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be always on your guard. Inftead of filling you with gloom and melancholy, this is the true way to prevent them. Having fubdued the laft enemy, you have none other to fear. Adopted into the family of God, interested in the merits of Chrift, entitled to the glories of immortality, you go forward through life and death, conquering and to conquer. Then all things are yours; death is a paffage to a better life, and the gate to immortality.

Much more is it incumbent on you, my aged friends, to confider your latter end. Why stand you here all the day idle? Confider how vain, and foolish, and finful,it is to be forming schemes of long life, when you are within the threshold of the house of death? Confider how terrible will be the hour, if you have never thought of death till you come to die; like Jonah, to be awakened from a found fleep, and to be cast into the ocean. Look into life, behold a young generation rising around you, and you yourselves left alone in a new world. Look into the records of mortality, into the repofitories of the dead, and hear your equals in age calling to you from the tomb, and warning you to prepare for that fate which is theirs today, and may be yours tomorrow. Embrace, therefore, the opportunities of grace which you now enjoy. Whilft the Prince of Peace extends the golden fceptre, kifs the Son, left he be angry, and ye perish from his prefence. Be wife, and confider your end that is fo near.

SERMON XXXI.

MATTHEW XI. 30.

My yoke is eafy, and my burden is light.

JESUS hath lately been addreffing to

you the gracious invitation which here he gives to penitent finners. With his invitation you have teftified your compliance. Laft Lord's day you confeffed at these tables, that you were weary and heavy laden with the yoke of the world; that you came to Jefus in hopes of finding reft to your fouls; and that you were refolved to learn of him, and to take his yoke upon you. The good confeffion, my friends, which you then witneffed, the happy choice which you then made, you will never have caufe to repent. The world, indeed, will reprefent religion to you as a heavy burden and a galling yoke; but I affure you, upon the authority of Jefus Chrift, and upon the teftimony of all his difciples, that his yoke is eafy, and his burden is light; that his commandments are not grievous, and the ways he points out to his followers, are ways of pleasantnefs and paths of peace.

The ease and pleasure of the chriftian life, is to be the fubject of the prefent difcourfe. But, before I enter upon it, I have one obfervation to make, which is, That in order to taste the joys of religion, we must have been accustomed to its government, and made advances in the divine life. We can never have a taste for any pursuit till we be acquainted with

it: we can never enter into the spirit of any science, till that science be familiar to us. To those who have long engaged in a courfe of wickednefs, the duties of religion will at first be grievous and irksome, because they oppose strong prejudices and confirmed habits. of vice. But when thefe bad habits are removed, and good ones are contracted, when a man acquires the temper and enters into the fpirit of religion, he then feels the joy which a stranger intermeddles not with. Give a mufical inftrument to an unfkilful perfon, we hear nothing but harfhnefs and difcord from every ftring the artift alone makes mufic and harmony accompany all the motions of his hand. Religion is an art, and like an art is to be learned before it be understood.

In the first place, The Chriftian life is a life of eafe and pleasure, on account of the principle from which the Chriftian acts.

The Chriftian is not a flave who obeys from compulfion, nor a fervant who works for hire; he is a fon who acts from ingenuous affection and filial love. When the chriftian contemplates the goodness, and tender mercies, and loving-kindnefs of God, particularly his inexpreffible love in the redemption of the world by Christ Jefus, he is constrained to new obedience, by the most powerful of all ties, by the cords of love, and the bands of a man; thus reasoning, and thus feeling, that if one died for all, then they which are alive ought not to live to themselves, but to him who died for them. Gratitude to a benefactor, affection to a father, love to a friend, all concur to form the principle of evangelical obedience, and to strengthen the cord that is not easily broken.

Love, then, is the principle of the Chriftian life: love, the most generous paflion that glows in the breaft of man, the most active principle that works in the human frame, the key that unlocks every finer feeling of the heart, the fpring that puts in motion every power of the foul. Pleasant are the labours of love. Short is the path and cheerful the journey when the heart goes along. A determined mind, enamoured of the object it pursues, removes mountains, and makes the crooked path ftraight: the fire cannot extinguish, nor the waters quench its force; it reigns fupreme in the heart, and diffufes a gaiety over every path of life. By its influence labour is rendered eafy, and duty becomes a delight.

In the fecond place, The ease and pleasure of the Christian life will appear if we confider the affistance we receive from above.

"Work out your falvation; for it is God that "worketh within you every good work and word." There are difficulties in the Chriftian life: I have no intention to deceive you, my friends; you will often find it difficult to act the proper part; to main. tain a confcience void of offence towards God and towards man; to keep your paffions within the bounds of reason; to fubdue your irregular inclinations to the obedience of faith, and to hold faft your integrity uncorrupted amid the temptations of the world. These and many other difficulties will befet you in running the Chriftian race. But let me remind you, that one half of the pleasures of human life arife from overcoming difficulties; and to overcome thefe difficulties which furround us, God beftows the influences of his Holy Spirit. The Lord

is ever nigh to them who call upon him in the fincerity of their heart. To those who wait at the falutary stream, an angel defcends to stir the waters. God never faid to the feed of Jacob, Seek ye my face in vain. He never neglected the prayer that came from the heart. He never forfook the man that put his trust in him.

If you were left to climb the arduous afcent, by your own ftrength alone, then the Chriftian life would neither be eafy nor pleasant; then you might fit down in despair of ever attaining the top. But whatever duties God calls you to, he gives you abil ities to perform them. According as your days are, he hath promised that your ftrength fhall be. His grace is fufficient for us; his ftrength is made perfect in our weakness. No, my friends, God hath never withdrawn himself from the world. The Father of fpirits is ever present with his rational offspring; he knows their frame, he helps their infirmities, affifts their graces, ftrengthens their powers, and makes perfect what concerns them. He aflifts the feeble, he revives the languishing, he fupports the ftrong. He aids the efforts of the captive, who endeavours to break loofe from the fetters that hold him; he favours the afcent of the devout mind, that with the confidence of faith rifes to himself, and he forwards the pilgrim, journeying to his native country. The good husbandman fuperintends the vine which his own right hand planted. He waters his vineyard with dews from heaven, and breathes ethereal influence on those trees of righteoufnefs that fhall adorn the paradife of God.

Haft thou not felt him, O Chriftian! restraining

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