If you are reduced to a state of indigence, or confined to the bed of fickness, can you look up to heaven, lay your hands upon your breasts, and fay, with the bleffed Jefus, Thy will be done? or do you kick against the pricks, and, full of repining, murmur at that gracious God, who intends your good in all his difpenfations? Again, How are you with your neighbour? Do you follow the bright example, in behaving with mildness, and sweetness of manners, to all with whom you converse, in your families at home particularly? or are you provoking, infolent, morofe, fullen, and overbearing? Are you prepared to forgive every injury that is done you, like the bleffed Jefus, who, in the midst of the most bitter fufferings, cried, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do? or, are you ready to take offence at every trifle, and turn every flight occafion into matter of quarrel? Are you, like the mild Saviour of Mankind, full of tenderness, compaffion, and charity; and ready to do good to all who need your affift ance? or, are you fo far from doing them good, that you are more difpofed to cheat and injure them, if you can ferve your own advantage by doing it privately? Again, how do you prac

tife your duty to yourselves? No impurity ever ftained that holy life; and are your lives fenfual, given up to low pleasures, debauchery, and drunkennefs? How fits the world upon you ? Can you fay, that in whatsoever state you are, you have learned to be content? Can you fay with your bleffed Mafter, calm and refigned, the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nefts, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head? or, do you feel your breasts full of ánxiety and discontent, of repining and diftress -perhaps, full of envy, becaufe your neighbours have more of this world's good than has fallen to you?

Do not then, my brethren, deceive yourselves; nor fuppofe, that this bright example- the hiftory of our bleffed Lord, which employed the pens of four evangelifts, and was dictated by the holy Spirit of God, was given you as an ordinary tale: it was given you to direct your lives-to affift the precepts of the gofpel, and make the

People may say,

strongest impreffion upon you. they cannot understand this text of scripture, or the other; and, no doubt, there are many texts of fcripture which are not easily understood; but a holy life is a leffon which every body may 5. read,

read, and every body may understand: and for this reason, no doubt, among others, the scheme of our religion was given us in the form of a history, to make our duty more plain and easy. Evil communication, fays the text, corrupts good manners; just fo, good communication has a tendency to improve them. We employ many a leifure hour, even the most induftrious of us, in things that are of little value; let us, now and then, at least, employ one in reading the holy fcriptures; and in forming our manners after the example of the bleffed Jefus : let us endeavour in our hearts let us endeavour, to accompany him, as he goes from place to place, intent on nothing but on works of charity, and kindness, and piety: let us listen to his divine discourses; and, above all, let us study his bright example. Living with a holy person affords often the beft kind of inftruction: let us live with Chrift; let us learn from him patience, and temperance, and humility, and refignation; let us, in few words, learn to amend our hearts, and despise the world: then fhall we be heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Chrift. But if we reject this adoption, and let the world, and all its wickedness have our hearts, then, instead of

being the disciples and imitators of Chrift, we become the children, as our Saviour tells the impenitent Jews, of our father, the devil. I am the vine, fays Chrift to his true followers, and ye are the branches: ye receive your nourishment from the vine; and through your connection with it, bear fruit, and bring it to perfection. But if you break off all connection with the vine, you fhall be pruned away, and thrown afide, like withered fticks appointed for the fire.

SERMON V.

MAT. vi. 34.

TAKE NO THOUGHT FOR THE MORROW: FOR MORROW. WILL TAKE THOUGHT FOR

THE

THE THINGS OF ITSELF. SUFFICIENT UNTO THE DAY IS THE EVIL THEREOF.

THE

HE enemies of Christianity have fometimes ridiculed restrictions of this kind; as if the gofpel was calculated only to qualify men for the next world, while it leaves them totally negligent of this. Though they live in the world, and are closely connected with it by various ties, moral and natural, they are to pafs through it, as if they had neither relation to it, nor it to them: they are to take no thought about it.

But whatever might have been objected on this head to the Chriftians of old times, the Christians of these days feem to have wiped off