SERMON XXI.

Motives to Univerfal Charity.

GOD, who loveft us with more than parental

tenderness, and haft made it our duty and our felicity, to love one another as brethren: may we all more and more faithfully fulfill that duty and more completely enjoy that felicity, and thereby acquire a continually nearer and brighter resemblance to thee. Yes, thou haft formed us capable of that love, fown the feed of it in our hearts, and given us the strongest motives and impulfes, the most diverfified means to provide for its expanfion and fructification. Notwithstanding which, this feed of virtue and happiness still lies unexpanded in fuch numbers of human hearts! Still it produces in but few thofe generous fruits which it might and is intended to produce. Ah but too feldom do we take man for what he is, and but feldom do we entertain fuch fentiments and form fuch judgments of each other,

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as truth and juftice require. But too often we mistake each other, and forget our natural confanguinity, our common dignity, our present and future deftination. But too often are our fentiments and our conduct towards each other determined and governed by base and selfish passions. And thus are beings, whom according to thy parental views all confiderations fhould connect and bring nearer together, feparated and divided ever farther afụnder. And thus do we ourselves foreclofe and embitter innumerable fources of fatisfaction, which thou haft opened to us, thy children, on earth, or even convert them into fo many fources of trouble and forrow. Most benevolent Father of mankind, teach us then more diftinctly to perceive thy merciful and gracious defigns upon us and to think and act more agreeably to them. Grant that we may more justly judge both of ourselves and of mankind, our brethren; and learn to hold both ourfelves and them for what we really are. Open the avenues of our mind and our heart to the worthier, nobler conceptions, the grander profpects that are given us by reafon and religion concerning the nature and deftination of man, and cause them to pervade us all with undiffembled efteem and affection for each other. Blefs to this end the confiderations in which we now prop ofe to engage. Let them correct our notions, enlarge and augment our perceptions of thefe important objects, and infpire us with fuch emotions, as may render the discharge of our duty

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a delight. We lift up our fuppliant hands to thee in this behalf with the utmost confidence as thy children, and address thee farther in the name and words of our lord: Our father, &c.

MATTH. xxii. 39.

And the fecond is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

CHARITY, or complacency and fatisfaction in

mankind, participation in their fortunes and in

clination to benevolence and to beneficence, is natural to us and to all mankind. The fight of whatever is beautiful and good makes agreeable impreffions on us; we view, we contemplate it with fatisfaction and pleafure; we rejoice in it, unless our eyes are blinded and our judgment warped by fordid and selfish paffions. We are all difpofed to rejoice with the joyful and to weep with the mourner, unless our natural fympathies are fuppreffed by envy or refentment, unless our heart is hardened and reduces us for a longer or shorter time to downright barbarians. We all prefer the intercourse with our brethren, the focial life, the enjoyment of focial joys and forrows, to a total feclufion and retirement from the world and mankind, unless fome disease of the mind or body deter us from fociety, and incapacitate us for their company

company and amusements. Our heart rewards us with fatisfaction and gladness, whenever we have done good to others, when we have afforded them fervice and relief; and never are we perfectly at ease, when we are forced to accuse ourselves of a contrary behaviour. We have all often experienced, that love, pure, generous charity is and difpenfes real felicity, that it enlarges and invigorates the heart, alleviates the burdens of life, and multiplies and heightens its fatisfactions. And if religion and christianity are not barren ideas to us, but real concerns of the heart, we must frequently have felt that their doctrines and obligations are more important, more easy, more confolatory in proportion as we are animated by love, love towards God and

man.

Natural however as charity is to man, yet seldom is it and does it achieve in him, all that it might be and achieve, because but too often nature is left deftitute of the affiftance and murture of reflection and exercife: Does this noble germ of virtue kindly thrive in the uncorrupted human heart, as in its native foil it requires however to be diligently tended and foftered, in order that it may take deep root in it, and not only bear beautiful bloffoms, but yield ripe and delicious fruit. If it be fuddenly blighted and killed by the breath of malignant passions, it languishes and fades more flowly indeed, but no less furely by the want of fufficient nutriment and culture. Let us now, my dear friends, bestow

upon this noble, paradifaical plant that nutriment and culture of which it is in want. Let us fee how and by what means we fhould rouze ourselves to the love of our neighbour, to general charity, or, what confiderations we should employ, in order to maintain, to nourish this love, so as to render it a preponderant, a ruling principle in our fouls.

Thence we fhall learn how we are to proceed in order to fulfil the precept of Jefus in our text: love thy neighbour as thyfelf, as we lately propounded it.

Wouldst thou love all mankind as thy brethren, o man, rejoice in them and think of them with complacency, fay fometimes to thyfelf: God loves them, he defigns their good, he fhowers his benefits upon them, he rejoices in them as the work of his hands, as his creatures, his children, he beholds them with complacency. From love he called them into being from love he caufes them to continue and to triumph in existence. From love he has made fuch grand, fuch wonderful pre-arrangements for their prefervation, for their multiplication, for their growth, for their education and exercife, for the drawing forth of their capacities and powers, for the decoration and embellishment of their refidence, for the enhancement and diverfification of gratifications and pleasures among the inanimate and animate creatures, both in the natural and the moral world. From love he daily caufes his fun to rife upon them and his rain to irrigate their fields. From love he

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