instincts be fo ennobled as is conformable to thy gracious and paternal intentions towards us! Might wisdom and virtue, might the light of religion direct and guide us all in this, and lead us all to the perfection and happiness whereof we are capable! How many unjust and criminal complaints of human mifery would not then be done away! How fatisfied, how blessed fhould we not then be in the focial and chearful enjoyment of thy bounties! How greatly facilitate to ourselves by mutual affection and friendship our progrefs on the way of duty and virtue, and how much more certainly and completely reach the end of our being! O God, do thou send the fpirit of love, of pure and generous love, into our hearts! Open them to the charms of virtuous friendship. Enable us clearly to perceive and intimately to feel its great value; and purify us from all low, selfish inclinations and paffions that are in oppofition to it. O God, to approach nearer to thee, the father of fpirits, and to unite ever closer the one to the other, is what all intelligent, fenfible beings are perpetually striving after, is also longed for by human fpirits! May we ever be becoming more fufceptible of this happiness in both refpects, and be ever drawing more felicity from this fource of life. Blefs to that end the contemplations we now propose to begin upon it. Strengthen our reflections, and enable them to penetrate us with vir tuous, generous fentiments and feelings. For this

we

we present our fupplications to thee, as the votaries of thy fon Jefus, our ever blessed deliverer and lord; and, firmly relying on his promises, address thee farther as he prescribed: Our father, &c.

PROV. Xviii. 24.

There is a friend that ticketh closer than a brother.

HRISTIANITY has frequently been reproached

CH

as unfavourable to friendship, fince it does not exprefsly inculcate it; prefcribing indeed to its fol⚫lowers benevolence, towards all, univerfal kindness and brotherly love, but not difcriminate friendship. Friendship, however, is not properly a duty, not an indifpenfable obligation for all; it is not to be commanded, like justice and general kindness; its rise, its direction very frequently depends on circumstances and incidents that are not in our own power; and even very intelligent and worthy persons, of a fenfible and friendly heart, may and often must, without any fault of theirs, forego the happiness of friendship, I mean strict and cordial friendship. At the fame time it must be confeffed, that the more a man opens his heart to univerfal benevolence, to philanthropy and brotherly love, thofe great commandments of

the christian law; the more he allows himself to be governed by the fpirit of them: fo much the more adapted and disposed will he be to even the most noble and most exalted friendship. Nay, friendship would be a very general virtue, and the whole fociety of christians a band of friends intimately united together, if they all inviolably conformed to the precepts of that doctrine which they confefs, and fuffered themselves to be animated by its fpirit.

Of this, what we know of the founder of christianity and of its primitive confeffors, will not allow us to doubt. When we fee Jesus repay the gentle, tender, affectionate difpofition of his disciple John with distinguished affection and confidence, when we fee this disciple fo often leaning on his breaft, and hear him continually called the difciple whom he loved, when we see our Lord selecting the house of his friend Lazarus as his place of refuge and recreation; when we hear him fay to his attendants, " Our friend Lazarus fleepeth, but I go to awake him;" when he afterwards haftens to his grave, weeps at the fight of his body, and the beholders exclaim, "See how he loved him!" how can we entertain the leaft doubt of the friendly difpofition of Jefus, or think that fuch a difpofition is at variance with his fpirit and his doctrine? And the connection that fubfifted between Jefus and his difciples and followers in general, certainly presents us with an example of the most generous friendship. How indulgent, how affectionate, how familiar, was his converfe with

them!

them! How great his concern for them!" If ye seek me," said he to the guards who came to feize him," then let these go their way." It is recorded of him, that, "having loved his own, he loved them unto the end." And, when he was fhortly to be separated from them, how he foothed, comforted, encouraged them! How he seemed entirely to for get himself and his most important concerns, in his attention to them! How tenderly he takes leave of them at the last fupper, and enjoins them the commemoration of him! How he bears them in mind even during the whole course of his fufferings, and in the last fad fcene of them interefts himself in their welfare! And how he hastened, as it were, on his refurrection from the dead to fhew himself to them, and to dry up their tears! Was not this friendship, was it not the most exalted friendship? And the first christians, who, animated and inspired by the spirit of christianity, were but one heart and one foul, who had all things, as it were, in common, who were daily of one accord together: did they not compofe a band of the most intimately connected friends, cemented together by the love of God and the love of Jefus and the love of each other?

-

No, christianity is by no means unfavourable to real, virtuous friendship. It, on the contrary, infpires us with all the difpofitions, incites us to all the actions, and makes us ready for all the facrificeswherein the characteristics and the glory of friendship confift. Only we must learn how properly to under ftand

VOL. II.

M

stand and appreciate it. And this is the purport of my present difcourfe. In it I will inquire with you into the value of friendfhip, one of the greatest bleffings of life. To that end I will first shew you, how friendship fhould be constituted in order to have a great value; then, wherein the value of it confifts; and, laftly, how we should behave in regard to it, in order that it may be and procure to us what it is capable of being and procuring to us.

This will enable us to feel the truth of Solomon's fentence which we have taken for our text: “There is a friend that fticketh clofer than a brother."

Friendship, what a facred, what a venerable name, -- and how abused and profaned! Now the most captivating garb of virtue: now the mask of vice. Now the indiffoluble band of generous and noble fouls and now the most dangerous fnare of the betrayer of innocence. Here the parent of truth, of frankness, of fincerity; there the difguife of the most artful treachery, and the deepest cunning. One while a powerful incentive to the fairest and most magnanimous atchievements; at another, the fordid means of profecuting and attaining the most selfish designs. And all this while, real friendship still maintains her station and fupports her dignity. She preferves the exalted place fhe has obtained among the virtues and prerogatives of human nature, among the fources of our felicity. But not every thing which bears her name, not every thing that borrows her garb, is fhe herself. Let us therefore, for her vindication,