enjoyments, when your prayers, as they ascend morning and evening, draw closer the sacred ties of parent and child, brother and sister-but I need not dwell on the minutiae of your blessings, I need not paint, what your hearts, if they are rightly attempered, will represent to you with more vividness and reality. Go home then, for you have a home, and tell your things God has done for us.

children what great

This recital of our blessings, however grateful it may be to the mind, is yet attended with two considerations, which press upon our attention. The first is, how little have we ourselves contributed to these advantages. They seem in truth to be the gifts of Providence alone, for we can hardly trace them to any positive causes. When we reflect upon our social and domestic lot, one thing is always evident, that if all the good we find can be traced to the care of a most gracious Providence, all the evil to which we are exposed may be traced directly to those passions, which the most favorable state of society cannot always suppress, to those corruptions which grow, alas! and ripen under the very sunshine of our prosperity. The other consideration which may make us all tremble, is how long shall this state of prosperity last? Has God given us a pledge of uninterrupted security and good fortune? or does not its continuance depend much upon ourselves? If the cup of our prosperity intoxicates us, will it not fall at last from our hands and be dashed in pieces?

My friends, let us think before we part, of the duties which our very happiness imposes upon us. Ought we not, first of all, most gratefully and humbly to adore the distinguishing goodness of God? Perhaps we have hitherto overlooked the real foundation of our happiness; perhaps if we have been sensible of the good, we have not thought of the Author. We have entered this garden of God, and carelessly cropped the flowers with which it is filled, and thought them planted only for our gratification. This is not the condition on which any of God's gifts are bestowed.

Our common prosperity is indeed unexampled, but it is not out of the reach of injury. While it lasts, it is the duty of every man to contribute what he can to preserve it. If you would advance the glory of your age, and make it worthy of being remembered by those who shall come after you, beware of the encroachments of luxury. Nothing will so much tend to make you insensible to the best gifts of Providence, and callous to the purest pleasures of life, as the love of noisy and frivolous distinctions, the pursuit of vicious pleasures, and the tyranny of fashion. Consider whether you do not contribute to the corruptions of the age, by an immoderate pursuit of amusement. Consider how easily the minds of those who are coming into life, are enfeebled and deluded by the doubtful examples of those whom they are taught to consider as giving the tone to the manners of the age.

To preserve our social pleasures in any good degree of purity, nothing will so much contribute as the cultivating a taste for domestic life and the quiet and affectionate pleasures which it affords. In such a state of society as ours, also, there is danger lest the love of money, or of merely sensual idleness, should overwhelm the rising generation. To obviate these evils it is much to be desired, that the love of literature and of intellectual pursuits should be greatly encouraged; for though the passion for knowledge is no proof of a principle of virtue, it is often a security against the vices and temptations of the world. Everything which you contribute to the institutions of sound learning and to promote a correct and pious education, you contribute to the peace, the purity, and the glory of the age.

What a treasure of

And by you it is to

Once more, my friends. felicity you have in keeping! be bequeathed to those who are to be your successors, in a long posterity. Let your thoughts run on a few years in prospect, and can you endure to see those whom you have brought into life, whom you have trained up to fill your places, and whose destiny you now influence, can you endure to see them spoiling this rich inheritance, and then reproaching your memories? Can you look, without remorse, and see them taking their places in society, depraved by your example, lost to virtue, to peace, and to Heaven?

Do not think you have discharged your obligations when you have laid up for them a perishable inheritance on earth, when you have given them a customary education, and set them up in life. Oh no! God, who watches over our employment of his gifts, demands of you, not only that you dedicate your children to him, but that you implant in them his fear and love, that you furnish them with the only sure sources of happiness, by your lessons of piety, by your example at home and in public, and by your prayers with them and for them. Without this you may leave them the wealth of the world, and it will only curse them; you may leave them the rank, the glory, the reputation of their fathers, and it will only render them the decorated victims of the indignation of HeavConsider, then, what obligations to others your privileges impose upon you. Walk within your houses with a perfect heart. Make them the nurseries of godliness, resolve that from this day you will not neglect this most solemn of your duties, and then with a grateful heart tell your friends what great things God has done for you.

en.

SERMON XVII.

THE PRACTICABLENESS OF THE EXAMPLE OF OUR SAVIOUR.

HEBREWS, III. 1.

WHEREFORE, HOLY BRETHREN, PARTAKERS OF THE HEAVENLY CALLING, CONSIDER THE APOSTLE AND HIGH PRIEST OF OUR PROFESSION, JESUS CHRIST.

WHEN We rise from the contemplation of the character of Jesus, it is with a mixture of transport and of despair; of transport at finding that such immaculate excellence was embodied and exhibited in a human form, and despair lest it should be impossible to imitate it in the present mixed condition of human life. I know not how any man can take up any one of the gospels and read it through, without feeling that there is something supernatural about the character of Jesus, without catching at intervals a glimpse of that divinity which seems to encircle him, or perceiving the truth and nature of the Centurion's exclamation, when he heard the last expression which escaped from the lips of the dying Saviour, Truly this was the Son of God.'

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