their aged eyes,more drops of blood from their breaking hearts, or increase the number of their hoary hairs?—Do they move thee not to return to a fenfe of duty, till thou haft brought down thofe hoary hairs with forrow to the grave? No :-they move thee to adopt a different Conduct. They urge thee to “arife and go to thy Father, and to fay unto him: Father! I have finned against heaven, and in thy fight, and am no more worthy to be called thy Son !"

Obey, I intreat thee, their generous impulfe. Be reconciled to thy Parents. "Honour thy Father and Mother; and endeavour to compenfate by thy future Obedience, for all the griefs thou haft occafioned by thy past behaviour.Perhaps the hand of Death has broken the union between them,-has, relentlefs, torn thy Mother from thy Father, or thy Father from thy Mother ;—has left one of them folitary and sad, to bear unfolaced the remaining Cares of life. If this be the cafe,-let thy affection be doubled to thy furviving Parent.Let the following request, the request of an aged

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aged Parent to his Son, be never forgotten by thee." My Son, when I am dead, bury me, and defpife not thy Mother; but honour her all the days of thy life, and do that which fhall please her, and grieve her not.-Remember, my Son, that the faw many dangers for thee, when thou waft in her womb and when he is dead, bury her by me in one grave." *

These words are not more pathetic than beautiful and juft. For, a state of Widowhood-either of Father or Mother is always a ftate of tender Melancholy and Dejection. And well may the World feem cruel and fevere, when they who ought to fill the void, and be a folace to the bleeding heart, cause its wounds to ftream continually by their difobedient behaviour.

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I hope, my young Friends! that this applies to none among you.— -If it does, go, and fin no more. "-Go home, and atone by future Tenderness and Duty for your paft Tranfgreffions.-Leave thefe facred walls with a Refolu

* Tobit, ch, iv.

tion, avowed in the presence of God, that you will abandon every habit,-every vice, and vicious Connexion that has given uneafinefs to your Parents, that your own Confcience tells you is wrong, and that is also displeasing to your heavenly Father.

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Then shall you live happy in the land which the Lord your God hath given you fhall be free from thofe reproving reflections which they muft experience. who have shortened their Parents' lives -perhaps alfo their own-by their Mifconduct. Surrounded by a dutiful and blooming Offspring, you fhall fee your Parents grow old in Comfort and in Honour; till at last, "in a full age, they be gathered to their fathers, like as a fhock of Corn is gathered in his feafon." You fhall follow their Remains to the grave with a compofed, a tender Sorrow; and your Memory fhall be blessed to remote generations.

May Almighty God have mercy upon you, and incline your hearts to keep the Law that has been the fubject of thefe Reflections!

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Amen.

SERMON

SERMON XI,

ON THE DIVINITY AND HUMILIATION OF

CHRIST.

PHILIPPIANS ii. 5, 6, 7, 8.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jefus who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a fervant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himfelf, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Crofs.

AT a Seafon * when the Humiliation

of our bleffed Saviour is the object

of particular confideration, we ought

*This and the three following Sermons were preached during the Seafon of Lent.

not

not so to regard him, in this Humilia tion, as to forget the exalted part of his Character. In "the man Christ Jefus," who for our fakes became poor, that we might be rich, we must not forget the Son of God with Power, who created all things, and by whom they are, and were created.

It is a difficult matter, I confefs, to raife our conception from fo lowly to fo exalted a Being:

"How poor! how rich! how abject! how august!"

This difficulty,-this" contrast infinite" it is, that has prevented fome perfons from annexing DIVINITY to the Character of Jefus. When they are told that he was both God and man," they afk with Nicodemus," how can this be?" how can man be God, or God become man ?”-----Those persons who thus argue certainly err, not knowing the Scriptures, neither the Power of God. With men this is impoffible; but with God all things are poffible."—An Almighty Being (i. e. a Being who has Power to do every thing) may certainly affume what

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ever

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