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May the merciful Lord pour down His grace into all our hearts, that we may never again give to the sins and vanities of the world, that love, which ought to be set on Him, but take diligent heed to love the Lord our God, and to walk in all His ways, and to keep His commandments, that we may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen!

SERMON IV.

ISAIAH lxiv. 6.

We all do fade as a leaf.

(PREACHED AT THE FALL OF THE YEAR.)

THE man who wishes to improve his mind, and to occupy his thoughts about the things that are of the greatest concern to him, will find, wherever he goes, in the most common things around him, plenty to instruct him and to make him better. In all the works of God which are about us in our daily path, some useful lesson is to be learnt, to feel and to understand which, it is by no means necessary that a man should be very learned.

We are apt to look upon these things with a careless eye, because we have been used to them all our lives through; but if we examine them with a little of that attention,

which every thing that God has made deserves from us, we find enough in them to fill us with wonder in respect to him, and to make us humble and lowly-minded in respect to ourselves.

If we would carefully consider the smallest flower that gives its beauty to the fields, the commonest blade of grass on which we heedlessly set our feet, or the meanest worm that crawls before us on our way, and would ask ourselves, by whom were these things made, and how came they here? our thoughts would rise from earth to heaven; we should learn to admire and glorify that great and good God, who called all these things, out of nothing, into life: and we should feel how little we have to be proud of ourselves, when the greatest and noblest works that we can do, are not fit to be compared, either in power or in wisdom, with the very smallest thing that He has made.

The season of the year, which, with God's permission, we have now reached, is one which naturally puts serious thoughts into our hearts, and reminds us of what we are. The earth no longer smiles under the glad

dening rays of a summer's sun; the birds have hushed their cheerful songs; the flowers have closed their blossoms till another spring; every thing speaks to us of decay, and tells us that winter is drawing near. The trees are no longer fresh and pleasing to the eye, as they were a short time back; their leaves have sickened, faded, and turned pale, and will soon fall down to rot upon the ground. How can we look upon this great change, which a few days have brought about, and not be reminded of the truth which is told us in the text, that we all do fade as a leaf? The days of man are but as grass; for he flourisheth as a flower of the field. For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no

more.

In the first days of spring, the trees put forth their leaves, tender and delicate. As the season gets forward, and the summer comes on, they reach their full growth; they keep it a little while, but in a few weeks we see them, as they are at this present time, faded and withered, and in a few days more we shall not see them at all,

they will be entirely gone. Such is man. He comes into the world, a tender, helpless babe; his strength increases by degrees, and in a few years, if God is pleased to spare him, he arrives at the full enjoyment of youth and health. But in a few years more his strength begins to decay; his limbs grow feeble; his beauty withers; and in a few years again, he returns to that dust from which he was taken. We all do fade as a leaf; no rank, nor riches can prevent it. We have nothing to depend upon in this world, we have no abiding place on earth: whatever difference there may be in our conditions now, there is one common home, the grave, waiting to receive us all, and to make us equal. All go unto one place, all are dust, and turn to dust again.

Now, though it is not to be imagined for a moment, that there can be living in the world one man who doubts that he is to die, one man who thinks that he shall be able to escape that which, every day of his life, he sees happening to others; yet there is nothing which a great part of the world. appears to need being reminded of so

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