Shun not, then, the house of mourning, as you value your own spiritual and eternal interests, which may there be greatly advanced; as you would prepare for the time when your own abode shall be visited by disease and death; as you would then wish for the affectionate sympathy of others, and for the soothing recollection that you have not lived wholly in vain. Do not devote the days of health and strength to the pleasures of the world: seek out the sons and daughters of affliction; endeavor to pour into their hearts the balm of consolation, and to lift their downcast eyes upwards toward heaven. Thus you may at once confirm the power of religion in your own minds, and impart its instructive and soothing influence to the hearts of the mourners; and you shall be blessed. These, indeed, cannot recompense you, but you shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.

And you, who are dwellers in the house of mourning, think it not strange concerning the affliction which has befallen you, as though some strange thing had happened unto you. If it be good sometimes to visit the house of mourning, be assured it may not be unprofitable for a season to abide there. Do you feel at times a disposition to murmur, and to say unto God, Why hast thou made me thus? Banish such unreasonable discontent. Are you so perfect, have you attained to such a height of piety and virtue, that you need not the discipline of affliction? You cannot appeal to the great Searcher of hearts, and declare that you are so. You cannot look back on the course of your past lives, without perceiving, that, in many things, you have failed and come short of the devotion and obedience which

God justly requires. He hath now visited you with affliction, that he may purify your hearts, and bring you to himself. Humble yourselves before his mighty hand, lament in his presence your imperfection and transgressions, implore that pardon which you need, and which he communicates by Jesus Christ to all who truly repent. Supplicate his gracious aid to comfort and to support you in the way of duty; then you may repose full confidence in him as a father and a friend, who chastens not for his own pleasure, but for our profit, that we may be partakers of his holiness, and even amidst the gloom of the house of mourning, you will be able to catch the beams of heavenly consolation, and to rejoice in the prospect of eternal life.

PRAYER.

Great God, and kind Father of us all, who hast bound thy children together by the bonds of common suffering, as well as of common joys; we entreat Thee so to aid and so to guide us, that we may make both conduce to our present and eternal welfare. Innumerable are thy ways of doing thy creatures good.. Thou inspirest their mind with wisdom; Thou fillest their bosoms with joy; the countenance shines by reason of the rays of thy favor, and the frame is full of energy because Thou pervadest it. Soon are they minished and brought low by affliction, disease and sorrow. The face is darkened, the body languid, and the home and the hearth filled with grief and wailing. Yet in each

In

dispensation Thou art alike kind, alike beneficent. each may we learn wisdom; both by what we suffer, and what we enjoy. May joy and sorrow serve only to unite our hearts more closely together, and fix them firmly on Thee and eternity. And while our sympathies are exercised steadily, mildly, yet fervently, towards those of our own household, lead us, we pray Thee, to weep with those who weep, and to rejoice with those who rejoice, in the abodes where poverty and sin double the common evils of our human condition. Hear us, for thy mercy's sake; forgive, answer, and bless. Amen.

SERMON XIII.

SHAME OF THE GOSPEL REPROVED.

Romans i. 16.

"I AM NOT ASHAMED OF THE GOSPEL OF CHRIST."

It seems at first strange that Paul should have deemed this declaration necessary, and that any person should exist who could not use the same words. Who can be ashamed of being the disciple of a master, whose life was a model of every virtue, whose morality is so perfect, whose doctrine is so sublime and so honorable to human nature? Who can blush at a religion, of which God declared himself the author; which he announced in the words of prophecy; which he signalised by numberless wonders; which he established by miracles? Who would not take a pride in the gospel, which, partaking of the eternity of its author, has triumphed over all obstacles, beaten down Paganism and its false gods, has survived errors, opinions, systems of every kind, to which the human mind has given birth; which, during eighteen centuries, has only multiplied its strength, and extended its happy influence; which, at

tacked by ignorance, by philosophy, and by the most active passions, has successfully resisted all, has confounded all its enemies, has seen generations pass away, empires become extinct, the proudest works of man fall before the ravages of time, and remained itself uninjured? But when we call to mind that this gospel was rejected with disdain by the two classes of people to whom it was first preached; that it was a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks; that it drew on them who announced it only contempt and derision especially, when we consider with how many dangers the Apostolic ministry was surrounded; when we see Paul calumniated, outraged, persecuted every where, dragged from tribunal to tribunal, quitting one prison only to be cast into another, here stoned, there beaten, exposed in a third place to wild beasts, and in this way proceeding to the martyrdom which was to terminate his painful career, we understand that there was some courage in the assertion of the Apostle, "I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ," and all that it implied in his mind.

Abundant reason have you to thank God, my brethren, that your attachment to Christianity is not at present put to these severe trials. The title of Christian no longer exposes him who bears it to martyrdom. We are not under the necessity, as were the ancestors of most of us two centuries since, of flying far from our country, to acquire the opportunity of professing freely the pure gospel of Christ and difficult, at first, is it to conceive, for what reason we can be ashamed of it. But we are liable to another kind of persecution. We live in an age when it is necessary to have, I had almost