your profession-and depend rather on the com forts of the world, you surely so far give up the comforts of religion. If you refuse the medi cine, you cannot expect the cure. If you have trusted in the world for your happiness; why, you must go to the world for your comfort also, In the multitude of sorrows that are in your heart, there you must apply for relief. When the calamities of life bear hard upon you-when sickness, or the infirmities of age, overtake you, you must try what consolations the world can give— what comfort it has in store for its devoted servants. To the consolations of the gospel you have little claim.-What?-Can you expect the pleasures of sin, and the comforts of religion? -Can you receive, at the same time, think you, the wages of Mammon, and the wages of Jesus Christ? Ah! my friends, you will find yourselves miserably mistaken;-cruelly disappointed. The world is a poor comforter in affliction-a wretched paymaster to those who trust it. If then you desire to receive solid comfort in affliction, the way is plain before you you must look for it only in religion. You must obey the gospel. You must receive, through faith, Christ's law into your heart. You must leave off your sins. You must believe truly in God through I VOL. I. Christ. N Christ. You must resign yourself with humility into his hands; and leaving the world out of the question, you must fix your thoughts on the promises of the gospel. Act thus, and then you may hope for the comforts of religion in your afflictions. Then you shall feel it more than the empty boast of religion, that in the multitude of sorrows, which you have in your hearts, the mercies of God will indeed refresh your soul. SERMON SERMON XV. MATTHEW, x. 30. THE VERY HAIRS OF YOUR HEAD ARE ALL NUMBERED. IN the chapter from whence this verse is taken, our blessed Saviour instructs his apostles, before he sends them to preach the gospel. He enumerates the many difficulties they should meet with from bad men, and from the perverseness of the world in general. But he assures them for their comfort, that none of these events were properly in the hands of men; but were under the direction of Providence;-of that Providence, whose care extended to the smallest events of the creation. The very hairs of their heads, he tells them, are all numbered. As the providence of God, no doubt, acts at all times in the same uniform manner, the instruction of the text belongs to us, as much as to those, to whom it was originally given; I shall therefore, in the following discourse, endeavour to explain to you, first, what we understand by the providence of God; and, secondly, I shall shew you what effect this doctrine should have upon us. WHEN we speak of the providence of God, we do not inquire into his being. That is taken for granted. Neither is God's creating the world the subject of our inquiry; but only his government of it; which is what we strictly mean by his providence. Now the belief of God's providence, or government of the world, engages us in greater difficulties, than the belief merely of his creating it; and it must needs be so. That God created the world, every one, who hath eyes to see, must be convinced. But to believe he governs it, requires the use of our reason as well as of our sight. We must reason from what we know to what we do not know for it is evident, that the acutest human reason cannot understand the whole mode of God's moral government. -- When you see a watch, you are convinced at the sight of so curious a piece of workmanship, that it was made by some ingenious artist; though, if you are not skilled in watch-making, you cannot possibly understand the use of all its springs and wheels; nor comprehend how its motion is regularly carried on. At the same time it would be absurd to doubt, whether the watch received its motion from the same ingenious hand that made it. Thus when we see the various parts of this world move in so regular a manner when we see the spring uniformly succeed the winter-when we see the summer follow the spring, and make proper preparations for autumn-and winter, as it were, resting from the labours of the year; and preparing for a new course of vegetation-when we see the world, thus admirably conducted in itself, and at the same time furnished not only with an infinite variety of animals, but each of those animals exactly suited to the element it lives in; and furnished with the proper means of providing food, and shelter, and other necessaries, we cannot but allow, if we have any modesty, that every difficulty we meet with, must be owing to ourselves in not being able to comprehend, with our confined understandings, N 3 |