Verse 28 Were astonished. This discourse seems to have made at the time, an impression upon those who listened to it, such as its character might have led us to expect. The clearness and simplicity of the aspects of truth which it presents, the force and elegance of its diction, and the beauty and appropriateness of its imagery, would combine to raise the sermon on the mount to the very highest rank, if we were to consider it simply as human composition. And vast has been the influence, too, which has exerted upon all that portion of the human race, to which the pen and the press have yet made it known; as it has now, for sixty successive generations, stood conspicuously before mankind, holding up to view the true tests and characteristics of virtue,--exposing, hypocrisy, promoting feelings of filial affection towards God, and a calm and happy trust in his superintending providence,--quieting the anxieties of human life, and lightening its cares,--and, more than all, soothing the anguish of remorse for sin, by pointing out the means and the certainty of pardon. It is remarkable, too, that its principles, new and startling as they were, when first announced, and hostile as they have ever been to the received maxims and established customs of society have never been seriously assailed. They cannot be assailed; and there is a certain sublime confidence in the majesty of truth exhibited in the form of simple assertion, in which these great principles are left, unsustained by argument or authority. They are left to stand, self-supported, by the innate power of truth, and by the testimony of that incorruptible, witness, ever ready, in the human soul, to confirm, by its voice, the immutable and eternal distinctions between right and wrong.