portant truths, that the "blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin," and that "neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate" him from the Saviour's love a love infinite as space, boundless as the universe, and vast as eternity.

SERMON V.

THE CREDITOR AND TWO DEBTORS.

ST. LUKE vii. 41–43.

"There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty. And when they had nothing to pay, he frankly forgave them both. Tell me, therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And he said unto him, Thou hast rightly judged."

OUR blessed Lord not unfrequently condescended to associate with his most inveterate opponents, among the scribes and pharisees, as well as with those who, in the estimation of these self-righteous persons, were utterly hateful in the sight of God. We find him, for instance, a guest in the house of Matthew, the publican,

whom he had lately called from the seat of custom; and of Zaccheus, also a publican, who at his command came down from the sycamoretree, and received him joyfully; on both of which occasions, his conduct was made the subject of the severest reprehension. One object in thus holding intercourse with a variety of characters, may have been to remove, as much as possible, the deep-rooted prejudices entertained against him, and thus to lead to the acknowledgment of his divine mission. In this familiar intercourse he acted very differently from the Baptist; and to this difference he alludes in the chapter before us, while he condemns the inconsistency of those who would neither benefit by his own instructions, nor by those of his distinguished forerunner-" Whereunto shall I liken the men of this generation? and to what are they like? They are like unto children sitting in the market-place, and calling one to another, and saying, We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced; we have mourned to you, and ye have not wept. Baptist came neither eating bread, wine; and ye say, He hath a devil. man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners."

For John the

nor drinking The Son of

Let us advert, in the first place, to the pecu

liar circumstances which induced our blessed Lord to deliver the parable in the text; and endeavour, in the second, to arrive at a knowledge of those doctrines which he intended to illustrate.

I. When our Lord uttered the parable under consideration, he was in the house of a pharisee named Simon, and most probably in the city of Nain. His entrance into that city had been distinguished by a miracle, which at once illustrated his power and his compassion; for he had restored an only son to his widowed mother, raising him from the bier on which his lifeless remains were carried out to be buried. The unfortunate case of this poor woman had excited the deepest sympathy, for many of the people of the city were accompanying her to the place of sepulture. The miracle could not fail to produce a very powerful effect on those who witnessed it" There came a fear on all: and they glorified God, saying, that a great prophet is risen up among us; and that God hath visited his people."

Whilst he sat at meat in the house of the pharisee, a woman of the city brought an alabaster box of ointment, and stood at the Saviour's feet behind him, weeping, and began to wash his feet with her tears, and to wipe

them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet and anointed them with the ointment. Some have supposed that it was Mary Magdalene who thus testified her affection to our Lord, on account of his mercy in casting out the seven devils; but there appears no just ground for the supposition. The incident naturally arrested the attention of the company assembled, it was in itself extraordinary, and rendered more so by the character of the woman. Some commentators, indeed, are unwilling to allow that the word translated sinner, implies more than that she was a heathen, and, consequently, in the estimation of the Jews, an alien from God; and, doubtless, in some cases, this is its true meaning; but from the whole circumstances of the transaction, from her own behaviour, as well as our Lord's language, we are warranted, without specifying the peculiar nature of her transgressions, to affirm that her character was notoriously bad. The master of the house, on witnessing the conduct of this woman, at once began to entertain doubts as to our Lord's discrimination, and the justice of his claims to be a prophet sent from God. Were this man under heavenly teaching, the pharisee probably argued, he would have clearly perceived that the woman who approached him with such affectionate ardour was notoriously of an infamous