an 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 first century have
left us authorise us to believe that they were equal to the task. And
how little qualified the Jews, the countrymen and companions of Christ,
were to assist him in the undertaking, may be judged of from the
traditions and writings of theirs which were the nearest to that age.
The whole collection of the Talmud is one continued proof into what
follies they fell whenever they left their Bible; and how little capable
they were of furnishing out such lessons as Christ delivered.

But there is still another view in which our Lord's discourses deserve
to be considered; and that is, in their negative character,--not in what
they did, but in what they did not, contain. Under this head the
following reflections appear to me to possess some weight.

I. They exhibit no particular description of the invisible world. The
future happiness of the good, and the misery of the bad, which is all we
want to be assured of, is directly and positively affirmed, and is
represented by metaphors and comparisons, which were plainly intended as
metaphors and comparisons, and as nothing more. As to the rest, a solemn
reserve is maintained. The question concerning the woman who had been
married to seven brothers, "Whose shall she be on the resurrection?" was
of a nature calculated to have drawn from Christ a more circumstantial
account of the state of the human species in their future existence. He
cuts short, however, the inquiry by an answer, which at once rebuked
intruding curiosity, and was agreeable to the best apprehensions we are
able to form upon the subject, viz. "That they who are accounted worthy
of that resurrection, sha