and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever". (Ps. xxiii. 1, 5, 6);-" Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matt. vi. 33.) Especially, if I were to add the infinitely better and nobler provision that is made for them in the pro

mises of spiritual and heavenly blessings, you must be convinced that the first thing you should do, and the best thing you can do, for those you are concerned for, is, to pray that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may be with them.

3. In point of security.

If you were to make never so large provision for them, not merely for the present voyage, but for their future settlement in life; if you were to assure them, that, if you died before they came home again, you should leave them a handsome fortune: you may intend as you say, and yet they may be little the better for it. It was an old and wise caution, "Trust not in uncertain riches;" though few have wisdom enough to profit by it. Job flattered himself that he should die in his nest," and should never see adversity; and David thought his mountain stood so strong that it could never be aved: and you may think so too; and fancy, that what you leave or give your children is so well secured that nothing can deprive them of it. But, (so "vain are all things here below") by some unexpected turn of Providence, it may happen, that not only they may never have what you intended for them, but you yourselves may live to want it. So that, I say, if your wishes for them terminate only in the world, and the things of the world, God can easily write "vanity" upon them, and you and they、

will probably be disappointed. But if you wish them the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that is a "good part, which shall never be taken from them." There you may tell them of treasures and pleasures, joys and glories, crowns and kingdoms, which shall last for ever. "God's gifts and callings are without repentance:" where once he sets his love, he never takes it away again. If he love in prosperity, he will love in adversity; if he love in youth, he will love in old age; if he love in life, he will love in death; and, which is best of all, whom he loves in time, he will love to eternity.

Now then, my friends, go when you will; our best wishes attend you. Not as the world wisheth, wish we unto you. Indeed, we wish you health; we wish you success in all your lawful undertakings; and, if it so please Him in whose hand are your times and ours, we could wish to see your faces again in the flesh: but, besides all this, and above all this, Brethren, our hearts' desire and most earnest prayer to God is, That the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ may be with you all, and always with you. Amen.

SERMON XXI.

PREACHED AT BIDEFORD ON A FAST-DAY,
FEBRUARY 28, 1794.

JER. Xxii. 29.

O Earth! Earth! Earth! hear the word of
the Lord.

WHAT, then! are all the inhabitants of the earth dead or deaf? As if they were more stupid than the ground they trod on, the blessed God, wearied out by their provoking inattention to his repeated calls, turns from them, and addresses himself to the Earth, as if that would hear him, when they would not." God hath spoken once, twice have I heard this, That power belongeth unto God." Awful and angry have been the messages that we have lately received from him; and some specimens he hath given of what he can do, when his wrath is kindled but a little what, then, would become of us, if he should be provoked to stir up all his wrath?

This is now the second time we have been called together since the commencement of the present troubles, to endeavour, by the united humiliation and prayer of the whole nation, to avert the divine displeasure, and procure a blessing on our councils and undertakings. The event has shewn, that our purposes of reformation, and prayers for peace, the first time, were both ineffectual. Disappointment

follows disappointment; and bloody war still rages with unremitted, or rather with increasing, violence. Perhaps since the wars of the Jews of old, there hath not been so much blood spilt in so few months, as hath been since the beginning of the disturbances in France. That nation hath been for ages the bitter persecutors of God's people; particularly in that horrid massacre, above two hundred years ago, when upwards of seventy thousand protestants were murdered, with circumstances of peculiar treachery and cruelty, mostly in one night. May not St. John be supposed to refer to this among other things, when he says, "And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held; and they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?" (Rev. vi. 9.) At least, may we not consider it as a visible and striking proof of the truth of that declaration, in the second Commandment, that God sometimes visits the "iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate him?"But besides the inhuman murder of the protestants in their own country, they have, by their restless ambition, been the cause of most of the wars that have ravaged Europe for a century past; and now Providence seems to be reckoning with them for the whole. They delighted in blood, and God is giving them blood to drink. Though the

quantity already spilt is astonishing, their thirst is still insatiable. The numbers that have fallen by the hand of the executioner within these last two

years exceeds all parallel, and, in the next age, when the whole comes to be known, will exceed all belief.--How far this sanguinary, ferocious, brutal disposition, may render them fit instruments to be employed by Providence as a scourge to surrounding nations, it is not for us to say, though it makes one shudder to think.

However, the design of this discourse is to call off your attention from second causes, to that word of the Lord, by which the world was at first spoken. into being, and by which all the inhabitants and occurrences of the world are ruled, and over-ruled, to subserve the purposes of his own glory.--" O "O Earth! Earth! Earth! hear the word of the Lord."

These words have a peculiar solemnity in them, and seem to imply,

I. That mankind in general are careless and in attentive to the word of the Lord.

How often do we hear God complaining of the Jews! 66 My people would not hearken to my voice, and Israel would none of me.... I spake unto thee in thy prosperity, and thou saidst, I will not hear." And again: "As for the word which thou hast spoken to us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee.' -What perverseness and impiety! They not only did not, but they would not hear. Would to God this were not the picture of our own times!

I will not now insist on the little success of the word preached though it be a manifest and melancholy truth: for where is the minister that doth not complain, "Who hath believed our report?"-"We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God