traction or of insensibility-it may be the leisure of death.

I have thus attempted to direct your attention to some of the numerous benefits, which follow from affliction; benefits, which may at least light up a smile on the pale and gloomy countenance of disease, if they cannot invest it with beauty and grace. Permit me now to suggest a few reflections naturally connected with the subject.

1. In the first place, then, if all the natural evils of life, pain, sickness, losses, sorrows, dangers and disappointments, are disciplinary and remedial, it follows, that nothing is really and ultimately calamitous but sin. Moral evil alone mars the intellectual works of God. While this remains, pain will wave over us her scourge in triumph, and disease will call exultingly upon her train of woes, and let them loose to prey on fallen man. And shall we willingly barbour this monster of the rational world? Shall we throw open our hearts, to give a hospitable shelter to this polluted and polluting tenant? Shall we roll this poison as a sweet morsel under our tongue, and then complain of the salutary sufferings, which are necessary to expel it from our system?

2. If the tendency of affliction is so beneficial, a stronger motive cannot be suggested to encourage us to support pain with fortitude and patience, and all kinds of suffering with resignation to the will of heaven. Other considerations indeed there are, which may have their weight on other minds, but I know of none at once so intelligible, so rational and so pious as these: by the sadness of the countenance the heart is unade better; and our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. There may, indeed, be found minds so well disciplined in piety, and so far advanced in the career of holiness, as to acquiesce humbly in every dispensation, from the simple consideration, that it proceeds from the hand

of an Almighty disposer. But I conceive, that this temper of unalloyed submission must be grounded on a conviction, that this disposer is merciful, that his chastisements are parental, and his designs exclusively benevolent and pure; so that the perfection of resignation is nothing more than a principle ripened into a habit ; a principle, which was originally suggested by an attention to the established tendency of affliction, and by conclusions thence formed of the character of the corrector, that he does not afflict willingly, nor for sorrow's sake alone grieve the children of men.

Others, however, submit unrepiningly to evils, merely because they are inevitable. This is a spirit, which is often dignified with the name of philosophical submission. But, whatever it may possess of philosophy, it has little of piety, for it is at best a spurious kind of resignation, a doubtful virtue, which might be recommended with equal propriety, and from the same considerations, under the government of a malignant as of a good being; and would, indeed, be peculiarly accommodated to the inhabitants of a world, if such there were, whose affairs were subject to the fluctuations of a blind chance, or bound down by an invincible and physical fatality.

But, my christian friends, in the enjoyment of that pure light, which our religion throws upon the character of God, we should be ashamed to recommend to you this Stoical principle. Leave such coldblooded virtue to that chilling system of philosophy, which sees in the universe no design, in adversity no tendency to good, in futurity no gleams of hope, and in heaven no creator, benefactor, father or judge.

From the view of affliction, which we have attempted to give you, what duties result? Consideration. In the day of adversity consider. Prayer. Is any among you afflicted, let him pray: In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee, O God, for

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thou wilt answer me. Fortitude. If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small. Patience. Patient in your tribulation, possess ye your souls, and let patience have her perfect work. And, to comprise all these virtues in a single word, Resignation. The cup, which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? Not my will, O God, but thine be done.

The reflection, that if our affliction does not make us better, it will assuredly make us worse, is, to those who have recovered, solemn, and full of awful thought. To grow worse under the discipline of Providence, is the must deplorable and desperate state, into which a moral being can sink. In the time of his distress did he trespass yet more against the Lord: this is that king Ahaz. Believe me, this is no chimerical danger. The fire, which does not melt, will harden; the stain, which is not purified by the furnace, will be more deeply engrained. If sickness, for instance, have not taught us the vanity of some of our dearest pleasures, we shall only return to them with appetites sharpened by abstinence, and desires rendered more ungovernable by temporary restraint. If it has not impressed upon us also the uncertainty of health, and prepared us better for the loss of life, it has probably increased our presumptuousness, and induced us to hope, that disease has now discharged his quiver of arrows, and that, as soon as our wounds are healed, we have little more to fear from this dreaded enemy in our passage through the troubled path of life. If we have not learned resignation, it is probable we have become more impatient, discontented and irritable. If we have learned no humility, we have probably learned perverseness, and-what is still more to be lamented, what we can hardly contemplate without horror-it will require a harder blow to make us feel hereafter, a severer chastisement to make us submit. And who shall say, whether the next chastisement shall be inflicted in this world, or

in another? Who will be so hardy as to assure us, whether it shall be part of the discipline of this state of probation, or a portion of the sufferings in a state of punishment?

4. Lastly, if there is any one, who, despairing of the return of health and strength, labours under the gradual advances of an incurable disease, to such an one I would say, it may be good even for you, to be afflicted. There are advantages even in the long continuance of confinement, and in the prospect of inevitable and slowly approaching death. To him who knows, that he must soon close his eyes on this pleasant scene, it is no small preparation, that every morning's sun rises upon his sight with daily diminishing lustre, luxuries pall gradually upon his taste, sounds die away gently upon his ear, and the ties, which bind him to earth, weaken by degrees, and at last the silver cord is loosed with gentle hands, without painful or perceptible disruption.

Long confinement, also, brings with it the advantages of drawing us off from those partialities, which bind us to society in general; and, though it may strengthen our attachment to those, who watch immediately around our bed, and are the inmates of our decaying hours, yet even here the energy of the affections wastes with the energy of the body, and the dissolution of the ties of love and friendship is, by the kindness of Heaven, rendered as gentle as the dissolution of the soul and body. Lengthened illness, too, not only draws off our attention gradually from a world we must leave, but it seems to usher into view, by a similar and solemn gradation, the world which we are about to enter. It places us in an extended and narrow vista, in which the various objects on each side are excluded, and eternity, that vast object at the termination of the view, seems to enlarge, as we approach it, till it fills at last, and engrosses the conceptions.

SERMON IV.

LUKE XIV. 18.

AND THEY ALL WITH ONE CONSENT BEGAN TO MAKE EXCUSE.

THIS parable, of the invitation refused, who ever read without indignation at the contemptuous incivility and ingratitude of these men? A nobleman, we are told, on the marriage of his son, proclaims his intention of making a liberal entertainment. Many guests are invited. To some, we may suppose, he was a benefactor; to others, a friend; to all, a kind and condescending superiour. At the hour of supper his servants are again despatched to urge their coming, to inform them, that every thing is ready, and that he waits only their arrival. With one consent they begin to excuse themselves. Without any expression of regret, they all find other engagements of business or of pleasure, with which they cannot dispense. One must visit his farm, another must attend to his merchandize, and a third is detained at home by domestic cares.

It is unnecessary to inform you, that by this parable our Saviour epresents the perverseness and prejudice, with which the Jews rejected the Messiah. But it is also true, that this parable which with such gentle remonstrance exhibits their ingratitude, holds out a faithful picture of a numerous and increasing