world has hitherto suffered little by too much placability or forbearance.  I would repeat once more, what has already been twice remarked, that these rules were designed to regulate personal conduct from personal motives, and for this purpose alone.  I think that these observations will assist us greatly in placing our Saviour’s conduct as a moral teacher in a proper point of view; especially when it is considered, that to deliver moral disquisitions was no part of his design,—­to teach morality at all was only a subordinate part of it; his great business being to supply what was much more wanting than lessons of morality, stronger moral sanctions, and clearer assurances of a future judgment.*

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* Some appear to require in a religious system, or in the books which profess to deliver that system, minute directions for every case and occurrence that may arise.  This, say they, is necessary to render a revelation perfect, especially one which has for its object the regulation of human conduct.  Now, how prolix, and yet how incomplete and unavailing, such an attempt must have been, is proved by one notable example:  “The Indoo and Mussulman religions are institutes of civil law, regulating the minutest questions, both of property and of all questions which come under the cognizance of the magistrate.  And to what length details of this kind are necessarily carried when once begun, may be understood from an anecdote of the Mussulman code, which we have received from the most respectable authority, that not less than seventy-five thousand traditional precepts have been promulgated.”  (Hamilton’s translation of Hedays, or Guide.) _________

The parables of the New Testament are, many of them, such as would have done honour to any book in the world:  I do not mean in style and diction, but in the choice of the subjects, in the structure of the narratives, in the aptness, propriety, and force of the circumstances woven into them; and in some, as that of the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, the Pharisee and the Publican, in an union of pathos and simplicity, which in the best productions of human genius is the fruit only of a much exercised and well cultivated judgment.

The Lord’s Prayer, for a succession of solemn thoughts, for fixing the attention upon a few great points, for suitableness to every condition, for sufficiency, for conciseness without obscurity, for the weight and real importance of its petitions, is without an equal or a rival.

From whence did these come?  Whence had this man his wisdom?  Was our Saviour, in fact, a well instructed philosopher, whilst he is represented to us as an illiterate peasant?  Or shall we say that some early Christians of taste and education composed these pieces and ascribed them to Christ?  Beside all other incredibilities in this account, I answer, with Dr. Jortin, that they could not do it.  No specimens of composition which the Christians of the