instances, to compare the sin you have committed, with the pain it hath cost you; or the injury you have received from it.—And is any great wisdom, think you, requisite for this? You have sense enough when you go to market, not to give more for a thing than it is worth. At market, you take care to inform yourselves of the goodness of the several commodities you purchase. You inquire into their real worth; and then into the price that is set upon them: and you hold off in your bargain, till you have adjusted the one to the other. You would fear your neighbours would laugh at you, if they should see you give twice as much for a commodity as it was worth your sense and judgment would be called in question. -Let me then beseech you only to be as careful in a business that concerns your immortal souls, as you are in a two-penny matter at a market. When you go to market, therefore, for the pleasures of sin, (for this is, in fact, the case : you buy a commodity by paying a price,) consider well, before you strike the bargain by committing the sin. Examine the real value of the pleasures it promises-how short they are--what their nature is; and what their circumstances? Examine next, the price you are to pay-whether for the pleasure of getting drunk, for instance; or

for

for the pleasure of cursing and swearing-or for any other unlawful pleasure, you are not charged more than the thing is really worth? Now if you could only coolly and deliberately prevail with yourselves to do this, when you go to purchase the pleasures of sin, one should hope, the drunkard, the common swearer, the whore-monger, the adulterer, and all other sinners, would draw back a little, before they venture to make so disadvantageous, so deceitful, so ruinous a bargain. Our blessed Saviour, you may remember, takes notice of this miserable kind of traffic: and let his words sink deep in your hearts. What is a man profited, if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or, what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

LASTLY, to incline us still more to examine our ways, and turn our feet unto God's testimonies, let us add fervent prayer to God. Before the great searcher of hearts, let us humbly confess those sins which we cannot hide; and bewail those corruptions which we cannot wholly overcome; praying always, that God will assist us by his holy spirit-that he will succour us in the hour of temptation that he will strengthen our resolutions; help us to gain a conquest over sin-and

finally

finally pardon us through the atonement of a blessed Redeemer.

THUS, my brethren, let us all, by our own best endeavours, assisted by the grace of God, examine our accounts here, in order to fit ourselves for that great account we must all render up to God hereafter. His will stand the clearest in that great day, whose accounts with his own soul have here been kept the most exact.-And may God, of his infinite mercy, grant that we may all so call our ways to remembrance, that we may turn our feet unto his testimonies.

SERMON

SERMON XX.

1 CORINTHIANS, ix. 10.

HE THAT PLOUGHETH SHOULD PLOUGH IN HOPE AND HE THAT THRESHETH IN HOPE, SHOULD BE PARTAKER OF HIS HOPE.

GOD hath given us in the Bible, the clearest revelation of his will but he hath also given us, to assist the Bible, books of instruction wherever we throw our eyes. The man who seeks for religious wisdom, can throw them no where without receiving it. The lilies of the field, which are cut down and wither, will impress him with the great lesson of mortality. The ravens, which sow not, nor gather into barns, will teach him dependence on Divine Providence. The sluggard is sent to the ant for instruction-the

intempe

intemperate man, to the sow, that walloweth in the mire-and the proud man is put in mind of the worm, which is destined, one day, to banquet upon him.

But amidst all the topics of instruction, which the book of nature holds out, there are none so apt, and various, as those suggested in the text, from the culture of the earth. The husbandman has the book of wisdom continually before him; and it is his own fault, if he do not gather instruction from it.

To assist him however in reading this wise book, though indeed it is open to us all, I shall, in the following discourse, point out a few of those various pieces of instruction it sets before us.

AND first, the very ground you cultivate, affords much instruction. Without proper tillage, you know, it will bear nothing: and the more it is cultivated, the more it will produce. And though there are many different kinds of soil, yet none is so bad, but it may be improved; and none so good, but without improvement, it will become barren,-Now what instruction have we here! How aptly does the ground represent our minds; and bring daily to our remembrance the

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