XXI.

A little leaven leaventh the whole lump.1 Cor. v. 6.

THIS was a proverbial mode of speaking among the Jews; and is used fometimes in a good, and fometimes in a bad fenfe. It is here taken in a bad fenfe; the apostle fearing left the christian converts at Corinth might be infected with the manners of their country, which were very profligate. In a good sense it is taken, where our Saviour compares the growth of the gospel to leaven hid in a bushel of meal. I fhall make a practical use therefore of both fenses; and take occafion from them to fhew you, the great obligation we are all under with regard to exactness in our words, and actions, merely as far as others are concerned; because a little leaven leaventh the whole lump.

No man then can answer for the effect, which the lightest impropriety in his words, or actions, may have upon another. It may touch fome ftring in unifon with it, which might never have

ftruck

ftruck a note, if it had not been for this vibration. You may yourself be a ferious man, and reverence the fcriptures: but you may perhaps have fuffered fome little light parody, or inadvertent interpretation to have escaped you; which may drop a feed of infidelity in a corrupt heart. This may take root and from it again, by a ftill farther femination on the minds of others, a new crop of infidelity may spring. If your inadvertent interpretation had not given a mind, yet unformed, a wrong turn, it might have been open to fome better impreffion. Whoever attends to his own thoughts, must be fenfible what trifles often give birth to a train of thinking.

Now take the word leaven in a good sense. The juftnefs of fome religious thought, or the beauty of fome religious action, may make an indelible impreffion on a well-difpofed mind: and, it is poffible, may give a man's life, and converfation a new turn. So many instances of this kind have happened in the world; that fome enthusiastic people have perhaps taken. from hence their ideas of miraculous converfion.

Confidering therefore how very liable we are to catch contagion from each other, it should ever be, as much as poffible, prefent with us, to

avoid every thing that may corrupt the minds of thofe, we are concerned with. At the fame time, we should be equally ready, when we can do it with propriety, to throw out good hints for their improvement.

It is impoffible for any human being to guard his words and his actions with perfect care; yet ftill perhaps we may have fewer idle words to account for than we perhaps otherwise might have, if we keep it continually in our minds, that a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.

XXII.

Do not found a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do, in the fynagogues, and in the freets, that they may have glory of men. Verily, I fay unto you, they have their rerward.-Matthew vi. 2.

IN the divine difcourfe, from whence this verse is taken, our bleffed Saviour corrects a number of impurities, and corrupt practices, which had obtained in the Jewish church: and as the heart of man is at all times the fame; we shall, in general, find ourselves equally concerned in all these prohibitions, with the ancient Jews. The spirit of different religions, and the customs of different nations, may modify vice in various ways; but wherever man is found; there all the great principles of wickednefs will be found with him; which will differ no more through the whole fpecies, than the caft of one national countenance from another. Thus the text, though spoken to Jews, is equally applicable to chriftians. In explaining it, I shall first fhew you what our Saviour

means

means by founding a trumpet; and fhall then explain the fubfequent fentence, they have their reward.

The trumpet was much used in the ceremonies of the Jewish law: and was generally intended, as indeed it is now, to proclaim fomething, that men were concerned to hear. Hence to found a trumpet became proverbial among the Jews. When the Pharifees therefore stood praying in the corners of the streets, our Saviour fays they founded a trumpet-that is, they called men by their hypocritical geftures to take notice of their fanctity.

But now, though the customs, and manners of the times, we live in, will not bear us out in founding our trumpets in the loud manner, in which thefe Pharifees founded theirs; yet there are few of us, who do not wish to found them in a lower note. In plain words, there are few of us, who are entirely fatisfied with doing our good actions in the fight of our heavenly father, who feeth in fecret. We fhould rather wish, that the eye of man might have a little view of them.

After the return of the Jews from the Babylonish captivity, in which they had fuffered for much for their idolatry, that mode of wicked

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