to exercise an unlimited authority over you, and do little or nothing for controuling their fway, which ought to be day and night your most momentous business. Ye are in danger of entirely lofing your liberty, and of plunging into the wretchedeft, the cruelleft bondage, and by every repetition of fin this danger is increased; and yet you go on doing the evil you have been doing all along, thus daily increafing the difficulty of ever recovering your liberty. Ye may to-day or to-morrow be deprived of all your temporal poffeffions and honours, all that is dear and valuable to you in this world; and yet ye are not making intereft for any better poffeffions, any nobler, more lasting distinctions, which may be an equivalent for this lofs, and compenfate you for it. Ye are mortal beings, not one hour, not a moment fecure from the danger of death, and yet ye give yourselves no trouble to make up your minds for that folemn hour, for that decifive moment, in preparing yourselves for this unfpeakably important change, and affuring yourfelves of an eligible portion in the world to come. Is this to be called acting judicioufly, or foolishly? Is it the glory and fecurity of the fage, or the apathy of the lunatic? Oh how justly may wisdom addrefs the perfons who fo think and act: Forfake the foolish, and live, and go in the way of understanding: how long, ye fimple ones, will ye love fimplicity? Surely, my dear audience, an unchristian, finful life is the groffeft infatuation, the abfurdeft of all follies.

And

And fo fenfelessly, fo foolishly have we all, more or less, thought and acted, all of us, who are here affembled in the prefence of God, to humble ourfelves before him, to implore his pardon, and to vow to him amendment of life. Not one of us, my brethren, who has not more than once declined from the paths of wisdom, and how many, ah how many, who have never yet trod thofe paths, who are still finners in the ftricteft fenfe of the word! Oh let us take the first step to wisdom, by confeffing our folly! Woe to him, who has finned, who still leads a finful life at enmity with the divine will, and will not yet confefs, will not own that he has acted, and ftill acts foolishly. A fool, who thinks himself wife, what a wretched and forlorn creature! Unconcerned and fecurely he marches along the path of folly, more and more eafily beguiled by the deceitfulness of fin, more and more infenfible to the warnings of his teacher, of his friend, of his confcience, of his God, adds fin to fin, folly to folly, and wakes not from his dream, till he is fo overpowered by fhame and mifery, that he can no longer escape them.

No, let us now be afhamed of our folly, while this fhame may be falutary to us. Let us ftand confounded before God, who has afforded us fo many capacities and means, for being wife, and for continually conducting ourselves more wifely. The non-employment, and the mif-employment of thefe capacities and means, the guilt of ingratitude which we have contracted towards our creator and father, the great

diffimi

diffimilarity, the manifest opposition, thence arising between him and us, our distant retroceffion from the goal of perfection, and from him, the primordial fount of light and happiness, fhould fink us to the ground before him, thoroughly pervade us with shame and remorse, and put into our mouths the language of the penitent I am afraid, o God, to lift my eyes unto thee, for I have refused to hear thy voice, thy call to wisdom and felicity, have liftened to the enticing voice of fin, have allowed myself to be dazzled by her deceitful charms, trufted her lying promifes, and am fallen on the way of folly and mifery. Let us however be so ashamed of our folly, my dear friends, as men are afhamed of it who are actually brought to reflection, to better fentiments, to felf-knowledge, to fome fenfe of our loft or fullied dignity, who are really become attentive to the call of wisdom, and refolved to follow it. To acknowledge, confefs, lament that we have acted foolishly, and then act again in like manner, how deeply muft it degrade and difgrace a human creature, what tortures of fruitless repentance muft it prepare for him hereafter! No, my dear friends, may every one of us now, while furrounded by a fomewhat clearer light, open his eyes to it, by the brightnefs of it fearch into his heart and his conduct, tell himself directly, how and in what instances he in particular has acted foolishly, of what fins and failings he in particular is guilty, what in his fentiments and in his conduct particularly militates with wisdom, with the will of God, with the

christian

christian temper, and then may we exclaim: No, fin fhall no more beguile me. Sin is ftupidity, is folly. Her promifes are lies; her pleasures are extremely fallacious, are fooner or later fources of pain and remorse; her benefits have more of femblance than reality; her charms can only impofe on the fhortfighted. O truth, wifdom, divine truth, chriftian wisdom, ye, ye fhall be the guides of my future life, reject not with difdain the wretch who has hitherto not known you, and flighted your fummons to happiness, let my path be brightened by your light, your counfel guide my fteps, your spirit revive and ftrengthen, admonish, chaften, alarm me, whenever my feet approach fome crooked path, or my ear is ftruck by the fafcinating voice of fin and vanity, at fuch moments let the idea of God and of futurity, of what as a man and a chriftian, I am and am intended to be and to become, fhake my very foul, and fright me back from the way of folly and perdition. May your gentlest whifpers be audible at all times, your dictates ever facred to me, may they conduct me on the path of christian virtue to peace of mind, that balm of life, to fatisfaction and felicity!

SERMON XLI.

The Infamy of a Sinful Courfe of Life.

Go

OD, who art our creator and our father, thou haft crowned us, thy children, with glory and honour, elevated us to the rank of rational creatures, endowed us with capacities and difpofitions for great undertakings, for generous and noble exploits, and made us but little inferior to the angels. We are thy offspring, derive our origin from thee, bear thy image, are thy children, are immortal. We have in thy fon Jefus, a relative, a brother, who became in all things like unto us, who for the restoration of our dignity came upon earth, lived among mankind and facrificed himself for them, and who intends to raife us with him to that perfection and felicity, which he poffeffes in heaven. O God, what might we not all be and become, if we understood how properly to prize and to ufe our privileges, if we were never unmindful of our extraction and our deftination! But how fhould we be covered with fhame and confufion at this idea, which ought to infpire us with the fublimeft joy!

How little are

we that, which we fhould and might be! How greatly weakened, enervated, decayed, degraded are we yet by fin! How hard the yoke of it bears upon us! How far do our temper and life remove us