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has over those, who do not seriously apply themselves to the service of God: for, first, the things. of this world, though they have no intrinsic worth and value in themselves, are yet material and visible, and consequently make a deep impression upon us; whereas the things of religion, though more substantial and valuable, yet being spiritual and heavenly, are far above the reach of our senses, and consequently are less able to affect the thoughtless and ignorant.

A second advantage of the world is, that all its enjoyments are present and round about us; they are within our reach, and, as it were, in our hands; whereas the promises of God princi-pally relate to our immortal part, and are reserved for a future world.

The world has a third advantage, in that its pleasures, though frail and fallacious, are however adapted to the inclinations of our corrupt hearts; whereas the pleasures of religion are so far from being agreeable to our irregular desires, that we must at all times correct, and sometimes even wholly renounce them, if we would enter into the kingdom of heaven. Hence then arise those fatal difficulties, which religion has to encounter. The world finds our natural inclinations favourable to it, and our heart always dis

posed

posed to embrace its offers. In our youth we are incapable of reflection, and have no other guide than our bodily senses, which too strongly war on the side of the world. And what the inexperience of youth has begun, habit too fa tally confirms:..so that when we come to an age capable of reflection, we too often find ourselves the confirmed slaves of lust and mammon. And when this is the case, it is no wonder the world should rival God, and dispute the dominion of our hearts with him: it is no wonder we should so obstinately cling to the gross earth; and prefer the flesh-pots of Egypt to the spiritual manna of heaven it is no wonder we should think it a hard task to serve God, and to desert the service of mammon. But hard as the task is, it must be done. One or the other we must quit. We may have heaven, or we may have hell; we may serve mammon, or we may serve God: but heaven and hell we cannot have together: God and mammon we cannot serve at the same time.

No longer, therefore, let us think of trifling between God and mammon :-a divided service is no service at all:-God and the world are before you on the one of them you must fix: no longer, therefore, halt between two opinions but chuse ye this day, whom ye will

serve.

:

But

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But remember, before you chuse, that on your determination is suspended the fate of eternity. Weigh, therefore, and deliberate, before you decide. Be not led by youthful lusts, or impelled by hasty thoughts. Look not at the present noment only, but extend your view over the great ocean of time. The mammon of the world may now greet you with similes, and heaven seem obscured in clouds: but soon the scene will be changed soon ye will find, that the world has nothing to offer but a few short glimpses of joy, succeeded by everlasting burnings; but that God has pleasures to bestow, which the heart of men cannot conceive, nor the tongue of angels express.

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SERMON LXIII.

PROV. xvii. 14.

The spirit of a man will sustain his infirmity; but a wounded spirit who can bear?

N

O man can want to be informed, that the road of life is overspread with innumerable calamities, which no human art can either foresee or prevent. The earth beneath us has its volcanos and earthquakes, to lay waste cities and empires, at the will of the great Author of nature. The elements above us are impregnated with stores of vengeance, which are able to scatter resistless ruin, and lay waste, in an unlooked-for moment, the labours of man and beast. The pestilence walketh in darkness, and sickness destroyeth at noon-day. The midnight conflagration robs the industrious man of half his property, and the artful deceiver, the secret. thief, or fraudulent bankrupt strips him of the remainder.

remainder. And, above all, the sword of war now extends its wide-wasting ravages over half the globe, and makes children fatherless and wives widows, and drives them out from their native homes, to seek their bread,-bread watered with the tears of their couch,-in distant and desolate places.

These are, doubtless, heavy and grievous calamities, which thousands of our fellow-creatures are at this very hour suffering and deploring in this vale of tears and sorrow. Yet, after all the black catalogue of natural evils, which mortal man is heir to, that man's greatest and only real misery is owing to himself, is a truth not to be denied. For though, in the language of scripture, he be born to trouble as naturally as the sparks fly upwards, yet God is just, even in the afflictions he sends, and always proportions our trials to our strength: the unhappy sufferer under natural evils, if he be not wanting to himself, though he cannot always remedy, yet he may bear his misfortunes, by a proper application of those various consolations, which are kindly placed within his reach by the gracious hand of Providence. But there is a torment of our own créating; there is a spirit wounded with a sense of our past guilt and folly, which nothing is able

to cure or assuage.

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