Page:Sermons preached in the African Protestant Episcopal Church of St. Thomas', Philadelphia.djvu/66

62 and do not the things" that he says; so, on the other hand, there is nothing better calculated, perhaps, to stop the mouths of gainsayers, to fasten conviction upon the mind of the ungodly, than the consistent conduct of religious professors. They are then as a city set on a hill that cannot be hid—they evince to all around that religion is a divine reality, and not a cunningly devised fable. In the character of Gaius, we see one who used the world as not abusing it. He was blessed with all the necessary comforts and conveniences of life, and very probably upon the whole, was in a very prosperous condition as it regards temporal matters; as we may learn from his repeated acts of kindness "to brethren and strangers." There were many to "bear witness before the church," of this praiseworthy trait in his character. His prosperity in the things of this life did not, however, prove to him a curse. He did not suffer the things of this world to