at the table of our lord, where all exclaims to us in accents diftin&t and loud: God is love, and that as furely as thou eatest of that bread and drinkeft of that cup, for from love he fent his fon to thee, and for thee delivered him up to death! That Jefus, whofe memorial thou here folemnizest, is the express image of his father is vifible, divine, incarnate love. He loved thee even unto death, loved thee more than his life, and loves thee still, and will love thee to all eternity. Yes, this moft confoling, most blissful of all truths, the truth that God is love, fhould be the leading principle of all our thoughts and judgments, animate all our words and works, folve every difficulty in nature and religion, or quiet our minds about it, diffufe light and confolation over all the paths of life, fweetening and dignifying every pleasure, and converting every affliction into a benefit! It fhould inftruct us to live righteously and cheerfully and to die contented and happy! And as often as we experimentally feel its faving influence, we will glory in christianity; christianity, which taught us this firft, grand truth, has put it in the clearest point of view and beyond all doubt, and would most affuredly even if it had taught us nothing else, have been the most inestimable boon of the divine bounty, the most exuberant, inexhaustible source of truth and felicity! Yes, happy and eternally happy for us, that we are chriftians, for now we know him, the Faithful and True, and know and believe and experience, that he is love!

Communion.

SERMON XXXIV.

The true worshipping of God.

GOD,

we are here met together, to be occupied in thy worship and in thy fervice.

What

a noble, what a blissful employment! How it elevates our foul! How it enlarges and gladdens our heart, to draw nigh unto thee, the fupreme, allperfect mind, thee, our creator and father, to know and experience our inward, ftrict alliance with thee! Oh might we but conftantly honour thee with our hearts as well as with our words and geftures, ap proach thee conftantly with filial love and confi. dence, adore thee conftantly in spirit and in truth, and in the sentiment of thy nearer presence enjoy the invigoration and the felicity, which it never fails to procure thy fincere and upright worshippers! Oh might but our whole lives be devoted to thy wor, ship and to thy fervice! Might all that we think and fpeak and do, attest that reverence, that love, that obedience, that truft and confidence which we for ever owe thee! Might all who fhould happen to know our difpofitions and to see our works, be thereby. incited and ftimulated to glorify thee, our father in heaven! Are not all the moments of our lives, are not all the capacities, all the endowments, all the faculties that we have, all the fatisfactions that we

enjoy,

Af

enjoy, thy gift, thy property! Are and continue we not at all times and in all places thy creatures, thy children, thy fubjects! Doft thou ceafe at any time and in any place to watch over us and to provide for us, to blefs us and to do us good! Oh might then our zeal and our efforts to please thee and to do thy will, be as uniform, as conftant, as unwearied! Might ever increasing truth and order and harmony reign in all our fentiments, and between all the parts of our conduct! Yes, fuch is now our wifh from the bottom of our hearts. fift us mightily by thy grace and heavenly benedic tion, o God of our falvation and hope, in doing that which the accomplishment of this pious with de mands. Blefs in that view our reflections on those doctrines of religion that are now to be delivered to us. Let their effulgence difpel our errors, and lead us on the path of chriftian perfection. Gracipufly hear these our requests, prefented to thy di vine majesty by votaries of thy fon Jefus, in whose name we farther addrefs thee, faying: Our fa ther, &c.

JAMES i. 27.

Pure religion and undefiled before God and the father is this, to visit the fatherless and the widows in their affliation, and to keep himself unfpotted from the world.

EV

VERY one accounts it his duty to worship God and to serve him. That is, every man who is not deftitute of all knowledge of God and of all be

lief in him; every one who conceives of the deity as a being, that ftands in certain relations to the visible world, and particularly towards mankind, that he is their creator, their preferver, their fovereign, their judge, on whose will their lives and their happiness depend. Nobody moreover absolutely refuses to fulfil this duty of the worship and the service of God. Every one is prompt to do or to omit in this refpect something, now more, now lefs, now this, now fomewhat elfe. Many people put themselves to great expense of money, of time, of exertion in this worship and in this fervice of God, impofe on themfelves many inconvenient restraints, prescribe themfelves auftere rules and practices, facrifice fome pleafures and advantages, neglect perhaps important affairs on that account, and poftpone other no lefs facred or even more facred duties. Little doubt however as the generality of mankind entertain of their obligation to worship God and to ferve him, and ready as they are for the moft part in complying with it, yet comparatively but few fulfil this duty in a reasonable manner, agreeable to God and falutary to themfelves, because but few form juft conceptions of it, because the generality confine the worship and the service of God to certain outward folemn acts, confidering them as matters that belong merely to particular times and places, and entirely detached from the general life and conduct of mankind. Let us endeavour to rectify this opinion, my

'pious

pious hearers, and that with the greater care, fince the influence of any mistake on this head is so extremely injurious to our virtue and happiness. What is therefore to worship God and to ferve him? How can, how fhould this be our daily, our unceafing occupation? Wherein confifts the perpetual divine worship, the perpetual divine service of the chriftian? To the answering of these questions I have devoted my prefent difcourfe; and the answering of them will fhew us how true and how important the declaration of the apostle in our text is: the proper and acceptable divine fervice is this, to affift widows and orphans in their distress, and to keep unspotted from the world, or confists in leading a beneficent, harmless, virtuous life.

Of this we are perfectly fure, my pious hearers, that we cannot ferve God, as we serve one another. We mutually ferve each other, by affifting and relieving one another, bearing one another's burdens, eafing one another in our bufineffes or our troubles, by lending or imparting to one another our credit, our property, our fagacity, our abilities, by working and providing for others, bearing and fuffering for others, by promoting the perfection and happinefs of one another. But now, o man, what canst, what wouldst thou do, in order to affift the Almighty? Who hath directed the spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counfel, and who inftructed him,

brought