brought forward therein, and the virtue and true happiness of all thy creatures may be effectually promoted. Finally, O Lord our God, as it hath pleased thee, according to thy sovereign wisdom, to assign to us our different capacities, stations, and employments in this world, enable us, whilst the short day of our trial lasts, to serve thee in them, and to employ our opportunities and abilities which thou bestowest, in the purification of our own natures, and striving to be instruments of the most lasting good to others; that, in the end of time, we may share in the unspeakable recompense of an endless bliss, which, not of debt, but of thy free bounty and goodness, thou hast promised to thy faithful servants by Christ our Lord! Now unto Thee, O Father, &c. December 11, 1785. SERMON SERMON XVI. 2 KINGS V. 17, 18, 19. And Naaman said, Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant henceforth will offer neither burnt-offering nor sacrifice unto other gods, but unto the Lord. In this thing the Lord pardon thy servant, that when my master goeth into the house of Rimmon to worship there, and he leaneth on my hand, and I bow myself in the house of Rimmon; when I bow down myself in the house of Rimmon, the Lord pardon thy servant in this thing. And be said unto him, Go in peace. THESE last words contain the short reply of Elisha, a prophet of God, to the very important question put to him; in the solution of which we are all of us much concerned, particularly in the consequences that have been drawn from it. I shall I shall first consider this history, and then lay before you some remarks. Naaman, a great military officer and a person of the first distinction under the king of Syria, was led by the fame of the prophet Elisha to apply to him for the cure of his leprosy, a most dreadful disease, especially in those Eastern countries, under which he laboured in a very high degree. He seems to have had in him the seeds of a singular probity and generosity of mind, with a turn to serious reflection; but being withal of a warm aspiring disposition, which had been fed by great success in war, and the rank he held, he was in danger of forgetting his feeble condition of humanity, and becoming wholly corrupted by pride and ambition. This is visible in the resentment which he shows at the prophet's not treating him as, he thought, became a man of his quality and consideration. Ver. 9, &c. "So Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha. And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying; Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again unto thee, and thou shalt be: clean. clean. But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said; Behold, I thought he would surely come out to me, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? may not I wash in them, and be clean? So he turned, and went away in a rage." Vain mortals are apt to fancy themselves of as much consequence in the sight of God as they are in their own conceits. The rich and the great especially, pampered and elated by the flattery and undue respect which their wealth and stations procure them, often grow to look upon themselves as of a different species from the rest of mankind; and instead of being thankful, and the more humbled as they ought to be, for their uncommon share of the ordinary blessings of Providence, to which they could have no claim, are apt to imagine themselves entitled to the same preference above others in the distribution of any of the extraordinary favours of their Maker. But Naaman was led to see his own unseemly vanity by what his domestics ventured to suggest to him; fortunate to have found in that |