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SER M. of Belshazzar, and writing in legible characters over against us, ❝ O man! thy days are numbered; thou art weighed in the balance, and found

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wanting; take care left thy kingdom "be on the point of departing from "thee."

WHEN WE confider, in the next place, that our times, as I before illuftrated, are in the hand of God as a fovereign Difpofer, it is an obvious inference from this truth, that we should prepare ourselves to fubmit patiently to his pleasure, both as to the events which are to fill up our days, and as to the time of our continuing in this world, To contend with him we know to be fruitless. The word that is gone out of his mouth muft ftand. In the path which he has marked out for us, whether it be short or long, rugged or fmooth, we muft walk. Is it not then the dictate of wifdom, that we should previously reconcile ourselves to this fovereign ordination, ordination, and bring our minds to harmonize with what is ap

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pointed to be our deftiny? Let us for- SER M. tify this temper, by recalling that reflection of the wife man; Who knoweth what is good for man in this life; all the days of his vain life which he spendeth as a shadow ?*

To enjoy long life, and fee many days, is the univerfal wish; and, as the wish is prompted by nature, it cannot be in itself unlawful. At the fame time, several circumstances concur to temper the eagerness of this wish; and to show us that it should always be formed under due fubmiffion to the wiser judgment of Heaven. Who among us can tell, whether, in wishing for the continuance of many years on earth, we may not be only wishing for a prolongation of distress and mifery ?-You might live, my friends, till you had undergone lingering rounds of fevere pain, from which death would have proved a seasonable deliverance. You might live till your breafts were pierced with many a wound from public calamities or private forrows. You

* Ecclef. vi. 12.

SERM. You might live till you beheld the death 1II. of all of whom you had loved; till you furvived all those who love you; till you were left as defolate ftrangers on earth, in the midst of a new race, who neither knew you, nor cared for you, but who wifhed you off the ftage.-Of a nature fo ambiguous are all the profpects which life fets before us, that in every wifh we form, relating to them, much reason we have to be fatisfied that our times are in the hands of God, rather than our own.

THIS Confideration is greatly ftrengthened when, in the last place, we think of God acting, not as a fovereign only, but as a Guardian, in the difpofal of our times. This is our great confolation in looking forward to futurity. To God as a wife Ruler, calm fubmiffion is due ; but it is more than fubmiffion that belongs to him as a merciful Father; it is the spirit of cordial and affectionate confent to his will. Unknown to us as the times to come are, it should be fufficient

to

to our full repose that they are known to SE R M. God. The day and the hour which are fixed in his counfels for our difmiffion from life, we ought to be perfuaded are fixed for the best; and that any longer we should not wish to remain.

When we fee that laft hour drawing nigh, though our fpirits may be composed on our own account, yet, on account of our friends and families, no little anxiety and forrow may be fometimes apt to take poffeffion of the mind. Long we have enjoyed the comfort of their fociety, and been accustomed to confider them as parts of ourselves. To be parted from them for ever is, at any rate, a bitter thought; but to the bitternefs of this, is over and above added the apprehenfion of their suffering much by our death. We leave many a relation, perhaps may leave young children, and a helpless family, behind us, to be expofed to various dangers, and thrown forth on an unfriendly world. Such virtuous anxieties often opprefs the tender and feeling heart at the clofing periods

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SER M. of life.-My brethren, look up to that God, in whofe hands the times of your fathers were; in whofe hand the times of your pofterity fhall be. Recollect, for you comfort, the experience of ages. When were the righteous utterly forfaken by God in times past? Why should they be forfaken by him in times to come? Well did he govern the world before you had a being in it: Well shall he continue to govern it after you are no more. No cause have you, therefore, to opprefs your minds with the load of unknown futurity. Commit your cares to a Father in heaven. Surrender your life, your friends, and your family, to that God, who hath faid, The children of his fervants shall continue, and their feed fhall be established before him*.-Leave thy fatherless children, I will preferve them alive; and let thy widows truft in me.

I HAVE thus fhown what the import is, and what the improvement should be,

of

*Pfalm cii. 28.

+ Jeremiah xlix. II.