or to the powerful. God may give wisdom and abilities he may give riches-he may give health and ftrength, fometimes to one, and fometimes to another: But in fact, what are thefe worldly bleffings? We put them off, like our clothes, at the end of our fhort day. In the eye of our Almighty Father they do not seem to be confidered as bleffings; but as trials merely. One man is proved by riches; and another by poverty.-But the peace of God is held out as a bleffing to all. The rich man feeks it by making a right ufe of his riches; and the poor man by bearing his poverty with contentment, and a religious refignation to the will of God. The man of learning feeks it by confidering it as his best knowledge-and the unlettered man by confidering it as the only knowledge he wishes to attain. All of us, in every flation, may be affured that in a degree, at least, each may acquire it; and every degree is an advance to happinefs beyond what any thing in this world can beftow; and what above all things fhould incite our ardour to attain it as far as we can, it will not, like the things of this world fail us in our laft extremity. It will ever be our comfort through life; and in the hour of death, when every thing else deserts * 4 us, the peace of God God will be most our comfort; and will give us a foretaste of those happy manfions; for which through its bleffed influence we have here been prepared. END OF THE SERMONS, I. Doing fervice, as to the Lord, and not to man.-Ephefians vi. 7. AMONG all the evils of life, that of flavery is one of the hardest to bear. To be totally fubject to the will of fuch a mifchievous, capricious creature, as man, is certainly very grievous. In compaffion to this miferable part of the human fpecies, the apoftle St. Paul is frequent in his advice to them. He tells them in general, that he was not authorized to make any change in the civil establishments of mankind. All he could do for them was to adminifter topics of confolation. Many of them, no doubt -one, we know he converted to christianity; and if he could not make them happy in one way, he did it in another. Among chriftians the idea of fervice is changed; and (except in one inftance, which is a difgrace to a chriftian legislature) the fervant is as free as his master. But though the nature of fervice is changed; yet ftill, as there must be different |