Puslapio vaizdai
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soever they would seduce him to wrong compliances with the world, or to deviate from the paths of truth and uprightness.

To conclude:

Let us not then be discouraged, my bre thren, in this our christian combat for the crown of the divine favour, and a glorious immortality.

What though we meet with rude assaults of temptations, which sometimes depress us and nearly cast us down! if we persevere in our integrity, we shall rise up again and conquer.

Here we are stationed for a while to acquire a meetness for future happiness; and the difficult scenes and various adverse trials in the midst of which we are placed, are fitted to produce the proper dispositions in us.

Only let not our own sincere endeavours be wanting, and let us go on to labour all we can, and we shall attain ;-our labour cannot be in vain.

Unto God be glory in all things, and for ever!

PRAYER.

O thou kind parent of our beings! the most perfectly holy, righteous, and good! dwelling

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in the light which none can approach, but who takest care of all the things that thou hast made, and hast in a most especial manner manifested thy love to us, thy children of the human

race!

What is man, O Lord! What are we, that thou shouldst thus be mindful of us and cherish us? Thou tookest us yesterday out of the dust, and designest us to be partakers of thine own immortality and blessedness!

O suffer not our manifold sins and unworthiness to defeat thy gracious purposes; but be pleased to perfect the work that thou hast begun, and purify and fit us for thyself.

And as thou, O heavenly Father, who knowest the frail materials of which we are composed, hast placed us in the midst of powerful and alluring temptations, dangerous to our feeble virtue and powers:

Give us, we pray thee, strength from above equal to the trials that we are to encounter with.

And aid us especially, to be always upright before thee, and to act the sincere part in this passing world, in bearing testimony to thee and to thy holy truth at all convenient seasons; that others may thereby be encouraged and

brought

brought forward therein, and the virtue and true happiness of all thy creatures may be effectually promoted.

Finally, O Lord our God, as it hath pleased thee, according to thy sovereign wisdom, to assign to us our different capacities, stations, and employments in this world, enable us, whilst the short day of our trial lasts, to serve thee in them, and to employ our opportunities and abilities which thou bestowest, in the purification of our own natures, and striving to be instruments of the most lasting good to others; that, in the end of time, we may share in the unspeakable recompense of an endless bliss, which, not of debt, but of thy free bounty and goodness, thou hast promised to thy faithful servants by Christ our Lord!

Now unto Thee, O Father, &c.

December 11, 1785.

SERMON

SERMON XVI.

2 KINGS V. 17, 18, 19.

And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant henceforth will offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other : gods, but unto the Lord. In this thing the

Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon; when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing. And be said unto him, Go in peace,

THESE last words contain the short reply of Elisha, a prophet of God, to the very important question put to him; in the solution of which we are all of us much concerned, particularly in the consequences that have been drawn from it.

I shall

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