words, Behold I stand at the door and knock, says he. Christ comes knocking at the door to come into your houses, but you will not come down to accept of his mercy. When the prodigal said, I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son; make me as one of thy hired servants: now you think that it was very humble in him, he who was a son of the head of the house, to be willing to be a servant. "Tis true he says, I will go to my father's house, but at the same time, he says, I will work for my living, he shall not maintain me for nothing; but when he comes to his father, he is quite brought down; he says, I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight; the joyful father clasps him in his withered arms, and takes the poor ragged wanderer home. The lawyers and other Jews thought they were righteous, and therefore they would not come to Jesus Christ. Our Lord spoke of the pharisees, who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and would not come to him that they might have life; and if we trust in ourselves, neither shall we. Our Lord says, I receive not honor from men. How can you come to him, that receive honor one of another? Honor to whom honor is due. To such as are in power, whether in church or state, respect is due to their outward situation. I am for no leveling principles at all; but, my brethren, at the same time, there is a fault, that we love to be applauded. There is no going to heaven, saith Mr. Gurnal, without wearing a fool's cap and a fool's coat, and there is no going to heaven without being accounted fools: you see many professors follow the world, they have not courage enough to live in holy nonconformity to the world; and many people are frightened from Christ, because they would not be counted Methodists; the fear of men has damned thousands. You will not come to him, because you cannot trust God, and then we love the world more than Christ. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. If I had the management of the people, their shops would be open three or four hours before they are now. I do not want to hinder men's business; those that have most money and most power if they acted as they ought to do, would be the greatest slaves to their fellow creatures. When I talk of loving the world, I mean an inordinate love. I may live in the world and not live upon it; my heart may be towards God; the love of the world is to be renounced, and therefore they will not come to Jesus Christ they think till they are going out of the world. If you are one of those who hate Christ, why you are the man that will not come to him. Why, say you, does any body hate Christ? Pray hold your

tongue, for fear of discovering your ignorance. O, say you, God forbid I should hate him. But, my dear soul, learn from this time forward, that every one of us by nature hates Jesus Christ we sent this message to him; we will not have this man to reign over us, we hate him because he is despised; we hate him because of the appearance of the people that are his followers; we hate him because of the narrowness of the way we are to pass into him, because we must part with our lusts; we hate him because we must be non-conformists: I hate that rag of the whore of Babylon, O that form of prayer, O all that stuff, I thank God I was born a dissenter, I love to be a puritan, I do not love rites and ceremonies, no not in the church, and yet, perhaps, are more conformed to the world than numbers of the church, and have nothing but rites and ceremonies about their houses and families. What do we more than others? A churchman should prove himself a churchman, by having his articles, and keeping up the practice of religion; and a dissenter should prove himself one, not by dissenting from the church, but from the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life, and then we shall agree very well together, though one went to a place called a church, and another to a place called a meeting. Would to God every soul now present would put this question to himself, am I come to Christ, or am I not? There is a great number of persons here; you have heard of Providence calling me abroad; no doubt curiosity brings many of you here, to hear what the poor babbler says. I tell you what I will say to you, that without you have an interest in the Son of God, you must be damned. Examine yourselves whether you are in the faith; whether your religion reaches any further than the church door; whether you are the inward court worshipers: conscience, conscience, conscience, thou faithful monitor, God help thee to give a proper verdict. When I had the honor of opening Lady Huntingdon's chapel, as I turned about, I observed over my head were these words, Earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord; O that every earthly soul may hear God's word this day. Do not be angry with me; I am now upon the decline of life, going toward threescore; surely now I may claim leave to speak to you freely after next Sunday, perhaps, you may never hear me any more, though I do not intend to live abroad, but return if it please God, in a proper time; but long before that thou mayst be in hell or heaven. As the Lord lives, in whose name I speak, if you will not come to Christ to have life, you must come to his bar to hear him pronounce you damned to all eternity. If you come to him that you may have life, Come, ye blessed, will be the sentence there, but if

you refuse now, Depart, ye cursed, will be your sentence then from the Lord, for in a little while he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Hark! hark! don't you hear him, don't you hear him, don't you hear him yonder? Hark! methinks I hear him, what does he say? See yonder, don't you see, good people, that yonder sun is darkened, and the moon turned into blood? O, who can abide the day of his coming? O, to think of his coming, may the sinner say, when I know his coming is only to damn my soul! How do the murderers dread the assizes, but pardoned sinners, pardoned criminals, are glad when they hear the high sheriff coming: O, say they, I long to go to the bar, because I am going there only to plead the king's pardon. Happy, happy, happy you, that have come to this Jesus Christ, that you might have life, that you might walk becoming him in your life and conversation. O, Christ will come, and come to you as his children; but God grant this life may be displayed in you and me more and more! If we are helped to know that Christ came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly, O, pray that others may come; bring your children to Christ. I was pleased one day after I had been preaching on Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, I think it was in New England, I was taken up into a room to repose myself; there was a mantlepiece, representing the children brought in the arms of their parents to look at the brazen serpent. O may God help you to bring your children and your relations to view Christ. O Lord help my mother, my father, my child, my servant, to come to Jesus Christ, that they may have life. The Lord help you to come, come young people. O I was charmed this morning, and every morning I give the sacrament, to see so many young men there crowding to the table; may the Spirit of God keep you near to Jesus Christ; and you young women, may God draw you nearer unto Christ. I remember when God touched my heart, and sent me down to see my friends in the country, I prayed God to bless me to those to whom I was called to dance and to play at cards, and, blessed be God, he blessed me to them all before I was twenty years of age, and after that he sent me to a prison, and I there preached to a murderer, and some others, and, blessed be God, they came to Jesus Christ, and one of them went off most triumphantly. A poor creature, fourscore years of age, who has made it a practice to go and read to poor people, and to the prisoners, said, Sir, I begun late, but by the help of God, I now work the harder for Jesus Christ." May he incline you to come, O young women and young men. There was a good woman who died some time ago, whose last word I think was, I now

go to my God. Will you come and go too, you old gray-headed sinners, that have one foot in the grave? God help you to go; God remove every obstacle; God grant that every mountain may be brought low, and a highway made into your hearts for Jesus Christ. Do not be angry with me; in a week or two I shall be tossing on the ocean, while you are hearing God's word here; while I am amidst storms and tempests, you will be upon the earth. Paul could stand the whipping, but it is not a whipping, but weeping, that breaks my heart; my greatest trial is, what if this sermon should help to sink these people deeper in the pit, that makes my blood run cold. O that my sermon may never rise in judgment against you, my poor dear souls. I believe you find it hard when any of you are forced to be witnesses against your own children, your own friends; and whoever deals with the word with disinterested spirit, must do it; the only way to prevent it is, to come to Christ; and if you cannot come, if you are sensible of it, God be praised; he will come to you if you cannot come to Christ; he will come and make you willing in the day of his power; that this may be the happy case, God grant to us all, for his name's sake. Amen.

SERMON XXVI.

THE GOOD SHEPHERD.-A FAREWELL SERMON.

JOHN X. 27, 28.

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand.

Ir is a common, and, I believe, generally speaking, my dear hearers, a true saying, that bad manners beget good laws. Whether this will hold good in every particular, in respect to the affairs of this world, I am persuaded the observation is very pertinent in respect to the things of another; I mean had manners, bad treatment, bad words, have been overruled by the sovereign grace of God, to produce and to be the cause of the best sermons that were ever delivered from the mouth of the God-man, Christ Jesus.

One would have imagined, that as he came clothed with

divine efficiency, as he came with divine credentials, as he spake as never man spake, that no one would have been able to have resisted the wisdom with which he spake; one would imagine they would have been so struck with the demonstration of the Spirit, that with one consent they would all own, that he was "that prophet that was to be raised up like unto Moses." But you seldom find our Lord preaching a sermon, but something or other that he said was caviled at; nay, their enmity frequently broke through all good manners; they often, therefore, interrupted him whilst he was preaching, which shows the enmity of their hearts, long before God permitted it to be in their power to shed his innocent blood. If we look no further than this chapter, where he represents himself as a good shepherd, one that laid down his life for his sheep; we see the best return he had, was to be looked upon as possessed or distracted; for we are told that there was a division therefore again among the Jews for these sayings, and many of them said, he hath a devil and is mad, why hear ye him? If the master of the house was served so, pray what are the servants to expect? Others, a little more sober-minded, said, these are not the words of him that hath a devil; the devil never used to preach or act in this way. Can a devil open the eyes of the blind? So he had some friends among this rabble. This did not discourage our Lord; he goes on in his work; and we shall never, never go on with the work of God, till, like our master, we are willing to go through good and through evil report: and let the devil see we are not so complaisant as to stop one moment for his barking at us as we go along.

We are told, that our Lord was at Jerusalem at the feast of the dedication, and it was winter. The feast of dedication held, I think, seven or eight days, for the commemoration of the restoration of the temple and altar, after its profanation by Antiochus. Now this was certainly a mere human institution, and had no divine image, no divine superscription upon it; and yet I do not find that our blessed Lord and master preached against it; I do not find that he spent his time about this: his heart was too big with superior things; and I believe when we, like him are filled with the Holy Ghost, we shall not entertain our audiences with disputes about rites and ceremonies, but shall treat upon the essentials of the gospel, and then rites aud ceremonies will appear with more indifference. Our Lord does not say, that he would not go up to the feast, for on the contrary, he did go there, not so much to keep the feast, as to have an opportunity to spread the gospel-net, and that should be our method, not to follow disputing; and it is the glory of the Methodists. that we have been in existence forty years, and I