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you awake out of sleep, and come indeed to know the Lord and yourselves, and to taste his grace. When you begin, indeed, to live aright to God, you will entertain a vile opinion of yourselves, and discover infinite depths of wickedness in your hearts by which you are at present enslaved, although you are not conscious of it.

What a state then must you be in now! How do those, who by believing in Jesus "have passed from death unto life," pity your blind, dead, stupid condition! Will you not, at length, pray for divine light, by which to see yourselves? Will you not, at length, take notice of those alarming hints of your own conscience which whisper to you the truth of those charges which in very charity I am making against you ? O Saviour of sinners! whether we are converted or unconverted, do thou pity and spare us. Teach us to flee, indeed, to thee, as our strength and refuge!

To conclude. Till we are impressed with a sense of our prodigious sinfulness, an Almighty Saviour and deliverer can appear to us no suitable foundation of hope. However, through him, and by faith in his blood alone it is, that the guilt of all the perverseness and impiety we have mentioned can be taken away, and the souls of men brought into a state of acceptance with God. Thus are they taught that meek, submissive resigned temper, whereby alone they can enjoy God's salvation in their souls here, and at length enjoy it to perfection hereafter.

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SERMON XV.

THE FOLLY OF ATTEMPTING TO MAKE THAT STRAIGHT WHICH GOD HAS MADE CROOKED.

Eccles. vii. 13.

Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?

THE great design of this book of Solomon is to enable us to form a just estimate of human life, and thence to teach us how to pass through it in the most prudent manner, so as to obtain the greatest comfort from it possible in our way to a better. On this account the wise author was divinely directed to inculcate the vanity and emptiness of all worldly things, which he does repeatedly. He confirms and illustrates his point by a variety of cases and instances, to teach us-what we are all very slow to learn, what young people have scarce any idea of— that the world is a world of emptiness and misery. This is absolutely necessary to be known, not only to dispose us to seek for the blessedness of the next life, but to enable us to pass with any tolerable cheerfulness through this. For if we expect nothing else but vanity, and a variety of crosses, we shall be prepared to use those wise rules for their mitigation, of which this book of Ecclesiastes is full, and may make the care of the soul the one thing needful. But if we have a wrong estimate of life as most

have during the greater part, if not the whole of their days and keep continually expecting happiness from it, what must be the effect? Surely bitter disappointment will ensue, besides the unspeakable misery of losing our soul for ever.

But, I say no more of the plan of Solomon's book. He who, under a divine influence, attends to it carefully throughout, may see, that one thing runs through it. It teaches us never to expect any thing from the world to set our heart upon. Solomon has written another book, commonly called his Song, to teach us what the heart ought to be set upon, even Christ Jesus as the true husband of the soul, in whose supreme, and unrivalled love, we may here taste the beginning of bliss, and be led to the fulness of it hereafter. The Lord is a jealous God, and as he will not fail to bless us, if we cleave to him in faith and love; so if he see us shy and cold, and more disposed to cleave to other persons and things than to him, we shall be sure to suffer for it. But let us now dwell upon the peculiar doctrine of the "Consider the work of God: for who can make that straight, which he hath made crooked?"

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The world, and our lot in it, is not straight, but crooked. There is always something rough and perverse in all its concerns. We can meddle with nothing that fully answers our wish. Most people, upon finding this in some particular object of desire, try some other scheme; but every fresh trial leaves them just where they were, always disappointed. They are ready to blame this and that hinderance. "If it had not been for such a person's folly, or such an unlucky thing happening, I should have

been happy." Would you so? Indeed you would not. Something else would have set you at a great distance from happiness, if that did not. The hinderance does not arise from particular occasional things, but from the general nature of things. And what you call LUCK, is the PROVIDENCE OF GOD.

"Consider the work of God." Men are apt to be Atheists practically, and to forget God, as if he had no business in the world, though "in him, and through him, and to him are all things." He has ordained it thus, and "who can make that straight, which he has made crooked?" The great misery of men in this life, and which will awfully prepare them for the misery of the next life also, if it be not cured here, is, that they are passionately set on having their own will gratified, and fondly expect that to be straight which God has made crooked. Do not you see what numbers blunder through life in this way? And as far as appears, after having taken pains in their own way to be happy all their lives, lie down in sorrow at last? But "consider the work of God." He has appointed this course of things. It is in vain, then, to resist it. All that you should expect and a great ALL it is, more than I can express-is to be supported in patient cheerfulness, by divine grace, through life, and then to be landed in perfect, everlasting rest hereafter through his mercy in Christ Jesus. The same sentiment occurs in the fifteenth verse of the first chapter of this book, "that which is crooked, cannot be made straight; and that which is wanting, cannot be numbered." The Holy Ghost is still teaching us, that it is not owing to any particular misfortune,

but to "the work of God," that human life is so full of vanity. You cannot make a crooked thing straight. And if there be a real want, you can never by numbering make up for that want. I fear, many are not accustomed to think of things in this light. If they did, it might, under God, help to teach them two things. One is, to bear with patience what is not to be remedied; and the other is, to seek more earnestly for the kingdom of heaven.

Since the use of the subject is so great, let us in the sequel endeavour, 1st, to illustrate a little more particularly this work of God in the crookedness of human life; and 2d, point out the complete felicity of the next life. A word of exhortation may follow to two sorts of persons.-Be with us here also, O God of compassion-and teach us wisdom in the greatness of thy mercy!

1. You will more firmly believe this account of human vanity, if you attend to the general cause of it. It was not the first original plan of the world. "God beheld every thing that he had made, and behold it was good." So Moses tells us, in the 1st chapter of Genesis. Man fell, and then behold the change! "Cursed is the ground for thy sake. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee." In the same manner misery has reached all other objects of sense. Sin is the most dreadful evil. It has filled the world with evil. In the wisdom of God it is ordered that thus it should punish us in its consequences and effects. And indeed so wicked is human nature since the Fall, that we cannot bear prosperity. Adversity seems needful to keep us in any tolerable order.

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