may be the confequences of the spirit of dissipation, erTor and infidelity which has gone forth, be ye, believers, faithful, and your fouls will be given you for a prey. God will preserve and ftrengthen you, and he which hath begun a good work in you, will perform it until the day of Jefus Chrift.

You are under indifpenfable obligations to forfake all fin and glorify God, not only as his creatures, but especially as his children who are created anew in Chrift Jefus. Often meditate upon these obligations, and remember, that ye are not your own, for ye are bought with a price, and therefore whatever others may do, ye are to glorify God in your body and in your spirit which are God's.

Strive to obtain clear apprehenfions of growth in grace, that you may determine with precision wherein it confifts. Despise not the day of small things. It is by little and little the enemy shall be driven out before you. Through many fallings and rifings, changes and viciffitudes, your progrefs lies. By many fad experiences you will know that your lufts are not yet all deftroyed; but by many comforting evidences you will affuredly find the promised aid of the Spirit, and the power of Christ in promoting your growth in grace.-Be afraid of fin and of temptations, but be not afraid of the crofs. Trials and afflictions prove no impediment to fanctification. When fufferings produce proper exercises, they yield the peaceable fruits of righteousness; they make us fenfible of our weakness; they imbitter fin, and leffen that attachment to the world which mars our progrefs, and hinders our growth in grace. Be then of a good courage, and go in the ftrength of the Lord. Your falvation is nearer than when you believed, and you may, in humble hope, look forward to your everlasting home, which is full in view; H 4

for

for yet a little while, and he that fhall come, will come, and will not tarry. And now the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jefus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleafing in his fight, through Jefus Chrift, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

SER.

THE FOLLY AND GUILT, OF BEING ASHAMED OF CHRIST.

BY

SAMUEL S. SMITH, D. D.
COL. N. C. V. P. et S. T. P.

MARK viii. 38.

Whosoever shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, in

this adulterous and finful generation, of him alfo shall the Son of Man be afbamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father, and with the holy Angels.

O perform our duty, and then without oftentation to avow it, is our most honourable and useful character. It is fulfilling the first law of our nature, and extending the prevalence of religion and virtue in the world, by the influence of our example. To be ashamed. of our duty is to be ashamed of our glory. To acknowledge its obligation in fecret, and yet disguise it before men, discovers a weakness and duplicity of mind, that is no lefs inconfiftent with dignity than with piety.

The

The fentiment of shame that gives to the opinion of others fo great authority over the mind, is originally a wife and excellent law of nature. But the depravity of man hath perverted the best principles, and changed the moft ingenuous feelings of the heart into minifters of fin. Great crimes are evidently opposed to the interests of fociety, and therefore they are condemned by public opinion. The depravity of the human heart is equally opposed to the spirit of true Religion, and therefore, the manners, and at least the oftenfible opinions of the world, contradict the purity and fimplicity of the Gofpel. The one opposes vice in the extreme, the other tends to encourage vice in a certain degree.

The world hath fo accommodated its converfation, its wit, and its opinions to its manners, that men in the cause of piety, are afraid of incurring its cenfure or contempt. They want courage to oppose the ftream of custom,they renounce their duty in compliance with fashionable vice, or they conceal their inward reverence for it, and against their conviction they live like the world.

To be ashamed of Chrift is a fin that may be confidered in a variety of lights. Our Saviour, in pronouncing this fentence, had probably an immediate view to the teftimony which his difciples would be called to bear to his name, before the tribunals of their unrighteous judges, where the fplendour of courts, the fcoffs of enemies, the ignominy of punishments, and the humble and unfriended condition of the firft Chriftians, would all contribute to fubdue their minds, to make them afhamed of their Master's cross, and to deprive them of the courage neceffary to profefs, or to suffer for his despised cause.-Honour elevates the mind and gives fortitude to the weak. Shame is an enfeebling principle that takes even from the brave the confidence neceffary to avow truth, and the firmness

neceffary

neceffary to endure fuffering.-Indeed, to be ashamed of Chrift and to deny him are fo intimately connected, as cause and effect, that St Matthew, in expreffing this declaration of our Saviour, fays, Whofoever fhall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father who is in heaven.

Through the goodness of God we are not exposed to perfecution, but living in an age in which cuftom, in which the powers of wit and ridicule, in which the honours of fociety, and in which even reason and philofophy have been engaged on the fide of vice, we are liable to difguife the truths of the Gospel, and to be ashamed of Christ, with a more criminal weakness than they who fuffered their conftancy to be fhaken by the majesty of tribunals, and the terror of flames.

It is this evil which I propofe from the text to explain and condemn.

I. By pointing out what is implied in being ashamed of Chrift, and of his words.

II. By demonftrating its folly and its guilt.

I. In pointing out what is implied in being ashamed of Chrift, and of his words, I fhall treat of the fentiment of fhame directly,-and unfold fome of its principal causes,—and its confequences, as they affect the profeffion of Religion.

1. In the first place, the fentiment of fhame.-This, like other fimple feelings and emotions of the human mind, cannot be easily understood, except by exciting the perception, and calling to mind the occafions on which we have most fenfibly felt its constraints.-Let us recolJect those seasons in which a finful regard to the observa

tion