thought if death was the consequence, I would go to the grave and have the last look at my dear departed friend; to see a new vault opened; to see a place of which he has been, in a great measure, the founder; to see a place which he was enlarging at the very time he died; to see a new vault there first inhabited by the father, and two only sons, and all put there in the space of two years time, Oh! it was almost too much for me, it weighed me down, it kept me in my bed all this day; and now I have risen, God grant it may be to give a seasonable word to your souls. Oh! my friends, put yourselves in the state of a surviving widow, and then see who is secure from cutting providences. The very children when they are young are a trial; but the young man for whom a handsome fortune awaited; for a tender loving father to have his son taken away; for the widow to have her husband taken away soon after; indeed, dear madam, you had need read the forty sixth Psalm; you may well say, call me no more Naomi, that signifies pleasant, but call me Marah, for the Lord hath dealt bitterly with me. These are strokes that are not always given to the greatest saints. Such sudden strokes, such blow upon blow, Oh! if God is not a strength and refuge, how can the believer support under it? but blessed be the living God, I am a witness God has been your strength, I am witness that God has been your refuge; you have found, I know you have, already, that there is a river a river in which you have swam now for some years, the streams whereof make glad your waiting heart. Surely I shall never forget the moment in which I visited your deceased husband, when the hiccoughs came, and death was supposed to be real

ly come, to see the disconsolaté widow flying out of the room, unable to bear the sight of a departing husband: I know that God was then your refuge, and God will continue to be your refuge. You are now God's peculiar care, and as a proof that you will make God your refuge, you have chosen to make your first appearance in the house of God, in the Tabernacle, where I hope God delights to dwell, and where you met with God, and which I hope you will never leave till God removes you hence. Whatever trials may yet await you, remember you are now become God's peculiar care. You had before a husband to plead for you; he is gone, but your pleader is not dead, he lives and will plead your cause; may you find him better to you than ten thousand husbands; may he make up the awful chasm that death has made, and may the Lord God be your refuge in time, and your portion to all eternity; and then you will have a blessed change. You are properly a Naomi: I would humbly hope that your daughter-in-law, which so lately met with a stroke of the same nature, will prove a Ruth to you, and though young and having a fortune, she may be tempted to take a walk in the world, yet I hope she will say, where thou goest, I will go, where thou lodgest I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me. It is to your honor, madam, and I think it right to speak of it, you had the smiles of your departing father-in-law, you had behaved with deference, and love; he was very fond of you; God make you a comfort to your surviving mother, who has adopted you,

and may the Lord Jesus Christ enable you to take God to be your portion.

As for you that are the relations of the deceased, there is one of you that has been honorably called to the service of the ministry: you, sir, was sent for over by an endearing uncle, you have been a stranger in a strange land: the Palatines will bless your ministry; God has, I hope, blessed it, and provided you a place to preach in. May God grant that that church may be filled with his presence and his glory; and you, madam, be made the instrument of sending the news to heaven for your husband, that this and that man was born of God there. As for you, the other friends of the deceased, may God grant that when you die, and when you are buried, the people may follow you with tears as they did dear Mr. Beckman last night. I was told by one this morning that walked along with the funeral, that it was delightful to hear what the people said when the coffin past by; they blessed the person contained therein, Oh! he was a father to the poor. The poor have indeed lost a friend: and I believe there has not been a man, a tradesman in London, for these many years, that has been more lamented than the dear man who now, I hope, is at rest. You well know how mindful he has been of you, and that soon after the decease of his disconsolate widow, his substance will be divided among some of you. Give me leave to charge and intreat you, by the mercies of God in Jesus Christ, to be kind to the honored widow. Do not say, Mr. Beckman my uncle is dead, come pluck up, let us plague her now she is livving, we shall have all when she is dead. The plague of God will follow you if you do: if you

valued your dear uncle, do all you can to make her life easy; pay her that respect which you would pay the deceased was he now living; this will show your love is genuine, and not counterfeit, and do not lay up wrath against the day of wrath. Follow the example of your dear deceased uncle; the gentleman was visible in him as well as the Christian; he would be in his warehouse early in the morning, that he might come soon to his country-house, and there employ himself in his friendly life, and open the door to the disciples of Jesus. It is time to draw to an end, but I will speak a word to the servants of the family, who have lost a good and a dear master. May the Lord Jesus Christ be your master forever, that you may be the Lord's servants, however you may be disposed of in this world; that you may meet your master, your mistress, and all the family, in the kingdom of the living God, then we shall have a whole eternity to reflect upon the goodness of a gracious God. O may God help us to sing the forty-sixth Psalm; may we find him to be our strength and our refuge, a very present help in the time of trouble: may the river of the living God make glad your hearts, and may you be with God to all eternity; even so, Lord Jesus, Amen and Amen.

SERMON III.

SOUL PROSPERITY.

3 EPISTLE JOHN ii.

Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayst prosper, and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.

WHA

HAT a horrid blunder has one of the famous, or rather infamous, deistical writers made, when he says, that the gospel cannot be of God, because there is no such thing as friendship mentioned in it. Surely if he ever read the gospel, having eyes he saw not, having ears he heard not: but I believe the chief reason is, his heart being waxen gross, he could not understand; for this is so far from being the case, that the world never yet saw such a specimen of steady and desinterested friendship, as was displayed in the life, example, and conduct of JesusChrist of Nazareth.

John, the writer of this epistle, had the honor of leaning on his bosom, and of being called, by way of emphasis, the disciple whom Jesus loved; and that very disciple, which is very remarkable concerning him, though he was one of those whom the Lord himself named Sons of Thunder, Mark iv. 17. and was so suddenly, as bishop Hall observes, turned into a son of lightning, that he would have called down fire from heaven to consume his master's enemies; consequently,