ll be as the angels of God in heaven." I lay a
stress upon this reserve, because it repels the suspicion of enthusiasm:
for enthusiasm is wont to expatiate upon the condition of the departed,
above all other subjects, and with a wild particularity. It is moreover
a topic which is always listened to with greediness. The teacher,
therefore, whose principal purpose is to draw upon himself attention, is
sure to be full of it. The Koran of Mahomet is half made up of it.

II. Our Lord enjoined no austerities. He not only enjoined none as
absolute duties, but he recommended none as carrying men to a higher
degree of Divine favour. Place Christianity, in this respect, by the
side of all institutions which have been founded in the fanaticism
either of their author or of his first followers: or, rather, compare in
this respect Christianity, as it came from Christ, with the same
religion after it fell into other hands--with the extravagant merit very
soon ascribed to celibacy, solitude, voluntary poverty; with the rigours
of an ascetic, and the vows of a monastic life; the hair-shirt, the
watchings, the midnight prayers, the obmutescence, the gloom and
mortification of religious orders, and of those who aspired to religious
perfection.

III. Our Saviour uttered no impassioned devotion. There was no heat in
his piety, or in the language in which he expressed it; no vehement or
rapturous ejaculations, no violent urgency, in his prayers. The Lord's
Prayer is a model of calm devotion. His words in the garden are
unaffected expressions of a deep, indeed, but sober piety. He never
appears to have been worked up into anything like that elation, or that
emotion of spirits which is occasionally observed in most of those to
whom the name of enthusiast can in any degree be applied. I feel a
respect for Methodists, because I believe that there is to be found
amongst them much sincere piety, and availing though not always
well-informed Christianity: yet I never attended a meeting of theirs but
I came away with the reflection, how different what I heard was from
what I read! I do not mean in doctrine, with which at present I have no
concern, but in manner how different from the calmness, the sobriety,
the good sense, and I may add, the strength and authority of our Lord's
discourses!

IV. It is very usual with the human mind to substitute forwardness and
fervency in a particular cause for the merit of general and regular
morality; and it is