Lectures delivered at Broadmead chapel Author:John Foster Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE TV. THE EIGHT MODE OF GIVING AND EEGETTING EEPKOOF. Galatians iv. 16. "Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? " Men com... more »monly assign a number of the persons and things within their sphere to the classes, respectively, of friends and enemies. There are beings that have in them an evil spirit toward us, and there are those that have a good one. And it is of very great importance that men rightly account of what are such, (i. e. friends and enemies), because very much of what men are, and what they do, depends on what they account friends and enemies. Many things in our notions, tastes, habits, practices, if traced back to the cause, are what they are, because such and such men were regarded by us as friends or as enemies. How disastrous, therefore, that perversity of apprehension through which enemies have so often been accounted friends, and friends enemies! And especially conspicuous has this perversity been in regard to the point suggested in our text, namely, whether it should be esteemed the part of a friend faithfully to tell men the truth;—and whether the suppression of truth, and the substitution of its opposite, should not be held to mark the character of an enemy. Advert, in your thoughts, to the first temptation in the world,—the first communication to man of opinion and advice, after God had finished speaking. The most gross, and impious, and pernicious falsehood was pronounced; what there was the most absolute evidence must be such.And it was taken for the language of a friend' For what plainer proof can there be that the speaker is regarded as a friend, than that his advice is practically taken, when the taking of it involves the most momentous interests ! It is but in passing, that we notice how much into the dark this...« less