love? Alas! we have nothing which we can give him but our hearts; we have nothing to offer him but our imperfect services.

We are bound, with gratitude and praise, to attribute our blessings to their true source, the loving kindness of our heavenly Father. This we do in the act of thanksgiving, if our hearts originate what our lips express. And in the grateful overflow of praise to your Maker, you will manifest your sincerity by beneficence to his children. While with decent festivity and temperate pleasure, you enjoy the viands of the day, a Christian joy will not suffer you to be unmindful of those, to whom the relics of your loaded boards will be a welcome feast.

Next to praise, and essential to it, is steady reverence of the Most High. This you will manifest nationally by the public protection and liberal support of his word and institutions; by preferring the unchangeable principles of his law to all human policy and immoral expedients; by advancing none to offices of honour and trust, especially to stations so elevated as that which the providence of God has made vacant in this state, who, in principle or in practice, despise his word and disregard his name, and, above all, by aspiring after such a national character, as we can believe he will approve. In your individual capacities you will manifest it by being uniformly righteous before him; “walking in all his commandments and ordinances blameless."

Finally. Whether we consider the character of the Deity as portrayed in his works and judgments, and revealed in his word; or contemplate our own situation with regard to our physical, social, and moral state, the greatest cause of joy we have is found in the truth, that God is the Governor of the world. It is our staff; the anchor of our souls; our only rational ground of safety, contentment, and happiness. The contemplation of it should fill us with holy enthusiasm, and the remembrance of it incite us to exclaim with the royal Psalmist; "Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.'

SERMON XXX.

THE

ON DEATH.

JOB, vii. 16.

"I would not live alway."

HERE is nothing to which human nature is more averse than to dissolution. Death presents himself to the imagination of every man, clothed with terrors. He finds in most. men, feelings that recoil at his approach, and thoughts that regret his existence. Except the few whom religion hath made "immovable," and the few whom sorrow hath rendered desperate, all men are prone to look upon death as the greatest of all terrestrial evils. Yet it is an event which to every man is unavoidable. To die is the doom of us all. We all, my my brethren, shall be called to submit, in our turns, to that fate which our nature so obstinately dreads. If, then, there are any considerations which may reconcile us to this unavoidable. doom, blessed is the wisdom which suggests them; happy is the prudence which engraves them on the tablet of the heart! They will break the most gloomy bondage of man. They will correct the most bitter ingredient in the cup of his allot

ments.

To the evils to be encountered in passing through the valley of death, Christianity furnishes many and sufficient antidotes. But to the existence of this valley in our way, we must also be reconciled. There are considerations which, when pondered

over with a Christian spirit, render us resigned to the transitoriness of this present life, and enable us to say with the venerable Job, "I would not live alway." Some of these considerations it is the object of this discourse to bring to your notice. And happy shall I be, if, through the divine assistance, I may suggest any thoughts to your minds which may reconcile you to the necessity of your own dissolution, or to the deaths of those who are gone before you.

In the first place, then, let me observe, that a due respect to the divine will, will deter us from wishing to "live always." "It is appointed unto men once to die;" and this appointment. is made by the wise and benignant Father of the universe. Our life is not made transient by any malignant power. It is the same good Being who hath brought us into existence, and leads us through the different stages of life, that conducts us into "the valley of the shadow of death." Our dissolution is a part of that economy by which he accomplishes his purposes with the human race.

Now, why should we turn with regret from any allotment. to which it is the will of God we should submit? Do we deem it unhappy, that to the light and activity of day, the darkness and sleepiness of night succeeds? Do we complain that the year, which has been enlivened with the several charms of spring, summer, and autumn, is terminated with the dreariness of winter? No. Our confidence in the wisdom of the Supreme Being teaches us, that night as well as day, that winter as well as summer, is necessary in its place; that the vicissitudes which he hath ordained to the hours and the months, are productive of the greatest natural benefits. Why, then, should we repine at the vicissitudes which he hath appointed to the generation of men? The same wisdom, which at the close of the day requires us to lose ourselves in the sleep of night, calls us at the close of life to rest in the grave. The same God who giveth the earth in the end of the year to be bound with the fetters of winter, leaves life when its spring, its summer, and its autumn have elapsed, to be bound awhile in

the insensibility of death. The purposes of God, which are dearer to every good man than anything else, are as much carried on by our dissolution as by our birth, or by our progress through any other stages of our being. The tomb as well as the cradle, we may safely presume, is meet for the display of his power. Death, were it not subservient to his glory, and fit and necessary for the creatures who are made subject to it, would not have place in any part of the dominions of God. That I must die, may in itself be an awful consideration; but that I must die, considered as the appointment of the gracious Being who made me, claims my cheerful acquiescence. For whatever may be the views of the Almighty with regard to mankind, and I have evidences enough that they are views of benignity and love, the methods by which he pursues them, I may feel assured, are the fittest and most proper which could have been chosen, and are parts of the scheme by which he is accomplishing the happiness of his saints, and the greatest possible good of the universe.

There is, indeed, in a submission to the laws to which the all-wise Creator hath subjected our nature, both safety and virtue. No man who considers the wisdom from which they have their origin, and the ends to which they are directed, would wish an exemption from them. It is enough to reconcile us to our mortality, that it is the will of God. That obligation to duty which is upon a child; that obligation to submission which is upon a creature; that claim to confidence which wisdom, like the Deity's, may assert; that title to unqualified reliance which goodness like our Maker's possesses, all conspire, when God hath limited our present life, to restrain us from wishing to "live always." Is death punitive? It is not more than we have deserved. Is it, as as we are taught, sent in mercy? Let us not dare to dispute its expediency. Whether it proceed from justice, or from mercy, or from both, the good man knows that it is his duty, and also his safety, to be entirely at the disposal of the Almighty. It may be, that through an instinctive affection for being, he may, in the

hour of infirmity, shrink from what has the appearance of a destruction of existence, and be ready to exclaim, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from me." But when he considers the preference which the divine will ought to have to his own wishes that that must be the fittest and best, which the Almighty hath ordained, reason and religion unite in correcting his wish, and the last expression of his lips will be, "Not my will, but thine be done."

Again. We may be reconciled to the necessity of dying, by considering who have passed through the gate of death. "Abraham is dead, and the prophets !" The apostles are dead, and the good men of every age! Surely, it is not a fate so much to be deprecated, to which these favourites of heaven have submitted! Surely, we need not be shocked at entering the path which these worthies have trodden! It is no inconsiderable boon, that death will dissipate the centuries that intervene, and make us companions of those who have been the friends of God, and the bright models of faith and virtue to mankind. Our kindred also, are dead; our fathers, it may be, and our dear mothers; and the friends whom we have loved as our own souls. In a world which they have left forever, who would always remain? To the state to which they have passed, who does not sometimes solace himself with the expectation of one day going? Death gathers us to our fathers. Death brings the child to the long absent parent, he brings the parent to her often lamented child. Pleasant to nature is the thought, even of mingling our ashes with the ashes of our ancestors, and sharing with our kindred the repose of the grave. But ravishing to the eye of faith, is the prospect of rejoining their spirits in better worlds, and winging with them the flights of immortality. Jesus, too, our blessed Redeemer, he hath passed through the gate of death. And shall we not choose to drink of the cup of which he hath drank! the vale which he hath consecrated by his own presence, shall we be averse to enter? There is a noble satisfaction in sharing the fate of the worthy. There is a comfort, a joy in being conformed in our fortunes to those whom we