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faith as founded upon a rock, which no future objection will be able to fhake.

Since, therefore, we may confider it as a certain and unquestionable fact, that Chrift is rifen from the dead, we may likewife, with the apoftle, confider him as the firft fruits of them that sleep, or that his refurrection is a pledge and affurance of our own, which it is the great object of christianity to inforce. Chrift is called the first fruits, and these are the forerunners of a general harvest. Afterwards, fays the apostle, they that are Chrift's, at his coming. For Chrift has only left the present scene for a time. If there be any truth in the facts, the evidence of which has now been laid before you, he will certainly come again, and that with power and great glory, to raise the dead, and to give unto every man according to his works.

Let us, therefore, my christian brethren, be continually looking for this great event, this great day of God, as it is sometimes called. For to all of us it is nigh, even at the doors. Long as the fleep of death may really be, it will appear to each of us to

be

be only a moment. In death we, as it were, only fhut our eyes upon this world, and immediately open them in another, with the brightest and moft glorious profpects, if our converfation has been fuch as becomes the gofpel, but with the most gloomy and dreadful ones, if this great light bath come into the world, and we have loved darkness rather than light, because our deeds were evil.

The mere profeffion of christianity will avail us nothing, nay much less than nothing, because it lays us under ftronger obligations to a virtuous life, and therefore will aggravate our condemnation if we do not live as, by ranking with christians, we profefs to live. Better, far better, would it be for us, at the day of judgment, to be able to say we had never heard of Chrift, than naming the name of Chrift, or profeffing his religion, not to have been thereby led to depart from iniquity, and to be to him a peculiar people zealous of good

works.

Christianity is much less to be considered as a fyftem of doctrines, than as a rule of

practice.

practice. Nay the doctrines themselves (the chief of which is that of a future ftate of retribution) have no other object than the regulation of our lives. What the great duties of the chriftian life are, we are all sufficiently acquainted with. They are comprehended in two great precepts, the first of which is the love of God with all our hearts, implying an intire and chearful devotedness to his will, in doing and in fuffering, in life and in death. And the fecond is the loving of our neighbour as ourselves, implying a readiness, in all cases, to do to others as we fhould think it right that they should do to us. We should all habitually confider one another as brethren, the children of the fame great univerfal parent, the care of the fame benevolent providence, as training up in the fame school of moral difcipline here, and as heirs together of the fame glorious hope of eternal life hereafter.

To fit us for thefe devotional and focial duties, we should alfo be careful to exercise a conftant government over our appetites and paffions, that, as the apoftle fays, we A a

may

may preserve ourselves as the unpolluted temples of the Spirit of God.

Thus, my Chriftian brethren, knowing. our duty, happy shall we be if we do it; that when our Lord, after his long abfence, shall return to take an account of his fervants, when our eyes, and when every eye, fhall fee him, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming; but having duly improved the talents committed to each of us, may hear from his mouth the joyful fentence, Well done good and faithful fervants, enter ye into the joy of your Lord.

DISCOURSE

DISCOURSE XII.

A View of Revealed Religion.

That the God of our Lord Jefus Chrift, the Father of glory, may give unto you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of him; the eyes of your underftanding being enlightened; that ye may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the faints, and what is the exceeding greatness of his power, to us-ward who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Chrift, when he raised him from the dead.

EPHES. i. 17-20.

THE apoftle, writing to those who had lately been heathens, frequently, and very properly, reminds them of the great benefit they derived from the knowledge of the gofpel.

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