Alas the world draws so powerfully that I fear few will be excited to such noble calculations. In the present rage for gain and distinction, the mass of professors seem determined not to be encumbered with more religion than will allow them to take the world along with them to heaven. How few there are that aspire to more religion than just enough to keep them out of hell. It is not a day to form many eminent christians. It is a day of too much prosperity and worldly attachment. The times of persecution and ancient simplicity could produce a Flavel and a Baxter and a thousand others, inferior only to them. But where are the Baxters and Flavels of the present day? Prosperity has weakened our strength, and the world has bound us fast, and here we sleep in ignoble sloth, and exist only to shame our fathers and contaminate our children. In the name of God, my brethren, awake and move towards heaven. Rend the veil from your eyes, tear the world from your hearts, and arise to life and to action. Must I return and make the complaint to him who sent me, that they will not hear? While I speak thus to you, my dear brethren, I reprove myself. I have reason to bow under the humiliating thought that I too have little knowledge or sense of God. To whom then shall we all apply? Who shall give us and a sleeping world a clearer discovery of God? He, he only, can pluck the film from our eyes and pour his glories upon our astonished sight. O that he would come forth and force himself upon our view. O that he would speak, and shake a drowsy world

from their sleep, and show them what a God there is that ruleth in the earth.

One word to impenitent sinners and I have done. Have you no desire, my unhappy friends, to know that God in whose presence you must shortly stand, whose hand must measure out your rewards or smite you with his thunders? Did you never read that "the Lord Jesus Christ shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that know not God?" You are they that know not God; and in this state you are fast approaching the judgment of the great day; and here you are sleeping in dreadful security! God Almighty awaken you from the slumbers of your destruction! Do you begin to awake? Do you wish to find the knowledge of God? Shall I tell you how you can be so blest? "If thou criest after knowledge and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver and searchest for her as for hidden treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God." I can say no more. I deliver you over into the hands of divine grace, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.” Amen.

and pray

"that

SERMON II.

THE TENDER MERCIES OF GOD.

ISAI. LXIII. 7.

I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us, and the great goodness towards the house of Israel which he hath bestowed on them, ac cording to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his loving kind

nesses.

The prophet, when he uttered these words, appeared to labor under an ineffable sense of the tender mercies and loving kindnesses of his God. He had been contemplating the wrath with which God would one day visit Edom when he should come to deliver his people from her oppressions. Immediately he raises an interesting contrast and sets before his eyes God's "great goodness towards the house of Israel" in loosing their Egyptian bonds and conducting them through the wilderness. In this type as through a glass, he discovered the wondrous love which redeems the Church from more oppressive chains, and supports her in her journey

to the heavenly rest. Under this view he seemed transported, and in his rapture exclaimed, "I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us, and the great goodness towards the house of Israel which he hath bestowed on them, according to his mercies, and according to the multitude of his loving kindnesses."

Though we should not raise our eyes to the exalted love which shines in the Gospel, still we should have abundant reason to mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord. Without any adviser or helper he introduced us to rational existence, and raised us to intellectual enjoyment. By his unceasing care, that existence is hourly supported. Our table is furnished and our raiment supplied by his benignant hand. We are blest with pleasant habitations and possessions; we enjoy the delights of refined society, the blessings of friendship, and the life and happiness of our friends. Our health is sustained by a thousand minute and constantly repeated touches of his hand to the various parts of our complicated machine. All the pleasures of imagination, of memory, of hope, of sympathy, and of sense; all the magic charms which play on nature's face, are the gifts of his bounteous hand. By his watchful care we are protected from countless visible and unseen dangers. By innumerable impressions made on our animal spirits by his careful touch, we are put in tone to enjoy the objects around us. More numerous are his mercies than the stars which look out of heaven. On no section