not seduced, as it too often is, to defend or to excuse the indulgence! What adds poignancy, penetration, and effect, to the voice of reason in such fearful moments? the Spirit and grace of God. Here then we have the unsolicited assistance of the Almighty; but we have more, we have the clear promise of his grace, not only as a safeguard, but as a preventive. "Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation," points out the necessity of this assistance, not to supersede, but to assist, our exertion. Vigilance without prayer, is presumption; prayer without vigilance is mockery. In order that this divine assistance may be perpetual, our aspirations for it must be perpetual also; an interruption of prayer is an interruption of grace. "Pray without ceasing," says the Apostle, for our need of assistance, that is our trials, never cease. What the Almighty answered to the great Apostle, he answers also to us: "My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness." The grace of God never failed the man who sought it in earnest, and sought it long.

Compare now the knowledge, the motives, and the assistance to which as Christians we are entitled, with the state of probation under which man is placed. Compare the increase of means with the increase of danger, and then let any man, looking at his own case, for by that and

that alone he must stand or fall, say, whether his state of discipline and trial, is not a state in which the benevolence and the wisdom of God are displayed in their most vivid colours. Upon the consequences of our trial in the promised distribution of future rewards and punishments, it will be the object of my next discourse to enlarge.

SERMON IX.

JAMES i. 12.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath prepared for them that love him.

HAVING in my two preceding discourses endeavoured to shew that the terms of our discipline and trial are such as infinite wisdom and benevolence would propose, I now proceed to consider the consequences of that trial in the distribution of future rewards and punishments. Though the words "rewards and punishments" are the best perhaps, that language could afford, yet we must ever remember, that they express in a very inadequate manner, the promises of the Gospel upon this momentous subject. The reward proposed is not so much a recompense, as a free gift; a gift, wholly disproportionate to the service required. The life and immortality which the Gospel has brought to light, is a state which God has prepared for them that love him, ante

cedently to any notion of their service. Our present life is given to us to try whether we will make ourselves by preparation fit objects for that which is to come. If we shall hereafter be received into heaven, it will be, not because any service of ours could have purchased the right of such an inheritance, but because by our tempers and our obedience we shall have shewn ourselves fitted for a higher degree of the divine bounty. Our own consciences will too surely testify, that, in the words of the Redeemer, we are "unprofitable servants," not so much from the deficiency of the powers with which God has endowed us, as from their neglect or abuse. But on the other hand, if God has been pleased to declare his acceptance of our imperfect services, it ill becomes us, to controvert so merciful a decision. It is well that we should be deeply convinced of our own absolute unworthiness, that we may the better estimate both the mercies and the terms of our acceptance with God. Our actions indeed in themselves are far from meritorious, but the Almighty for Christ's sake, has been pleased to attach to them both a merit and a value, and to place his undeserved bounty in the light, not of a gift, but of a reward. And to impress the notion of a reward still stronger upon our minds, our future happiness is to be proportionate to our present obedience. With

the terms and the proportion of future happiness, placed at the disposal of our own free will, let us neither forget the value of our actions, nor the source from which that value alone can proceed. But all these considerations increase upon us, when we contemplate the nature of that tribunal, before which the value of our actions will hereafter be estimated. Though the light of natural reason led men to the anticipation of a state of future rewards and punishments, yet at what time, and in what manner, and to what extent these rewards and punishments were to be distributed, natural reason never could discover. Fabulous representations were consequently invented, so absurd in their nature, and so improbable in their circumstances, that scarce a child would give credence to them. It was not to the Jew or to the Barbarian, but it was to the Athenians that St. Paul declared the new, the awful tidings, "that God hath appointed a day, in which he will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance to all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." The appointment of a day, when high and low, rich and poor shall rise together to meet their Judge, is a measure peculiarly calculated to conclude a state of probation. The appointment of this great day, when the elements of the natural world shall