joyless that heart which the spirit of life never animates! When fin entered into paradise, the angels of God forfook the place. So from the foul that is polluted with guilt, peace and joy and hope, those good angels, vanish and depart. What fucceeds to this family of heaven? Confufion, fhame, remorse, despair.

SERMON

PSALM 1xxviii. 1.

Give ear, 0

XXIV.

my people, to my law.

THIS is the call which God addreffed to

his ancient people, and which at fundry times and in divers manners he addreffes to the world. It is the voice of the Almighty to mankind in every age. His voice all nature hears, and his law all nature obeys. The fun moves in the path marked out to hint by his Creator; the moon keeps her appointed course, and the host of heaven proceed from age to age in their original beauty. The feafons know their time, and the earth obeys the law impreffed upon it at first. The elements confefs their Lord; the tempest hears his voice, and the fea fubmits to the mandate which faid, "Hitherto fhalt thou come, and no farther; here fhall thy waves be "ftaid." The orders of celeftial fpirits, the principalities and powers of heaven, obey the command of their King, minister to the purposes of his providence, and in acts of goodness, or on errands of mercy, perform his pleasure.

Throughout all nature, one being alone is deaf to the voice and disobedient to the command of God, that is, the finner. He alone has departed from his sphere, has rebelled against the law of his nature, and rejected the univerfal dominion of the Deity in the universe. To recall him from this rebellious

ftate, to replace him in his original station, and reftore him again to the kingdom of God, is the end of true religion. For this purpose Mofes and the prophets were infpired, Jefus and the apoftles were fent. For this purpose the heaven was opened, the Almighty appeared, and the voice uttered to the world, "Give ear, my people, to my law."

Your obligation to obey this law will appear, if you confider that it is the law of your nature, that it is the law of heaven, that it is the law of fociety, and the law of happiness.

In the first place, It is the law of your nature.

When God created man, he did not leave him to act at random, or to live in a ftate of anarchy. He gave him a law, the emanation of eternal wisdom and the transcript of Divine perfection. The fame fingers that upon Mount Sinai wrote the commandments upon tables of ftone, had written them beforehand upon the living tables of the human heart. The foundation of morality is laid deep in human nature; its principles refult from the constitution of our frame; and its authority will be fupreme, while there is a mind to difcern, or a heart to feel, or a confcience to judge. Darknefs is not more different from light, nor bitter from sweet, than good is from evil, and virtue from vice. You are no more mafters of the emotions that rise in the mind, than of the fenfations which rife in the body. You can no more give the law to internal nature than to external nature. You may as well call the fun to come down from the firmament, as aim to extinguish the light of heaven which fhines in the breast. Inferior ani mals are incapable of morality. They have no law

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but instinct; they are left to obey the call of appetite, and to follow blindly the prevailing impulfe. But it is not fo with man. Reafon is his law; and the dictate of virtue is the dictate of nature. The question with him is not, what is the call of appetite? but, what is the voice of reafon? Not what is the prevailing impulfe? but, what is the impulfe which ought to prevail?

If, therefore, you difown the obligation of this law, you renounce your nature and unman yourself. If you claim an exemption from the authority of reafon and fentiment and confcience; if you take the license to indulge every appetite and every paffion without restraint or control; you may;—but first come down from your rank in the scale of being; break off all intercourfe with rational creatures; depart from the fociety of men; go to your equals; herd with the animals of the field, and eat grafs with the brutes that perifh: there difplay humanity degraded: exhibit thyself a monument of folly and guilt, to be pointed at by the hand of scorn, and to be fhunned like the peftilence. If ever, like the Monarch of Babylon, thou fhalt rife from thy degraded state; if ever thine understanding shall return, and thou fhalt be able to lift up thine eyes to heaven, like him thou wilt praise and extol and glorify the King of heaven, and give ear to that law which he promulgates to the armies in heaven and to the inhabitants of the earth.

In the second place, Your obligation to obey this law will further appear when you confider that it is the law of Heaven.

It comes to you not only recommended by your

own authority, but it comes enforced by a higher authority, that of God himfelf. The appearances of the Almighty to confirm the law, the prophets and the gofpel, were made for the inftruction and improvement of thofe who faw them, and are recorded for the inftruction and improvement of those who read them. The mighty God, even the Lord, hath fpoken, and called the earth from the rifing of the fun to where he goeth down. The first promulgation of the law was from Mount Sinai. To ftrike a rude and barbarous people, to reclaim a perverfe and obftinate generation, it was requifite that the arm of power should be stretched out, and that the majefty of terror fhould be difplayed. Accordingly, when the law was given from Sinai, there was blackness and darkness and tempeft; there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud upon the mount; and when Mofes brought the people from the camp to meet with God, they trembled as one man; and hill Sinai was altogether on a flame, and the fmoke thereof went up as the fmoke of a furnace, for the Lord defcended upon it in fire, and the mountain quaked; and when the voice of the trumpet founded long, and waxed louder and louder, God called Mofes up to the top of the mount, and gave the law.

The fame precepts that were given upon Mount Sinai, Jefus Chrift came to confirm and to extend. At his first public appearance, in his fermon on the mount, he republished, restored and perfected the law. The new difpenfation indeed was different from the old. The God of Abraham dwelt in darknefs, and was clothed with terror. The God and Father of our Lord Jefus Chrift dwells in light, and