SERMON XX.

The intimate Correspondence and Connection of Man. kind the Bafis of Charity.

GOD

OD, thou art love. With paternal complacency thou embraceft all thy creatures, all mankind. Life and joy and happiness are dispensed by thee, the eternal, inexaustible fountain of life, of joy, of happiness, over all the parts of thy immenfe domain. Thy love, like thyself, is infinite, unbounded, immutable. In doing good thou even now principally revealeft thy majesty, and wilt be always more glorioufly revealing it from everlasting to everlasting. Even us, thy children, thou haft formed and ordained for mutual love, made it our inceffant duty and the most exuberant fource of our felicity. Therefore haft thou caufed us all to derive our extraction from one blood, and connected us fo closely, fo intimately together. Therefore haft thou

affigned

affigned us all the fame place of abode, the fame occu pations, given us all the fame nature, endowed us all with the fame faculties, rendered us all capable of the fame fatisfactions and fubjected us to the fame wants and fufferings. Therefore haft thou implanted in our hearts the focial, fympathizing instincts and affections, and fo indiffolubly interwoven all the affairs and events of our lives. Therefore haft thou deftined and called us to the fame perfection and happiness, and wouldst that we should all purfue it on the fame path. Oh that every one of us might obey thy call, this call to felicity! Might all perceive and feel our relationship together, and our bleffed connection with thee, our common parent! All confider and treat each other as relatives! expand our hearts to evangelical charity, and in the enjoyment of it be happy! O almighty Father, fend down the spirit of love into our hearts, purify them from all inhuman fentiments and affections, and let righteousness, equity, tendernefs, beneficence, placability, and univerfal brotherly love take poffeffion of them and be feen in all our words and works. Grant that chriftianity, which announces and preaches only love, may likewife in this refpect, manifeft its divine power and efficacy in us, and be ever farther diffufing its benign effects within us and among us. Blefs to that end our reflections on these important objects, and let them make a deep and lasting impreffion on our hearts. We im

All

plore

plore these mercies of thee, as the votaries of thy fon Jefus, with filial boldnefs, and addrefs thee farther in his name: Our father, &c.

ΤΗ

MATTH. Xxii. 39.

Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

HE fundamental law of chriflianity is love, love towards God and man; and this is at once the peculiar characteristic and the glory of chriftianity. This propofition though univerfally recognifed and admitted, is perhaps but feldom apprehended in its entire importance, in that fublime fignification which fhews it to be divine. A doctrine, a religion, preaching love as its leading principle, evidently carries with it the characters of a fuperior and celestial origin! How worthy of the fupremely perfect being, of the being that is effential love! And how venerable, how deferving of all acceptation must it appear to every rational and reflecting mind, that is in pursuit of happiness, and knows what happiness is! For what way leads more directly and fecurely to this ultimate aim of all our wishes, than love, than the love of God and man!

And how entirely peculiar is this advantage to christianity! What human fcheme of philofophy, what human code of laws, what other fyftem of religion has ever been built on this firm foundation,

and

and been thoroughly pervaded and infpired by this generous fpirit? Oh that this spirit did but actually animate and govern all the profeffors of christianity, and plainly fhew itself in their fentiments and actions, as it difplays itself in the doctrine they confefs! How much more contentment and happiness would there be among mankind, among chriftians! How much more good would this love effect, than the most celebrated patriotism was ever able to produce! If patriotifm has a tendency to feparate the affections of man from man, to divide the interefts of one people from another, to alienate one kindred from another, and to promote the welfare of a smaller or larger portion of mankind at the expense of all the reft; and be as unjust and cruel on one fide, as it feems generous and magnanimous on the other: yet christian love unites all nations, all mankind together, and never injures and oppreffes one, in order to procure profit and advantage to the other. Were we therefore indeed united in a practical, confiftent, animated and stedfaft belief in this unfpeakably im portant fentiment, its genuine effects would be deeply to imbue our minds with the love of God above all, and of our neighbour as ourselves. Compared with thefe two great and peculiarly fundamental principles, how fubordinate, how uneffential would all differences of opinion appear! Arrayed in all the grace and dignity, in all the fimplicity and loveli ness of her native character, christianity would then delight to become the affociate of the children of

men.