in folemn earnestness resolve upon it. May we all put this refolve into immediate execution, and from this inftant walk the path of virtue and piety with perfevering fidelity. How bleffed will then this day be to us! In what tranquil delight will the rest of our lives flow on! How fedately may we see our diffolution approaching! How confidently may we expect the glorious recompences that are prepared for the righteous in heaven!

Every thing calls us to hearken to the voice of God, so affectionately inviting us to repentance and amendment. We yet live to hear this voice; but how long it may be allowed us, none of us can tell. Woe to us if we put off from day to day, till it be too late to devote ourselves obediently to it! Only with him, only in his fervice and in compliance with his commands, are light and life and joy and felicity to be found; remote from him, darkness and bondage, mifery and death, are our only portion. Merciful father, into what perils has not fin beguiled us! We hafte to escape from them, and to seek grace and help from thee who alone canft help and fave. Lo, we return to thee, unworthy to be called thy fons, but firmly refolved by a better conduct to ren、 der ourselves deferving of that glorious name. We are thine, o Lord, thine by creation, and thine by redemption. We will give ourselves up to thee as our only proprietor. Thee will we only and con tantly obey. In thee will we feek our whole felicity,

Qh

Oh do thou fupply our weakness; keep us by thy mighty arm from falling back into fin; grant us to advance in goodness, give us to overcome the world, and by thy fupport to perfevere unto the end.

Preached on a Faft-day.

SERMON XLI.

The Blefedness of Beneficence.

GOD, who art all benignity and love, who art always more ready to blefs than to punish, and displayeft thy infinite greatnefs by infinite bounty; daily and hourly openeft thou thy liberal hand and fillest all things living with plenteousness. Daily and hourly giveft thou to us fresh proofs that thy mercy is over all thy works; that thou loveft us with parental tenderness; that as a father thou provideft for us and our real welfare. Lord, with admiration and humility we adore the riches of thy grace and love; we rejoice in the multitude and the exceeding value of the unmerited gifts of thy bounty; we are ready to render thee the thanks for them which thou requireft of us. Thou requireft, as a proof of our acknowledgment, that we fhould be kind, compaffionate, charitable and bountiful, like

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thee;

thee; that we should be followers of thee as dear children; that we should fhare, as it were, with thee, the blessedness of beneficence. To obey thee, o God, is our glory and our happiness. Thy commands are life and peace to all that keep them. Ah let us ever confess it, and ever willingly be faithful to that confeffion. Do thou eradicate all feeds of avarice, of selfishness, of obduracy and cruelty from our hearts; and fill them with the gentle, compaffionate, affectionate, officious and difinterested dispofitions which alone can render us worthy to be called thy children and disciples of thy fon. Biefs, in this view, the leffons we are now to receive from thy word, and let the efficacy of them be manifest in abundant fruits of chriftian beneficence. Thou Father of an infinite majefty, let these our fupplications find acceptance with thee, for the fake of Jefus Chrift, thy honourable, true and only fon, our mediator and redeemer, in obedience to whose express command we address thee thus: Our father, &c.

ACTS XX. 35.

It is more bleffed to give than to receive.

THERE are times and circumstances, when we, your ministers, afcend this place with heavy hearts, as having but little hope of the defired fuccefs in delivering to you the word of truth, and of reaping much fruit from our labour. This happens whenever our office, and a zeal for your real wel fare, require us to lay before you your fins and failings, and among them fuch particularly as are the most rife amongst us, which are the least condemned by the world, and in behalf whereof felf-love, pride, custom, and fashion, have invented the most excufes, and the muft plaufible palliations. It hap pens whenever we have to deliver to you fuch doc. trines and precepts as are manifeftly at variance with the prejudices of the times in which we live, with the prevailing manner of thinking and acting; and of fuch doctrines and precepts chriftianity, which derives its origin from heaven, and is ordained to conduct us thither, comprifes not a few. It happens especially whenever we labour to inspire you with the humble, the gentle, the compaffionate, the hea, venly difpofitions, which are the diftinctive charac

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