they must seek the things which are Jesus Christ's. And if they ever intend it, the present time is always the best; but this present time is peculiarly so. Decency prohibits now the usual diversions: apply your vacant hours to a better purpose. The offices of the week throughout express in the most affecting manner, what your gracious Redeemer hath done and suffered for you think deliberately in it, what you ought to do for him, indeed for yourselves. Think what you have been, and are, and what the faith you profess requires you to be consider what fatal consequences will follow, perhaps very soon, if you neglect to amend, and how you shall accomplish this necessary work. Read with reverence the rules and declarations of God's Word; read with attention other awakening yet prudent books, reflecting as you go along; and engage some pious, but judicious friend to excite, support, direct, and if there be occasion, restrain you. Form discreetly by their helps needful resolutions; and beg earnestly of God strength to fulfil them: else they will all prove ineffectual. But remember, that the piety of the weak, however strict, is not to end with it; and cannot be really Christian, if it doth. You are called to recollection now, that you may practise vigilance all the rest of your days. Temporary, periodical goodness, that is like the morning cloud, and as the early dew goeth away*, will be of no avail to any one; but they, who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory and honour and immortality, are secure of ob taining eternal life. SERMON XIX. GAL. VI. 14. But God forbid that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ: by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. WE must have some foundation, real or imagined, for thinking well of ourselves and our condition; or we must be wretched. And innumerable are the methods which men take to procure the esteem of their own minds. Too many glory in their shame : are proud of notions and discourses, which misrepresent sacred truths, degrade human nature, and tend to dissolve human society; of gratifying their passions, their appetites, their fancies, whatever mischiefs it produces; of doing what visibly hurts, and must finally ruin, their characters, their fortunes, their healths, their souls. Others value themselves on more plausible, yet insufficient, pretensions: on the lustre of an ancient family, which perhaps they disgrace; on the inheritance or acquisition of wealth, which they employ to little or no good purpose; on agreeableness of person, which makes them vain and imprudent the short time it continues, and miserable when it decays; on liveliness of wit, which either provokes enemies, or invites dangerous friends; on depth of knowledge, often falsely so called and pernicious, often wholly foreign to their true business; on elegance of taste in smaller matters, while they are contemptibly injudi * Phil. iii. 19. cious in the greatest; on pomp and shew, which give a pleasure as fleeting as it is childish; on making a figure in the idle hurry of amusements, which encroaches on every valuable purpose of life, and wears out the spirits under pretence of raising them; on the favour of the great, by whatever arts attained, and however precarious; or on the seemingly more solid possession of power, which it is hard to abstain from using ill, and extremely hard to use in a due measure well; which disobliges by the exercise of it many more than it can possibly oblige; is accompanied with perpetual fatigue and uneasiness, yet with perpetual envy; causes innumerable vexations while it lasts; and yet commonly grievous regret when it is gone. If all these be wrong grounds of self-complacency, how few of us have right ones! There are those, however, who profess to build it on something more substantial, on virtue. But, alas! the virtue of great numbers consists almost wholly in specious words, honour, benevolence, good-nature, which are either a mere ornament of their talk, or influence their behaviour only on some occasions, or to some persons. And the more uniformly well inclined towards others are often strangely addicted to blameable indulgence of themselves: or, however inoffensive otherwise, are lamentably defective in the discipline of the heart, particularly in forming it to that deep humility, which becomes dust and ashes. If we think too highly of ourselves, we shall be fatally misled: and, if we think reasonably, we shall experience the daily mortification of being faulty, more or less, even in those things for which we are applauded. Besides, our virtue itself will frequently oblige us to do what others will dislike, oppose, revenge. Or, though we escape such evils, yet the unavoidable ones of fear, sorrow, languor, pain, sickness, death, are usually more than enough to make our present state a pitiable, rather than a glorious one, if the consciousness of our own rectitude be our whole support under them. Wiser men, therefore, in their search of comfort, look beyond themselves to God. And indeed, faith in him, provided it represents him as a righteous governor, observing, distinguishing, and recompensing, unspeakably dignifies our condition, and adds importance to our prospects. But still, our best obedience being only his due, and paid only out of what we have received from him, we could neither boast nor merit, though it were perfect: and what his free goodness would bestow on us even then, beyond security from being sufferers on the whole, reason could never ascertain. Or, were the innocent assured by it of ever so great rewards; are we innocent? Thoughtless presumption may answer hastily in the affirmative: but what doth the deliberate voice of conscience say, after a faithful scrutiny of our past actions, words and thoughts, as in the divine presence? Such and so many as our duties are, of love, reverence, and resignation to our Maker, of justice, equity, goodness, in the numerous relations of life, virtuous command of our various inclinations, careful use and upright government of our understandings; have we been always as blameless in each of them, as infinite purity can demand of us, though we see that no one round us hath? If not, let us remember it, we are sinners, and sin de serves punishment. God forbid then that we should glory in our moral or religious characters: God grant we may find mercy for our failures in them. But how can reason assure us that we shall? Doth it know, what the holiness of his nature, the honour of his government, the admonition of other parts of his creation, may render needful? Sorrow for what is past cannot annihilate it: and living well for the time to come, though it were not mixed, as what we call so is with perpetual faults, no more makes amends for past transgressions, than avoiding to incur new debts pays off the old. Still our hearts dictate hope. But hope, far from being certainty, is not so much as persuasion. And though pardon were unquestionable, future happiness, much less eternal, would not. The possibilities therefore, the probabilities of these things, which nature can suggest, how reviving soever, compared with absolute despondency, have to Christians, as the Apostle speaks in a similar case, no glory by the reason of the glory that excelleth*: they fade away and vanish before his precious promises †, who was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification‡. Here then we have sure ground for glorying: not in ourselves indeed; for we have contributed nothing to this merciful dispensation, besides falling into the extremest need of it by our offences: but Christ Jesus is made unto us of God, wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, that, as it is written, He that glorieth let him glory in the Lord§. We have only to embrace, with acknowledged unworthiness, the gracious offer of our heavenly Father, on the equitable conditions annexed to it. But we must embrace the whole, not part only. Multitudes profess to respect the Gospel very highly, for its many rational doctrines, its holy and mild precepts, its interesting sanctions, its provision for in 2 Cor. iii. 10. + 2 Pet. i. 4. 1 Cor. i. 30, 31. |