DISCOURSE XVII.

ON THE PURIFICATION.

LUKE II. 22.

And when the days of her purification, according to the law of Moses, were accomplished, they brought bim to Jerufalem, to present him to the Lord.

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XVII.

MONG the many advantages we DISC. enjoy in these feats of learning and religion, it may surely be deemed one, that an honourable respect is paid to those sacred festivals, which the church of England, in her wisdom, has thought proper to retain. They are few, and they are important: fo few, that the neceffary profecution of fecular business is not too much

DISC. broken in upon; so important, that nothing XVII. seems to have been appointed in vain. They compose a celestial circle, of which Chrift is the centre: his first and faithful friends form the circumference, reflecting back on him the glory received from him. They vifit us in their annual course, with messages from above, each teaching us fomething to believe, and, in consequence, fomething to do. They bring repeatedly to our remembrance truths, which we are apt to forget: they secure to us little intervals of rest from worldly cares, that our hearts with our hands may be lifted up to God in the heavens: they revive our zeal and fervour in performing the offices of religion: they cheer the heart with sentiments of gratitude and thankfulness: they confirm us in habits of obedience to the institutions of the church and the injunctions of our fuperiors: they stir us up to an imitation of those who have gone before us in the way of holiness: they minifter an occafion to our children, of enquiring into the meaning of their institution; and afford

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afford us an opportunity of explaining the DISC. several doctrines and duties of Christianity, to which they refer: in short, to use the words of the excellent Hooker, " they are "the splendor and outward dignity of our " religion, forcible witnesses of ancient "truth, provocations to the exercises of "all piety, shadows of our endless felicity " in heaven, on earth everlasting records " and memorials; wherein they who can"not be drawn to hearken unto that we " teach, may, only by looking upon that "we do, in a manner read whatever we " believe. Well to celebrate these religious " and facred days, is to spend the flower of " our time happily *."

Let us therefore arrest the festival of the day, and detain it, while we learn from it those useful lessons it is prepared to teach, concerning the purification of the blessed virgin; the presentation of the child Jesus in the temple; the sacrifice offered upon

* Ecclesiastical Polity, v. 71.

VOL. III.

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DISC. the occafion; and the behaviour of Simeon

If we look into the law of Mofes, we find it ordained, that the woman who had borne a male child, for forty days thence enfuing (a period, for whatever reason, often fixed on, in cases of humiliation), was to be accounted impure, to touch no hallowed thing, nor to approach the sanctuary. At the expiration of that term, she was to repair, for the first time, to the temple, and there to have an atonement made for her by the priest.

With respect to the whole class of those incidents and maladies to which the body is subject, thus regarded in the eye of the divine law as unclean; from the nature of the ordinance itself, as well as from numberless passages in the writings of the prophets, and more especially in the New Testament, it should seem evident, that fomething farther was intended than may at first fight appear.

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among other things, "in divers outward DISC. * washings and cleanfings." But may it not be here asked, as in another instance, "Doth God take care for these ? Or faith "he it not for our fake?" Hath he not enjoined such external rites, for the fake of conveying by them to future ages and generations, no less than to those then present, some truths of universal use and importance ?

Of one thing we are all well assured. That alone which renders man and the creation otherwise than acceptable in the fight of their Maker, is fin. That alone which can reinstate them in his favour, is the redemption by Christ. By means of the former we are affirmed to have become " corrupted, polluted, defiled, unclean;" by the instrumentality of the latter we are said to be " purged, purified, washed, cleanfed" terms all borrowed from the legal ceremonies, at once explaining them, and being explained by them.