Laftly, my pious hearers, these several advantages muft likewise impart more life and efficacy to our knowledge in the future world, than it here commonly has and can have. Our foundest perceptions, our nobleft principles, our best convictions are oftentimes by worldly occupations and cares, by bodily infirmities and fufferings, by outward connections and relations, by points of honour and complaifance, by bad example, by praise and cenfure, by intercourse with fops and fools, much diminished and prevented from having their proper influence on our fentiments and conduct. What a great gulf is often fixt between our judgment and our heart, between our thoughts and our actions! How feldom do even the most important truths of religion exert their whole efficacy upon us! How feldom are we rendered by them fo wife, fo good, fo contented and happy, as we might become by them! — But likewife in this refpect, my dear friends, the imperfect will hereafter give place to the perfect. Truth will then fall into a better foil, and therefore more easily shoot up and thrive and bear fruit. Neither worldly cares nor occupations will choak and crush like thorns and stones that heavenly plant. A milder climate, a ferener sky, a more genial atmofphere, a more careful nurture, a greater abundance of refreshing dews will favour its growth and cause it to bring forth fruit a hundred and a thousand fold. Never will our knowledge be extinct, never

unpro

unproductive, never will our reason be at variance with our affections, as we think fo fhall we act, and do that which we know to be lawful and right.

Such, my pious hearers, is that greater perfection, which we may presume to expect in regard to our knowledge in the life to which we are haftening. Be ye joyful in this hope, all you who are enamoured of truth, who are eagerly fearching for it as for hid treafures. Your researches will affuredly not be in vain; your thirst for it will hereafter be quenched. Let not the darkfome night by which you are now in fo many refpects furrounded, alarm or perplex you. It will not laft for ever, it will not much longer continue. Soon will it yield to the cheering dawn, to the bright effulgence of day and then will every restlefs doubt be at once difpelled, every anxious uncertainty ceafe, ye will pafs on from faith to fight, ye will behold many objects which ye now just discern through the present dim and misty twilight, in all their lustre, and perfectly distinguish many others which are now totally concealed from your view, and thereby become progreffively more active, more perfect, more happy.

SERMON LVIII.

The Advantages of eminent Virtue in the future
World.

GOD, in framing us rational and moral creatures, thou haft made us capable of virtue, and thereby opened to us fources of happiness the most exuberant and pure. We can diftinguish good from ill, truth from falfhood, and chufe between both according to principles clearly known. We can propofe for our model thee, the primordial fount and archetype of all perfection and strive after a progreffively nearer resemblance to thee. And on doing this; how it exalts, how it expands both our mind and our heart! What a bleffed fentiment it gives us of our dignity, of the true end of our being, of our fellowfhip and connection with thee! But ftill we often tire in the nobleft of our exertions, in the ardent purfuit of virtue, of godlike attainments. Still fometimes we are in want of light, fometimes of ability, fometimes of courage and refolution, to pursue with conftancy the path which leads to that glorious object. Still most of our paces towards it are flow and unfteady. The idea of this often troubles us, o God, and penetrates us with a diftreffing fentiment of our weakness and frailty. But far be it from us, on that account to stand still, or even to turn back to the

dark

dark and dangerous road of vice! No, this is our ftate of difcipline, here we are to learn the proper ufe of our faculties and to think and act upon the principles of virtue: and then shall we hereafter perform more with our well-trained powers, and employ our good aptitudes with lefs molestation and greater fuccefs. This our hope refts on the infalli ble security of thy parental kindness; it is built on the express affurances of him whom thou haft fent us as a teacher and conductor in thy name. Oh grant that this exalted hope may be ever present to our mind, and affift us by it to overcome every obstacle and difficulty on the paths of duty and virtue. Bless to that end our reflections on these important doctrines that they may diffuse light into our minds and impregnate our hearts with fincere affection for whatever is right and becoming. We are emboldened to pray to thee for these benefits as the votaries of Jefus, and address thee further in his name: Our father, &c.

I CORINTH. xiii. 10.

But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part fhall be done away.

WHAT the apostle afferts in our text in regard

to knowledge, may with equal propriety be affirmed concerning virtue. Our virtue at present as well as our knowledge, is but a medley of scraps, extremely defective, extremely incomplete: when

VOL. II.

however

however that which is perfect is come, when the flate of perfection is arrived, then the incoherence fhall ceafe. The fame advantages that we expect to reap in a superior life from the former, from knowledge, we may likewife promise ourselves from the latter, from virtue. Virtue no lefs effentially and in fome fort more effentially pertains to human happiness than knowledge. The former is far more immutable, far more self-fubfiftent than the latter. It is as eternal, as immutable as God, as the eternal laws of truth and order. Superior happiness may far more easily be conceived without greater knowledge than without greater virtue. From this the former derives its whole worth: without this it is frequently more prejudicial than profitable, more a fource of trouble and grief, than of fatisfaction and pleasure. And what is virtue? It is the best, the worthieft application of our feveral capacities and powers, of our advantages and endowments; it is the steady profecution of the rules of truth and juftice, the precepts of order and of moral beauty in all that we think and fay and do; it is the predominant inclination and the conftant readiness to accomplish every duty, and always to do that which is right and proper and in every inftance the best; it is a temper and difpofition thoroughly imbued with love towards God and man, and a conduct in perfect harmony with it. And what are now the advantages of virtue? In what does its perfection confift? The more univerfal; the more voluntary;

the