There is another reason why every wise man is so scrupulously jealous of the character of English Justice. It puts an end to civil dissension. What other countries obtain by bloody wars, is here obtained by the decisions of our own tribunals; unchristian passions are laid to rest by these tribunals brothers are brothers again; the Gospel resumes its empire, and because all confide in the presiding magistrate, and because a few plain men are allowed to decide upon their own conscientious impression of facts, civil discord, years of convulsion, endless crimes, are spared; the storm is laid, and those who came in clamouring for revenge, go back together in peace from the hall of judgment to the loom and the plough, to the senate and the church.

discovered. Every man feels that he the storms of the world, and why we has a country, that he has something did not fall. The Christian patience worth preserving, and worth contend- you may witness, the impartiality of ing for. Instances are remembered the judgment-seat, the disrespect of where the weak prevailed over the persons, the disregard of consequences. strong one man recalls to mind when These attributes of Justice do not a just and upright judge protected end with arranging your conflicting him from unlawful violence, gave him rights, and mine; they give strength back his vineyard, rebuked his oppres- to the English people; duration to the sor, restored him to his rights, publish- English name; they turn the animal ed, condemned and rectified the wrong. courage of this people into moral and This is what is called country. Equal religious courage, and present to the rights to unequal possessions, equal lowest of mankind plain reasons, and justice to the rich and poor: this is strong motives why they should resist what men come out to fight for, and to aggression from without, and bind defend. Such a country has no legal themselves a living rampart round the injuries to remember, no legal murders land of their birth. to revenge, no legal robbery to redress: it is strong in its justice it is then that the use and object of all this assemblage of gentlemen and arrangement of Juries, and the deserved veneration in which we hold the character of English Judges, is understood in all its bearings, and in its fullest effects: men die for such things - they cannot be subdued by foreign force where such just practices prevail. The sword of ambition is shivered to pieces against such a bulwark. Nations fall where Judges are unjust, because there is nothing which the multitude think worth defending; but nations do not fall which are treated as we are treated, but they rise as we have risen, and they shine as we have shone, and die as we have died, too much used to Justice, and too much used to freedom, to care for that life which is not just and free. I call you all to witness if there be any exaggerated picture in this: the sword is just sheathed, the flag is just furled, the last sound of the trumpet has just died away. You all remember what a spectacle this country exhibited one heart, one voice- one weapon, one purpose. And why? Because this country is a country of the law; because the Judge is a judge for the peasant as well as for the palace; because every man's happiness is guarded by fixed rules from tyranny and caprice. This town, this week, the business of the few next days, would explain to any enlightened European why other nations did fall in

The whole tone and tenour of public morals is affected by the state of supreme Justice; it extinguishes revenge, it communicates a spirit of purity and uprightness to inferior magistrates; it makes the great good, by taking away impunity; banishes fraud, obliquity, and solicitation, and teaches men that the law is their right. Truth is its handmaid, freedom is its child, peace is its companion; safety walks in its steps, victory follows in its train: it is the brightest emanation of the Gospel, it is the greatest attribute of God; it is that centre round which human motives and passions turn and Justice, sitting on high, sees Genius and Power, and Wealth and Birth, revolving round her throne; and teaches their paths and

marks out their orbits, and warns with tion was happy, if ever a nation was visibly blessed by God-if ever a nation was honoured abroad, and left at home under a government (which we can now conscientiously call a liberal government) to the full career of talent, industry, and vigour, we are at this moment that people and this is our happy lot.-First the Gospel has done it, and then Justice has done it ; and he who thinks it his duty to labour that this happy condition of existence may remain, must guard the piety of these times, and he must watch over the spirit of Justice which exists in these times. First, he must take care that the altars of God are not polluted, that the Christian faith is retained in purity and in perfection and then turning to human affairs, let him strive for spotless, incorruptible Justice; praising, honouring, and loving the just Judge, and abhorring, as the worst enemy of mankind, him who is placed there to "judge after the law, and who smites contrary to the law."

a loud voice, and rules with a strong arm, and carries order and discipline into a world, which but for her would only be a wild waste of passions. Look what we are, and what just laws have done for us: a land of piety and charity; a land of churches, and hospitals, and altars;-a nation of good Samaritans ;· -a people of universal compassion. All lands, all seas, have heard we are brave. We have just sheathed that sword which defended the world; we have just laid down that buckler which covered the nations of the earth. God blesses the soil with fertility; English looms labour for every climate. All the waters of the globe are covered with English ships. We are softened by fine arts, civilised by human literature, instructed by deep science; and every people, as they break their feudal chains, look to the founders and fathers of freedom for examples which may animate, and rules which may guide. If ever a na

:

THE LAWYER THAT TEMPTED CHRIST.

A SERMON

PREACHED IN THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF ST. PETER, YORK

BEFORE

THE HON. SIR JOHN BAYLEY, KNT.

ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S JUSTICES OF THE COURT OF KING'S BENCH

AND

THE HON. SIR JOHN HULLOCK, KNT.

ONE OF HIS MAJESTY'S BARONS OF THE COURT OF EXCHEQUER

AUGUST 1, 1824.

through whose mediation, you, and I, | and all of us, hope to live again; and the answer, remember, was plain and practical; not flowery, not metaphysical, not doctrinal; but it said to the man of the law, If you wish to live eternally, do your duty to God and man; live in this world as you ought to live; make yourself fit for eternity; and then, and then only, God will grant to you eternal life.

placed by other habits of solicitude, hurry, and care, totally incompatible with habits of devotion? Is not the taste for devotion lessened? Is not the time for devotion abridged? Are you not more and more conquered against your warnings and against your will; not, perhaps, without pain and compunction, by the Mammon of life? And what is the cure for this great evil to which your profession There are, probably, in this church, exposes you? The cure is, to keep many persons of the profession of the a sacred place in your heart, where law, who have often asked before, with Almighty God is enshrined, and where better faith than their brother, and who nothing human can enter; to say to do now ask this great question, "What the world, "Thus far shalt thou go, shall I do to inherit eternal life?" I and no further;" to remember you are shall, therefore, direct to them some a lawyer, without forgetting you are a observations on the particular duties Christian; to wish for no more wealth they owe to society, because I think it than ought to be possessed by an insuitable to this particular season, be- heritor of the kingdom of heaven; to cause it is of much more importance covet no more honour than is suitable to tell men how they are to be Chris- to a child of God; boldly and bravely tians in detail, than to exhort them to to set yourself limits, and to show to be Christians generally; because it is others you have limits, and that no of the highest utility to avail ourselves professional eagerness, and no profesof these occasions, to show to classes sional activity, shall ever induce you of mankind what those virtues are, to infringe upon the rules and pracwhich they have more frequent and tices of religion: remember the text; valuable opportunities of practising, put the great question really, which and what those faults and vices are, to the tempter of Christ only pretended which they are more particularly ex-to put. In the midst of your highest posed.

success, in the most perfect gratification of your vanity, in the most ample increase of your wealth, fall down at the feet of Jesus, and say, "Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?"

It falls to the lot of those who are engaged in the active and arduous profession of the law to pass their lives in great cities, amidst severe and incessant occupation, requiring all the The genuine and unaffected piety faculties, and calling forth, from time of a lawyer is, in one respect, of great to time, many of the strongest passions advantage to the general interests of of our nature. In the midst of all religion; inasmuch as to the highest this, rivals are to be watched, supe- member of that profession a great share riors are to be cultivated, connections of the Church patronage is entrusted, cherished; some portion of life must be and to him we are accustomed to look given to society, and some little to re-up in the senate for the defence of our laxation and amusement. When, then, venerable Establishment; and great is the question to be asked, "What and momentous would be the loss to shall I do to inherit eternal life ?" this nation, if any one, called to so what leisure for the altar, what time high and honourable an office, were for God? I appeal to the experience found deficient in this ancient, pious, of men engaged in this profession, and useful zeal for the Established whether religious feelings and religious Church. In talking to men of your practices are not, without any specula-active lives and habits, it is not pos tive disbelief, perpetually sacrificed to sible to anticipate the splendid and the business of the world? Are not exalted stations for which any one of the habits of devotion gradually dis- you may be destined. Fifty years

ment, fear no change which draws down upon it the more abundant prayers and blessings of the human race.

ago, the person at the head of his profession, the greatest lawyer now in England, perhaps in the world, stood in this church, on such occasions as the present, as obscure, as unknown, Justice is found, experimentally, to and as much doubting of his future be most effectually promoted by the prospects as the humblest individual opposite efforts of practised and inof the profession here present. If genious men presenting to the selection providence reserve such honours for of an impartial judge the best arguany one who may now chance to hear ments for the establishment and explame, let him remember that there is re-nation of truth. It becomes, then, quired at his hands a zeal for the Es- under such an arrangement, the detablished Church, but a zeal tempered cided duty of an advocate to use all by discretion, compatible with Chris- the arguments in his power to defend tian charity, and tolerant of Christian the cause he has adopted, and to leave freedom. All human establishments the effects of those arguments to the are liable to err, and are capable of judgment of others. However useful improvement: to act as if you denied this practice may be for the promotion this, to perpetuate any infringement of public justice, it is not without danupon the freedom of other sects, how-ger to the individual whose practice ever vexatious that infringement, and it becomes. It is apt to produce a prohowever safe its removal, is not to fligate indifference to truth in higher defend an establishment, but to expose occasions of life, where truth cannot it to unmerited obloquy and reproach. for a moment be trifled with, much Never think it necessary to be weak less callously trampled on, much less and childish in the highest concerns of suddenly and totally yielded up to the life: the career of the law opens to you basest of human motives. It is astonmany great and glorious opportunities ishing what unworthy and inadequate of promoting the Gospel of Christ, notions men are apt to form of the and of doing good to your fellow- Christian faith. Christianity does not creatures: there is no situation of that insist upon duties to an individual, and profession in which you can be more forget the duties which are owing to great and more glorious than when the great mass of individuals, which in the fulness of years, and the ful- we call our country; it does not teach ness of honours, you are found de- you how to benefit your neighbour, fending that Church which first taught and leave you to inflict the most serious you to distinguish between good and injuries upon all whose interest is evil, and breathed into you the ele-bound up with you in the same land. ments of religious life: but when you I need not say to this congregation defend that Church, defend it with that there is a wrong and a right in enlarged wisdom and with the spirit public affairs, as there is a wrong and of magnanimity; praise its great ex- a right in private affairs. I need not cellences, do not perpetuate its little prove that in any vote, in any line of defects, be its liberal defender, be its conduct which affects the public inwise patron, be its real friend. If you terest, every Christian is bound most can be great and bold in human affairs, solemnly and most religiously, to follow do not think it necessary to be narrow the dictates of his conscience. Let it and timid in spiritual concerns: bind be for, let it be against, let it please, yourself up with the real and import- let it displease, no matter with whom ant interests of the Church, and hold it sides, or what it thwarts, it is a yourself accountable to God for its solemn duty, on such occasions, to act safety; but yield up trifles to the altered from the pure dictates of conscience, state of the world. Fear no change and to be as faithful to the interests of which lessens the enemies of that Es- the great mass of your fellow-creatures, tablishment, fear no change which in- as you would be to the interests of any creases the activity of that Establish- | individual of that mass. Why, then,