching on the authority of any other person, or by any other rule, which the fashion of the times or the prejudices of education may have established amongst us.

This relation betwixt the master and the scholar must suggest to every Christian the indispensible duty of knowing the scriptures, and following the precepts of the gospel. For, let us ask ourselves: are we the scholars of Jesus Christ, and are we ignorant of his doctrine? Do we pay no regard to his discipline, and the rules he has given for the conduct of life? And shall we not in such a case be disowned and expelled from his society? If we know nothing of him, he will know nothing of us, and will signify the same to us upon an awful occasion-Depart from me, I know you not.

Having thus far shewn how the nature, state, works, offices, and relations of mankind are applied, and how the scripture reasons from them, as from so many parallel cases; I shall now consider what use is made of the inferior part of the animal creation. And here you are to recollect, that beasts differ from one another as men do, the sober from the sottish, the gentle from the ravenous, the trusty from the thievish, the peaceable and obedient from the blood-thirsty and rebellious: and as the scripture expresses all things by similitudes, the properties and qualities of beasts are examples of virtues and vices amongst men. This moral difference was the ground of the distinction of beasts under the law of Moses into clean and unclean. The people of God were to eat of no un

clean creature; they were to converse with no unclean man; and so the first effect of this law was of a civil nature, to keep the Jews separate from the conversation of other nations, that they might not learn their works. They could not eat with them, and consequently could not keep company with them; and this law has the same effect to this day with the modern Jews. The second intention of it was of a moral or spiritual kind; to suggest a figurative lesson of purity, obedience, and patience, from the various instincts of animals.

Read the 11th chapter of Leviticus, and you will see how the creatures are distinguished. The gentle, tame, and profitable kinds are allowed for food: and all creatures of wild, fierce, or filthy manners, are forbidden. Thus the Israelites were reminded daily by what they ate, what manner of persons they ought to be in all holy conversation and godliness; by what was forbidden, they were taught to abhor the vices. of the heathen. So saith the law itself: Ye shall not walk in the manners of the nations which I cast out before you—I am the Lord your God, which have separated you from other people; ye shall therefore put a difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean-and ye shall be holy unto me; for I the Lord am holy, and have severed you from other people that ye should be mine*. This passage puts the moral intention of the distinction of meats out of dispute, and is indeed a direct affirmation of it: the people of God were to avoid unclean meats, as a sign that he had separated them from unclean Gentiles to be holy unto himself.

But in the fulness of time, when the Gentiles were

* Lev. xx. 23, &c.

to be admitted to Christian baptism, and taken into the church with the Jews, this act of grace in the divine œconomy was signified to St. Peter, by a new licence to feed upon unclean beasts. The case was this: Peter was about to be invited to preach the gospel to Cornelius a Roman, into whose house he could not come; because the law which he had always observed commanded the Jews to keep themselves separate from heathens in their conversation; as, in their diet, they abstained from unclean beasts.

While this matter was depending, Peter fell into a trance, and saw a vision. A great sheet, knit at the four corners, was let down to the earth, containing all those living creatures which were forbidden food by the Levitical law, and he was commanded to kill and eat: to which, when he objected, as being contrary to the law, a voice said, what God hath cleansed that call not thou common. The message from Cornelius which immediately followed, shewed the design of this vision; that it signified the reception and cleansing of the Gentile world, and that the Jews were no longer to count them unclean. So Peter himself thus explained it when he visited Cornelius: Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company or come unto one pf another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean. Therefore those living creatures of all kinds, which had been presented to him in the vision, were the people of all nations; the linen sheet which contained them signified their sanctification by the gospel; and it was knit at four corners, to shew that they were gathered together from the four quarters of the world, and brought into the church.

Nothing more need be said to prove that the dis

tinctions amongst men were figuratively expressed under the law by a distinction amongst beasts and birds and all living creatures. In the subtilty of the fox, the fierceness of the tyger, the filthiness of the swine, the impudence of the dog, you see, as in a glass, the manners of those idolatrous nations, from whom the Jews were separated. In the gentleness of the sheep, the integrity of the labouring ox, the innocence and profitableness of other tame creatures fit for food, you see the virtues of an Israelite indeed, such as those people ought to be, who were gathered into the fold of the church, and had God for their shepherd. But when God had mercy upon all, and the Jew and Gentile became one fold in Christ Jesus, then this distinction was set aside. However, to all readers of the bible, the moral or spirit of this law is as much in force as ever. Wild, subtile, fierce, unclean manners, are as hateful in Christians, as they were of old in heathens: and the heathens were taken into the church, on condition that they should put off their savage manners; as the unclean creatures had before put off their natures and became tame, when they were admitted into the ark of Noah, a figure of the church. This change was again to happen under the gospel; and the prophet foretells the conversion of the heathens under the figure of a miraculous reformation of manners in wild beasts: the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together; and though they were once so fierce and terrible that a man dared not to come near them, they shall be so changed, that a little child may lead them -they shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain.

Authors of natural history divide their subject