therefore its religious interests are dear by additional ties. Let me address those of you, whose age and experience, in the human and the divine life, give you something of a natural authority in your application, and command a distinguished regard. Look round about you, and observe the state of religion in your neighbourhood; and labour to the utmost to propagate, not so much this or that particular opinion or form of worship, but real vital christianity in the world. Bear your testimony to it on all proper occasions: Be not ashamed of it in your familiar discourse: And above all, labour to adorn it by your actions. And when you see any under serious impressions, as it is certain they will have a great deal discouraging and difficult to break through; and as the Devil and his instruments, among whom I must necessarily reckon licentious company, will be doing their utmost to draw them back into the snare of the fowler; let me exhort and charge you to be as so. licitous to save, as others are to destroy. I know, how many excuses our cowardly and indolent hearts are ready to find out upon such an occasion; but I think those words of Solomon are a sufficient answer to all, and I beg you would seriously revolve them; If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not; doth not he that pondereth the heart, consider it? And he that keepeth thy soul, (thine, Oh Christian, with such peculiar and gracious care) doth not he know it? And shall not he render to every man according to his works*? He will assuredly Remember, and will abundantly reward, every work of faith, and every labour of love +; and we are insensible of our own truest interest, if we do not see how much it is concerned here. Let me especially leave this exhortation with you, who are parents and heads of families. And one would imagine, there should need but little importunity in such a case as this: One would think your own hearts should speak to you, upon such an occasion, in very pathetic language. Look upon your dear children, to whom you have conveyed a nature which you know to be degenerate and corrupt; and be earnest in your prayers. before God, and your endeavours with them, that it may be re. newed. And take care, that you do not in this sense Despise the soul of your man-servant, or of your maid-servant. God has brought them under your care, it may be in those years of life, in which, on the one hand, they are most capable of being *Prov. xxiv. 11, 12. +1 Thess. i. 3. Heb. vi. 10. Job xxxi. 13. instructed and seriously impressed; and in which, on the other hand, they are also most in danger of being corrupted. Perhaps their relation to you, and abode with you, is the most advantageous circumstance, which may occur in their whole lives: See therefore that you seize it with a holy eagerness; and amidst all the charges you give them relating to your own business, neglect not that of the One thing needful*; and labour heartily to bring them to the honour and happiness, which is common to all God's servants, and peculiar to them alone. Let me conclude this part of my address with entreating you all to express your concern for the souls of others, by your importunate prayers to God for them. Pray for the success of gospel ordinances; and for a blessing on the labours of all God's faithful servants throughout our whole land, of one or another denomination in religion. Yea, pray that throughout the whole world, God would Revive his work in the midst of the years ↑; that the religion of his Son, by which so many souls have been regenerated, refined, and saved, may be universally propagated; and that all who are vigorously engaged in so important, though so self-denying a work, may find that The hand of the Lord is with them, and so multitudes believe and turn unto the Lord; so that his Sons may be brought from far, and his daughters from the ends of the earth §; that the Barren may rejoice, and she that did not travail with child, may break forth into singing, and cry aloud; that the children of nations now strangers to Christ, may be more than of those that are already espoused to him. And then, [4.] Let all that are born again "long for that blessed world, where the work of God shall be completed, and we shall appear with a dignity and glory becoming his children." As for God, His work is perfect¶; and the time, the happy time is approaching, when we shall know, and the whole world shall know, in another manner than we now do, what our heavenly Father has intended for us in begetting us to himself. -Whatever our attainments here may be, We know at present but in part **; and with whatever integrity of soul we now walk before God, we are sanctified but in part: And hereupon we find, and must expect to find, The flesh striving against the Spirit, as well as the Spirit against the flesh; so that, in many respects, we cannot do the things that we would++: And in pro + Hab. iii. 2. Acts xi. 21. * Luke x. 42. § Isai. xliii. 6. †† Gal. v. 17. portion to the degree in which our nature is refined and brightened, we are more sensible of the evil of these corruptions that remain within us; so that though we are not, in a strict propriety of speech, Carnal, and sold under sin, but do indeed, delight in the law of God after the inward man*, yet in the humility of our hearts we are often borrowing that pathetic complaint, Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death †?—But let it be remembered, Christians, as the matter of your joy, that the struggle shall not be perpetual, that it shall not indeed be long. Look up with pleasure then, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth night: The time is approaching, When that which is perfect shall come, and that which is in part shall be done away §. You are now the children of God; but it does not appear to every eye that you are so : The world knows us not||, nor are we to wonder at it; for even Christ our Lord was once unknown, and appeared in so much meanness, and so much calamity, that an undiscerning and carnal eye could not have discovered who and what he was. But there is a day appointed for The manifestation of the sons of God¶, as the apostle Paul most happily expresses it; when he will manifest them to each other, and manifest them also to the whole world. They shall not always live thus at a distance from their Father's house, and under those dispensations of providence that look so much like disregard and neglect: But he will take them home, and gather them to himself. Ere long, Christians, he will call these heaven-born spirits of yours, that are now aspiring towards him, to dwell in his immediate presence: He will receive you to himself; and you shall Stand where no sinner shall have a place in the congrega tion of the righteous**, and shall have an inheritance among the saints in light, the saints in holiness and glory.-Oh happy day! when dropping this body in the grave, we shall ascend pure and joyful spirits to that triumphant assembly, where there is not one vitiated affection, not one foolish thought to be found among the thousands and ten thousands of God's Israel! Oh blessed period of a regenerate state! Though all the schemes of the divine love were to rest here, and these bodies were for ever to be laid aside, and utterly to be lost in the grave; the rejoicing soul might say, "Lord, it is enough!" And it might be indeed enough for us; but it is not enough to answer the gracious purposes of God's paternal love. God will shew in the most conspi Rom. vii. 14, 22. Rom. viii. 19. Luke xxi. 28. § 1 Cor. xiii. 10. ** Psal. i. 5. cuous manner, what a family he has raised to himself among the children of men ; and therefore he will assemble them all in their complete persons, and will do it with solemn pomp and magnificent parade. He will for this purpose send his own Son, with all his holy angels,*, and will cause the bodies of millions of his children, that have long dwelt in the dust, to spring out of it at once in forms of beauty and lustre, worthy their relation to him. This therefore is with beautiful propriety called by the apostle, The adoption, even the redemption of our body+; alluding to the public ceremony with which adoptions among the ancients were solemnly confirmed and declared, after they had been more privately transacted between the parties immediately concerned. Oh Christians, how reasonable is it, that our souls should be rising with a secret ardour towards this blessed hope, this glorious abode!—It is pleasant for the children of God to meet, and converse with one another upon earth; so pleasant, that I wonder they do not more frequently form themselves into little societies, in which, under that character, they should join their discourses. and their prayers.-It is delightful to address to those, that, we trust, through grace are born of God. No discourses are more pleasant than those that suit them: And could we that are the ministers of Christ reasonably hope, that we had none but such to attend our labours, we should joyfully confine our discourses to such subjects.-Yet while we are here, we see imperfections in others; we feel them yet more painfully in ourselves: And as there is no pure unmixed society, no fellowship on earth that is completely holy and without blemish, so there is now no pure delight, no perfect pleasure to be met with here.—Oh when shall I depart from this mixed society, and reach that state, where all is good, all glorious! Where I shall see my heavenly Father, and all my brethren in the Lord; and shall behold them all for ever acting up to their character! All Giving thanks to the Father, who has made us meet to be partakers of the inheri tance of the saints in light! All for ever blessing and serving the great Redeemer; and without one ungenerous action, one reflecting word, one suspicious thought, for ever serving each other in love, rejoicing in each other's happiness, and with the most prudent and stedfast application for ever studying and labouring to improve it! With the most earnest desire that you, my dear brethren and friends, may at length attain to this state of perfection and *Mat. xxv. 31. VOL. II. Rom. viii. 23. Col. i. 12. glory and with a cheerful expectation, through divine grace, that I shall ere long meet many of you in it; I close this sermon, and these discourses: Not without an humble hope, that when we arrive at this blessed world, these hours which we have spent together in the house of God in attending them, will come into a pleasant remembrance; and that the God of all grace, to whose glory they are faithfully devoted, and to whose blessing they are humbly committed, will honour them as the means of increasing his family, as well as of feeding and quickening those who are already his regenerate children. Amen! |