"I would begin the music here, "There ye that love my Saviour sit, There I would fain find place, Among your thrones, or at your feet, So I might see his face." SERMON XI. ACKNOWLEDGING GOD IN ALL OUR WAYS. PROV. III. 6. "In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." HAGGAI I. 5. "Consider thy ways." In every stage and in every station of life this is at once a privilege and a duty; but especially is it so in the commencement of a new voyage or a new year. This is the time especially to look back on the past, and call to mind what has taken place; and to look forward, and calculate on what may probably be the circumstances of the future. If we do not do this, we shall not acknowledge God in the past, or be likely to obtain his blessing and direction for the time to come. Let us then enquire, First, How the Lord is to be acknowledged in the past? Secondly, In what way we may expect him to direct our paths for the future? First, then, it is our bounden duty to consider our ways, to review our conduct, and to call to remembrance, as far as possible, what we have been doing, with respect to seeking and serving the Lord through the past year; and what the Lord has been doing with respect to sparing us, and forbearing with us, and shewing us mercy, and giving us means and opportunities to flee from the wrath to come, and to lay hold on eternal life. If this be done faithfully, we shall, no doubt, see much cause to humble ourselves on the one hand, and to bless and praise the Lord on the other. When we call to mind the events that made up the last year, or the last voyage, we shall have to say, that both at sea and in port, both in fair and in foul weather, both in times of visible danger and in times of safety, the Lord was frequently out of our thoughts; or that if we sometimes remembered him, it was not in a way that was profitable to our own souls, or pleasing to him and yet all this while, and through all these changing scenes, his mercy and forbearance, his providence and power, were in constant exercise for our good. Now this should at once stir up our souls to praise the Lord for all his goodness, and bring us, in all humility, to confess our ingratitude and sinfulness, and to seek grace to love him more and to serve him better for the time to come. But, perhaps, when we look back through our ways, some of us shall stand self-convicted and self-condemned of many great and grievous sins. How many seamen must this day declare, were God to call them to their final account, "I had many opportunities of hearing the word of God, both on board and on shore, but I refused to attend! The Bethel flag ofttimes waved over my head, or at no great distance off, and christian friends invited me to the house of God on shore, but I turned away; ofttimes my heart, in in its ways, as utterly to unfit it for any thing, or for any place which the Lord approves of. A man who continues in the road of sin, becomes in the end so bilnded and besotted, so carnalized and utterly unfit for communion with God on earth, and for enjoyment of him in heaven, that he is said "to be dead while he lives." He lives as without God in this world, and he must for ever live far from God and from hope; far from rest and peace in the world to come. Oh, then, what can this world do for him? Alas, the world of unrenewed and unrepenting souls who now go with each other, and who are helpers of each other in departing from the living God, will then be found confined together, and doomed to become fellow tormentors; and the means of increasing each other's remorse, each other's hatred and sufferings for ever. What will it then avail, "if a man gained the whole world," by doing as others did for threescore years and ten, if at the end of those years he opened his eyes in hell and found that |