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LECTURE XII.

ACTS XIX. 2, 3.

" HE SAID UNTO THEM, HAVE YE RECEIVED THE HOLY GHOST SINCE YE BELIEVED? AND THEY SAID UNTO HIM, WE HAVE NOT SO MUCH AS HEARD WHETHER THERE BE ANY HOLY GHOST; AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, UNTO WHAT THEN WERE YE BAPTIZED ?"

THE last lecture concluded with a brief review of St. Paul's sermon at Athens, of the effect of which we are informed at the conclusion of the 17th chapter, where it is said, “Howbeit, certain men clave unto him, and believed." How strong is that expression, "clave unto him :" there is no room for change, or fickleness, or vacillation; they believed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and gave them

selves up to him with full purpose of heart, to be ruled by him, and saved by him, to "follow the Lord fully;" that the same winds of persecution which blew others away from him, should only drive them the closer to the Saviour, to whom, in the beautiful language of an uneducated peasant, they clave "as the limpet to the rock." 66 Among the which," continues the evangelist," was Dionysius the Areopagite, and a woman named Damaris, and others with him." It was this Dionysius of whom the earliest Christian historians relate, that being at Heliopolis in Egypt, at the time of our Lord's crucifixion, when he beheld the mid-day darkness which attended that awful event, he exclaimed, "Either the God of nature suffers, or the frame of the world will be dissolved." His thoughts had, therefore, in all probability, been early led to inquire into the truth of the mission of that Being in whose sufferings all nature had so miraculously sympathized; and we are

not surprised to find that he was the firstfruits of the apostle's preaching in Athens. Dionysius, the Areopagite, was a person of importance, being one of the judges of that court in which St. Paul had spoken; and Damaris also is generally supposed to have been of high rank in the society in which she lived. "Not many

mighty, not many noble are called," says the revealed word of God; "for the base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen," "that no flesh should glory in His presence. Yet are not the great ones of the world. excluded, unless they exclude themselves; and it is probably to convince us of this fact, to encourage the rich, and the mighty, and the noble, that the Spirit of God has recorded the names of most of those persons, who, in high situations of worldly importance, believed in those early times on the Lord Jesus. Thus the Spirit of God has seen right to mention, that" Joseph of Arimathea" was "a rich

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man; that Paul had friends, to whom he desired to be remembered, even in "Cesar's household; " and that Dionysius was" the Areopagite." How often, while there is time, would I urge you whom it has pleased the providence of God to number among the wealthy and the noble of the land, to remember the peculiar snares, and the peculiar difficulties of your particular situation; "the camel," and the needle's eye," should never be banished from your memory and your hearts; the narrow way and the strait gate, strait and narrow as they are to all, are infinitely straiter and narrower to you

than to any around you; all circumstances

combine to impede your progress, to entangle your footsteps, to keep you from the cross of your Redeemer, and from the gates of heaven; the fascinations of the world, the snares of its riches, the glitter of its pomps, all spread their thousand snares across your path; you are flattered, and courted, and applauded, not

because you are wiser or better than those around you, but simply because you are more noble or more wealthy. I know none so much to be pitied as yourselves; for with all these additional impediments, no additional allowance will be made for you at the bar of God; you will stand there as the poorest object now before me will stand, and you will be sentenced precisely upon the same conditions, tried by the same laws, subjected to the same ordeal, as the veriest outcast of them all;—pardoned, if clad in the righteousness of your Redeemer ;—condemned, if you shall have lived and died in sin, having rejected Him-the “way, the truth, and the life," who is now so freely offered you, and whom none have ever sought in vain.

We are informed of nothing further of St. Paul's ministry at Athens. Some, indeed, declared that they would "hear him again of this matter; " but the Spirit of God is not to be thus trifled with; if

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