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Awake, thou that fleepeft, and arise "from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light*."

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PRAISE is ever valuable in proportion to the judgment and integrity of him who bestoweth it; and the pa-. negyric is truly honourable, when the panegyrift is one who will not flatter, and who cannot be deceived. How then shall we raife our thoughts to conceive adequately of a perfon, whofe encomium was spoken by the Son of God; and concerning whom that Son of God declared, "Among

them that are born of women there "hath not arifen a greater than John "the Baptiftt." After this declaration made by the mafter, the difciples cannot well be hyperbolical in Ephef. v. 14. + Matt. xi. 11. B 2

their

their praises of St. John, as the great pattern of repentance; the relation of Chrift; the friend of the bridegroom; the herald of the king immortal; the glory of faints, and the joy of the world.

It is obfervable, that the Baptift's nativity is the only one (that of Chrift excepted) which the church has thought proper to celebrate.

The

days appointed for the commemoration of other faints are generally thofe on which they refpectively ceafed from their labours, and entered into their everlasting reft; the day of a good man's death being indeed the day of his birth, and this world no more than the womb in which he is formed and matured for his admiffion into a better, where there is neither

crying nor pain. But the nativity of St. John being defigned, by the remarkable incidents that accompanied it, to turn the eyes of men towards one who was far greater; one, the latchet of whofe fhoes he confeffed himself not worthy to unloofe; the church keeps a day facred to it, and directs us to begin our meditations by confidering, as all Judea did, when it happened, "what manner of "child" that should be, which was fo wonderfully born.

He whose works are all wrought in number, weight, and measure, bringeth every event to pass in its proper feafon. The time approached which had been decreed in the counfels of the Moft High, foretold by the Pro

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phets, and ardently defired by holy men of old, when the Son of God fhould be manifested, to redeem his people from death, and to lead them in the path of life. As this redemption was not to be effected by flethly might and power, the spiritual king of Ifrael chofe to make his appearance, when the houfe of David was like a root buried in the earth; and therefore his forerunner was born "in "the days of Herod the king* ;" days, when his countrymen were under a foreign jurifdiction, and the profpect on all fides was gloomy. True indeed it is, that the facred amp went not out in the temple, where the good old Simeon and the devout Anna ferved God inftantly

* Luke i. 5.

with faftings and prayers, and waited, as many others did, with earnest expectation, for the confolation of Ifrael. They were not difcouraged by the grofs darknefs which then covered the earth, but rather concluded from thence, that the dawn of day could not be far off; as the mercies of heaven generally come when man moft wants, aud, humanly fpeaking, has leaft ground to hope for them; to the end that he may with thankfulness receive the benefit, and with humility give God the glory. And this may be an ufeful lef fon to those who fhall live in the latter days of the Gentile church, which are to precede the fecond advent of Chrift; when they will behold the religion of Christians degenerated

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