come. He is not therefore to be discou raged from addressing himself to God in prayer, by a sense of unworthiness arising, from his past sins. Upon the ground of merit, no man is worthy to claim an audience of his Maker; but to a privilege to which innocence might scarce aspire, by the mercy of the gospel covenant repentance is admitted. Reformation indeed is innocence in the merciful construction of the Christian dispensation: The Redeemer stands at God's right hand, pleading in the behalf of the penitent the merit of his own humiliation; and the effect is, that no remembrance is had in heaven of forsaken sin. The courage of our converted idolatress is an edifying example to all repenting sinners; and the blessing with which it was in the end rewarded justified the principles upon which she acted.

Before we proceed to the more interesting subject of meditation our Saviour's conduct upon this occasion, we must consider another circumstance on the woman's part the manner in which her supplication was addressed. She came from her

home to meet him on the road; and she cried out" Have mercy upon me, O Lord, thou son of David!" Jesus, retiring from the malice of his enemies or the imprudence of his friends to the Sidonian territory, is saluted by an idolatress of the Canaanites by his proper titles,—“ the Lord," "the Son of David." It is indeed little to be wondered, that idolaters living on the confines of the Jewish territory, and conversing much with the Israelites, should be well acquainted with the hope which they entertained of a national deliverer to arise in David's family, at a time when the expectation of his advent was raised to the height, by the evident com pletion of the prophecies which marked the time of his appearance; and when the numberless miracles wrought by our Lord, in the course of three successive summers, in every part of Galilee, had made both the expectation of the Messiah and the claim of Jesus to be the person the talk of the whole country to a considerable distance. It is the less to be wondered, because we find something of an expectation of the Messiah of the Jews in all

But the

that

parts of the world at that season. remarkable circumstance is this, this Syrophoenician idolatress must have looked for no partial deliverer of the Jewish nation, but for a general benefactor of all mankind, in the person of the Jewish Messiah; for had he been to come for the particular benefit of the Jews only, this daughter of Canaan could have had no part or interest in the Son of David.

Having examined into the character of our Lord's suppliant, and remarked the terms in which she addressed him, we will in another discourse consider the remarkable manner in which on our Lord's her petition was received.

part

SERMON XXXVIII.

MARK, vii. 26.

The woman was a Greek, a Syrophonician by

nation.

THESE words describe what was most remarkable in the character of a woman, a Canaanite by birth, an idolatress by education, who implored our Lord's miraculous assistance in behalf of her young daughter tormented with an evil spirit. In my last discourse, the lessons to be drawn from this character of the woman and from the manner in which her petition was preferred were distinctly pointed out. I come now to consider, still with a view to practical inferences, the manner in which on our Lord's part the petition was received.

In the lovely character of the blessed Jesus, there was not a more striking feature than a certain sentimental tenderness, which disposed him to take a part in every one's affliction to which he chanced to be a witness, and to be ready to afford it as miraculous relief. He was apt to be particularly touched by instances of domestic distress; in which the suffering arises from those feelings of friendship, growing out of natural affection and habitual endearment, which constitute the perfection of man as a social creature, and distinguish the society of the human kind from the instinctive herdings of the lower animals. When at the gate of Nain he met the sad procession of a young man's funeral, -a poor widow, accompanied by her sympathizing neighbours, conveying to the grave the remains of an only son, suddenly snatched from her by disease in the flower of his age, the tenderness of his temper appeared, not only in what he did, but in the kind and ready manner of his doing it. He scrupled not to avow how much he was affected by the dismal scene: He addressed words of comfort to the weeping mother: Unasked,