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WHC Trecestways,
Washington,

ton, D. 24. April. 1869.

SERMONS

ON CERTAIN OF

THE LESS PROMINENT

Simons

FACTS AND REFERENCES IN SACRED STORY.

BY HENRY MELVILL, B.D.

MINISTER OF CAMDEN CHAPEL, CAMBERWELL, AND CHAPLAIN TO THE TOWER OF LONDON;

FORMERLY FELLOW AND TUTOR OF ST. PETER'S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.

NEW YORK:

STANFORD & SWORDS, 139 BROADWAY.
PHILADELPHIA:

GEORGE S. APPLETON, 148 CHESNUT-STREET.

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1844.
M

THE NEW YORK

PULLU JIBRARY
99

ASTOR, LENOX AND
TILDEN FOUNDATIONS.

1898.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by STANFORD & SWORDS, in the Clerk's Office of the Southern District of New-York.

NEW-YORK:
Printed by Daniel Fanshaw.

SERMON I.

THE FAITH OF JOSEPH ON HIS DEATH-BED.

By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel, and gave commandment concerning his bones."-Hebrews, 11: 22.

We have often occasion to point out | to you what a difference there is in the standards by which God and men judge the relative worth or importance of things. In one great sense, indeed, there cannot be to God any of those distinctions which exist to ourselves; for, wondrously exalted as He is, things must be equal in his sight, which differ in ours in many respects and degrees. It is undoubtedly to forget the immeasurable distance of the Creator from the creature, to imagine that He who sitteth in the heavens, swaying the universal sceptre, regards as great, and as small, just what are reckoned such in our feeble computations. There ought to be nothing clearer than thisif our great and our small were great and small to God, God would be little more than one of ourselves, judging by the same measures, and therefore possessing only the same faculties.

ing places, so far as difference is allowed between the two.

It is this latter fact on which we now chiefly wish to fix your attention. Take, for example, our sins. We deny that there can be such a thing as a sin which is small in God's sight; forasmuch as sin, from its very nature, must be of infinite guilt, because committed against an infinite Being. But this is not saying that there are no degrees in sin, as though God regarded all crimes as of equal enormity. One sin may be greater than another in the Divine estimate, as well as in the human; and yet God may account no sin small, however ready we may be to think this or that inconsiderable. And what we are disposed to reckon trifling, may be precisely that to which God would attach the greater criminality; so that, as we have said, great and small may change places, and Yet, though the distinctions made by where both God and man admit a difGod must not be thought the same with ference, you may have to reverse the those made by man, we are not to con- judgment of the one to find that of the clude that God admits no differences other. Sins of the mind, for instance, where differences are supposed by our- are ordinarily thought less of than sins selves. We are evidently in error, if of the flesh; pride incurs but slight we think that what is great to us must reproof, whilst sensuality is heavily debe great to God, and that what is small nounced. Yet the proud, perhaps, ofto us must be small to God: but it is fers a more direct insult to God, and not necessary, in order to the avoiding more invades his prerogative, than the this error, that we should confound sensual; and thus his offence may be great and small, or compute that in the more hateful of the two in the sight God's sight they must be actually the of the Creator, whilst it receives, comsame. They may not be the same; paratively, no blame from the creature. they may be widely separated: and Accordingly, there is nothing of which yet none of them may be great to God, God speaks with greater loathing than none of them small: whilst, moreover, of pride: the proud man is represented the Divine estimate may be the reverse as the object of his special aversion. of the human, great and small chang-"God resisteth the proud." So that

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