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We should maintain a good-will to those who injure us, as far as is consistent with the public safety and our own. should be sorry for their sin, and heartily wish their repentance and everlasting welfare.

If there is any probable hope of their being reclaimed, we should try mild methods first to bring them to reason, and allow time for observing how they operate, before we come to extremities. "Charity suffereth long," 1 Cor. xiii. 4.

If we have received prejudice by their means, but it was undesigned on their part, if in charity we have reason to pass that judgment, not only mercy, but justice requires us not to take any advantage we may have against them. If the providence of God has unexpectedly reduced them, without their own visible fault, so as to disable them to answer our demands from them, to treat them with severity in such a case, would be to fly in the face of Providence.

If they have been designedly injurious to us, but give credible marks of repentance, we are obliged heartily to forgive them, whatever their offences have been.

If they have wronged us, but we know are now utterly incapable to make us reparation, mercy will certainly prompt to be content with what can be had, and never allow us to say, If I cannot have my debt, I will have the man's bones. Nor will it suffer us to proceed to extreme rigour in such circumstances, wherein the innocent must be deeply involved with the guilty, and the utter ruin of a family must ensue upon carrying matters to the greatest height. Mercy in such a case, should temper justice, and it will do so where a merciful temper prevails.

II. I proceed to shew the peculiar engagements that lie on Christians, to be of a merciful disposition.

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1. It is most frequently inculcated upon us as a necessary duty. By frequent precepts, "Be ye merciful," Luke vi. 36.; "Be kind one to another, forgiving one another," Eph. iv. 32.; "Be of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful," 1 Pet. iii. 8. It is represented as an eminent branch of the goodness which God requires of men: "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy?" Mic. vi. 8. An unmerciful spirit is declared

to be inconsistent with the love of God in the soul: "Whoso shutteth the bowels of compassion,-how dwelleth the love of God in him?" 1 John iii. 17. A tender sympathy is emphatically described as the fulfilling of Christ's law: "Bear ye one another's burthens, and so fulfil the law of Christ," Gal. vi. 2.

2. It is made an express term of our acceptance with God: "With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful," Psal. xviii. 25.; “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." Matt. v. 7.; "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses," Matt. vi. 14, 15. The same thing is represented in a very affecting parable, Matt. xviii. 23, &c.; wherein the king of heaven is described as calling his servants to an account, and out of compassion forgiving one of them a debt of ten thousand talents; while this same servant used the extremest rigour to a fellow-servant, that owed him but an hundred pence; whereupon his Lord is represented, after the manner of men, as calling his forgiveness, and insisting afresh upon his debt to him with the utmost severity; to teach us what our Lord delivers at the close as the moral of the parable, ver. 35. “So shall, likewise, my heavenly Father do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses." The process of the great day is directly described as turning eminently upon this point, both in the goodness and severity of God, Matt. xxv. 34. to the end. We are told on the one hand, Jam. ii. 13. that "he shall have judgment without mercy, that hath showed no mercy;" and, on the other, that "God is not unrighteous, to forget any work or labour of love, shewed toward his name, in ministering to the saints," Heb. vi. 10. Would to God that all who name the name of Christ, would seriously lay to heart things so strongly and frequently said !

Nor is it any wonder that this should be made an indispensable term of the divine favor, and of our eternal happiness, since,

3. We are most fully taught our own need of divine mercy. We have constant occasion for mercy to pardon, and grace to help, Heb. iv. 16. None of us can come to God as innocent creatures, but as penitents, who must be beholden to infinite

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mercy for the pardon of innumerable offences, and for the acceptance of our best services, and cannot hope for any benefit at his hands upon the foot of desert, but as the fruit of sovereign grace and favor. And can we come to God with a humble apprehension of our own guilt and unworthiness, and yet allow an unrelenting temper to our neighbour; How can we have the confidence of such a frame to offer to God that petition of the Lord's prayer, Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors ?" The very request, coming from a heard-hearted and implacable man, is no better than to bespeak a denial. Can we be sensible, according to the elegant representation of the parable lately mentioned, that our debt to God is as "ten thousand talents," and yet hesitate upon forgiving our neighbour the trifle of "an hundredpence?" That is a vast disproportion, but falls much beneath the reality of the case. Can we have the face to be petitioners for his compassion and indulgence every moment, and yet be obdurate to the cries of our fellow-creatures, or think it beneath us to have any regard for them in their wants and distresses?

4. God's actual mercy to us is, therefore, set in our view in the gospel, as a pattern for this holy disposition. He is "the Father of mercies, rich in mercy; his tender mercies are over all his works." He is "full of compassion." The course of providence and redemption are the brightest demonstrations of it. He continually supplies our returning wants, often before we call upon him, and especially he satisfies our desires, and answers our humble entreaties. He remembered us in the low estate of our apostacy, when no other eye pitied us, and no other hand could save us; and, out of the riches of his grace, gave his only-begotten Son to be the propitiation for our sins. All his mercy to us is disinterested; he never can have any need of us, as we may have of the meanest of our fellow-creatures; there was nothing but misery and necessity on our part to move his tender regard. He was highly provoked by us, so that resentment, instead of relief, might in all reason have been expected; yet then mercy rejoiced over judgment. Can I then beseech you to put on bowels of mercy, by any stronger argument than "by the mercies of God?" The Scripture dwells upon this consideration: "Be ye merciful, as your Father also is merciful," Luke vi. 36. ;

"Love your enemies, &c. that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven; for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust," Matt. v. 44, 45.; "Be tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you," Eph. iv. 32.

5. The Son of God gave us a most illustrious pattern of mercy. This was the great inducement to vail his original glory, and to assume our nature, not our merit, but our misery. He came "to seek and to save them that were lost," to 66 save us from our sins," and "from the wrath to come," due for them.

When he was actually made flesh, there never was such a pattern of mercy in our nature. Almost all his words and works breathed this.

How singular was his compassion to the souls of men ! When he "saw them as sheep without a shepherd," without proper and good instructors in the way to heaven," he was moved with compassion on them," Matt. ix. 36. And that compassion induced him to be their unwearied instructor himself, to go about through their cities and villages preaching the doctrine of the kingdom, accommodating himself to their capacities and circumstances, taking every advantage to enlighten their minds, and remove their prejudices, and guide their feet in the way of peace. When any of his hearers perversely opposed the design of his instructions and miracles, he was "grieved for the hardness of their hearts," Mark iii. 5. And when he plainly foresaw, that the body of the Jewish nation were about to fill up the measure of their iniquities, by rejecting and crucifying him, the Lord of glory, he shed tears of sorrow for them, because they would "not know the things of their peace, till they were "hid from their eyes,” Luke xix. 41, 42.

His sympathy with men in their bodily wants and sorrows, was also very conspicuous. We often read of his being "moved with compassion," upon several distressing occasions, and so being led to relieve them. From those bowels of tender mercy, he was induced to heal a sick multitude, Matt. xiv. 13, 14. and to cure the blind men that cried after him, while the multitude rebuked them, chap. xx. 34.; and to restore to life the only son of the woman of Nain, Luke vii. 12-15. He

bore an affectionate part with the mourners at Lazarus' grave, he wept and "groaned in spirit," John xi. 35-38. Every miracle that he wrought, was a relief to men in one or another distress, excepting two; one of which, in permitting the devils to enter the herd of swine, Matt. viii. was, after an act of great mercy, in delivering two men who had been sorely tormented by those devils; which was also an instance of mercy to the people of the country, who had been in continual danger before from those possessed men, ver. 28.; and the other, of cursing a barren fig-tree, so that it immediately withered away, Matt. xxi. 19. was intended, with no considerable loss or prejudice to any, to warn his disciples, by an instructive emblem of the danger of unfruitfulness.

He was ready to perform kind offices to all sorts of people in distress, whether good or bad. Though he seemed more shy of relieving a Gentile during his personal ministry, and before the wall of partition was broken down, lest he should offend the Jews, to whom he was peculiarly sent; yet we find as illustrious a fruit of his gracious compassion to the woman of Canaan, as any in the gospel-history, Matt. xv. 28. Even his enemies felt the benefit of his miraculous power; so he healed the ear of Malchus, the high-priest's servant, when he was among those who came to apprehend him.

He did not always stay for desire and application, but would even surprise a miserable object with the offer of his help. Thus he acted with reference to the man who waited at the pool of Bethesda, and "had an infirmity thirty-eight years; when Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that case, he saith unto him, wilt thou be made whole ?" The impotent man not knowing him, only tells him his helpless case, but without expectation of a miraculous cure; but Christ pronounced the healing word, and made the poor man to feel its healing virtue, ere he was aware, John v. 5-9. Such was his disposition to mercy.

And his benignity is not lessened now when he is passed into the heavens. For still "we have not an high-priest, who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities," Heb. iv. 15. As they are not out of the reach of his knowledge, so they still move his compassionate regard; and we may suppose him saying to us from heaven those gracious words under them, which he did to St, Paul, 2 Cor. xii. 9. "My grace is