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tears.

done. I have never seen one, who hath not invented as many pretexts to keep his ill-gotten wealth as he had invented to get it. In one word, I never saw one, who understood, or was willing to learn the elements of christian morality on the doctrine of restitution. How rare soever the conversion of sinners of other kinds may be, thanks to divine mercy, we have sometimes seen edifying examples of such conversions. We have seen voluptuous people groan at the recollection of their former debaucheries, efface the dissipations of their youth by the penitential grief, and pious actions of their mature age, and affix that body in a mortal illness to the cross of Christ, which during health and strength they had devoted to luxury. We have seen assassins ready if it were possible to replace the blood they had shed with their own. We have seen vindictive people embrace inveterate enemies, and cover them with affectionate But among that great number of dying people, who, we know with the utmost certainty, had become rich by oblique means; among the great number of soldiers and officers, who had robbed, plundered and sacked; among the great number of merchants and tradesmen, who had been guilty of falsehood, deceit, cheating and perjury, and who by such means had acquired a splendid fortune; among all this great number we have never seen one, who had the resolution to assemble his family round his dying bed, and take his leave of them in this manner. My dear children, I have been a scandal to you through life, I will not edify you by my death. I am determined in these last moments of my life to give glory to God by acknowledging my past transgressions. The greatest part of my fortune was acquired by artful and wicked means. These elegant apartments are furnished with my oaths and perjuries. This strong and well finished house is founded on my treachery. My sumptuous and fashionable equipage is the produce of my extortions. But I repent now of my sins. I make restitution to church and state, to the public and individuals. I choose rather to bequeath poverty to you than to leave you a patrimony under a curse. You will gain more by the example I give you of repentance than you would by all my unjust acquisitions." An age, a whole century, doth it furnish one such example?

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Such is the face of mankind! Such the condition of the church! And what dreadful discoveries should we now make could we look into futurity as easily as we can ex

amine the present and the past! When Jesus Christ, that good master, uttered this painful prophesy to his family sitting round him, verily I say unto you, one of you shall betray me, all his disciples were exceeding sorrowful, and every one said unto him, Lord, is it I? How many subjects for grief would rise to view, should God draw aside the vail that hides the destiny of all this assembly, and shew us the bottomless abyss, into which the love of money will plunge many who are present!

Let us prevent this great evil. Let us purify the spring from whence our actions and their consequences flow. Let us examine this idol, to which we sacrifice our all. Judge of the value of riches in pursuit of which we are so eager, by the brevity of life. The best course of moral instruction against the passions is death. The grave is a discoverer of the absurdidy of sin of every kind. There the ambitious. may learn the folly of ambition. There the vain may learn the vanity of all hunan things. There the voluptuous may read a mortifying lesson on the absurdity of sensual pleasure. But this school, fruitful in instructions that concern all the passions, is profusely eloquent against avarice. I recollect an anecdote of Constantine the Great. In order to reclaim a miser, he took a lance, and marked out a space of ground of the size of a human body, and told him, "add heap to heap, accumulate riches upon riches, extend the bounds of your possessions, conquer the whole world, in a few days such a spot as this will be all you will have." I take this spear, my brethren, I mark out this space, among you, in a few days you will be worth no more than this. Go to the tomb of the avaricious man, go down and see his coffin and his shroud, in four days these will be all you will have.

I conclude, and I only add one word of Jesus Christ. Our divine Saviour describes a man revolving in his mind great projects, thinking of nothing but pulling down and rebuilding, dying the same night, void, destitute, miserable, and terrified at seeing all his fancied projects of felicity vanish; on which our Lord makes this reflection, so is every one, who layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God, Luke xii. 21. My God! how poor is he, though among piles of gold and silver, amidst all riches and plenty, who is not rich toward God! On the contrary, how enviable is the condition of a man hungry, indigent and wrapped in if he be rich toward God! Rich men! This is the only

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way

way to sanctify your riches. Be rich toward God. Ye poor people! this is all you want to support you under poverty, and to enable you to triumph even in your indigence. May we all be rich toward God! Let us all accumulate a treasure of good works, it is the most substantial wealth, and that only which will yield a bountiful harvest at last. There be many that say, who will shew us any good? Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased, Psal. iv. 6, 7. Amen.

SERMON

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O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine

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HESE words are so concise in the Hebrew text that no distinct idea can be affixed to them, unless we supply something. All expositors allow this. The only question is, what word ought to be supplied to express the prophet's meaning.

Some supply, thine idols, or thy calves, have destroyed thee: and by these they understand the images, which Jeroboam placed at Samaria to prevent the ten tribes, who had revolted under his direction from the government of Rehoboam, from returning to that prince, as probably they might have been tempted to do, had they gone to worship the true God at Jerusalem.

Others supply, thy king, hath destroyed thee, O Israel, meaning Jeroboam, who had led the people of Israel into idolatry.

But, not to trouble you with a list of the various opinions of expositors, I shall content myself with observing that, which I think best founded, that is, the sense given by the ancient Latin version, Thy destruction is of thyself, O Israel, or thou art the author of thine own ruin. translation, which supplies less to the original, is also perfectly agreeable to the idiom of the Hebrew language. With this the version of our churches agrees, thou hast destroyed

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thyself,

thyself, or thou art destroyed, which is much the same, because others cannot destroy us unless we contribute by our own negligence to our own destruction. This translation too is connected with what precedes, and what follows, and in general with the chief design of our prophet.

This chief design is very observable in most chapters of this prophecy. It is evident, the prophet intended to convince the Israelites, that God had discovered in all his dispensations a desire to fix them in his service, to lead them to felicity by the path of virtue, and that they ought to blame none but themselves if judgments from heaven should overwhelm them, giving them up to the Assyrians in this life, and to punishment after death. This design seems to me most fully discovered in the latter part of this chapter, a few verses after the text, I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from death. O death, I will be thy plagues, O grave, I will be thy destruction. You know, my brethren, St. Paul informs us, that this promise will not be accomplished till after the general resurrection, Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? But, adds our prophet, Samaria shall become desolate, for she hath rebelled against her God. The text is therefore connected with the foregoing and following words according to this translation, Ö Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.

I class the text then among these passages of scripture, in which God condescends to exonerate his conduct in regard to sinners by declaring, that they ought to take the whole blame of their own destruction on themselves; and in this point of view I am going to consider it. The difficulties of this subject chiefly proceed from three causes, either from our notion of the nature of God-or the nature of religionor the nature of man. We will examine these difficulties, and endeavour to remove them in the remaining part of this discourse.

I. O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. The first difficulties, that seem to belong to this truth, are taken from the nature of God, who, having created nothing of which he had not an idea before, and having realized no, idea all the consequences of which he had not foreseen, is the author not only of every being that exists, but also of every

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