ferings awake us to confideration and amendment, and teach us to look up to GOD, and be above all things folicitous to recommend ourselves to his favour, it is good for us to be thus afflicted; and happy the days of adverfity that are productive of these effects.

In our future ftate, when we take a retrospective view of our lives, they will appear in a light very different from that in which we fee them at prefent. What we now confider as misfortunes and afflictions, will appear to have been mercies and bleffings; and we fhall fee that the intentions of the Deity were benevolent, when his inflictions feemed fevere. And certain it is, that our ftate or condition is often then the happiest and best for us, when we are apt to judge it the worst; that we have often the best reafon to acquiefce in those appointments of Providence at which we are most inclined to grieve; and that we ought to be most thankful when we most complain. For we form our judgment of events from prefent appearances only, without being

VOL. I.

being able to penetrate into their remote confequences, that lie hid in the bofom of futurity.

Let it be our determination, then, to meet every difpenfation of Providence with the most fubmiffive refignation to the will of that fupremely gracious Sovereign of mature, whofe unerring wifdom can alone determine what is good or evil for us; whofe unbounded goodness will direct all things fmally to the happiness of his creatures; and can infinitely overbalance the light afflictions of this world, which are but for a feason, with an exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

SER

SERMON XIV.

On the Fear of God.

PROV. xvi. 6.

By the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil.

FEA

a

EAR is a paffion inherent in our nature, and infeparable from it. From the influence of this principle, none, not the most intrepid, are exempt. They who, by an uncommon fortitude of mind, are fuperior to the apprehenfions of danger, and fear not them who can kill the body, have yet other objects of this passion, and may fear cenfure, guilt, difeafe, difhonour;-or may have their fears for others, if not for themselves. The one univerfal object of fear

0 2

fear is, or ought to be, that Almighty Being who is the arbiter of our fate, and ordereth all things both in heaven and earth. But this fear, in different perfons, will differ, according to the state and difpofition of the mind. The finner, oppreffed by a fenfe of guilt and a defpondency of mercy, reprefents that Beft of Beings as an object of terror, and dreads as an enemy the Friend and Father of mankind. this is a fpecies of fear which I hope none of us may ever experience, and is very dif

But

ferent from that which is a Chriftian and a rational duty.

Let us then enquire, 1, What is that fear of God which religion recommends and requires; 2dly, What confiderations are proper to excite and produce this fear; and, laftly, Let us obferve its effects and influence on our manners.

I. The fear of GoD which religion recommends and requires, is an ingenuous principle, very different from that terror which refults from the idea of our fubjection to a being void of mercy, and pof

feffed

feffed of power to inflict evils which we can neither oppose nor avert. Such a fear of the Divine Being as leads to defpondency, as extinguishes the confideration of his paternal goodness, and blots out from the mind every liberal fentiment of him, must arife from erroneous or partial conceptions of his nature. If we mifconceive of God, if we reprefent him under forbidding appearances, as a fovereign feated always on his throne of judgment, fevere in his laws, inflexible in his juftice, and armed with power for the purposes of vengeance; if we thus admit falfe reprefentations of the Divine Majefty; or if we form partial and defective conceptions of him, and dwell altogether upon his natural, without affociating with them his moral, perfections; if we consider only his irresistible power and abfolute dominion, but forget that his dominion and power are never exerted but under the direction of infinite goodness; or if we select the more awful even of the moral perfections, fuch as, juftice inflexible, and holiness un03 fpotted,