but do not enviously display it to the fight SERM. The most shining examples of others. - cannot be without defects; but where defects are so few, let them be as fpots in the fun, which are wholly loft in the brightnefs of the luminary. Obferve him with a mind enlightened by knowledge, yet not elated with the vanity of learning; endowed by nature with confiderable abilities, which he had cultivated with laborious application, fee him willingly submitting to the drudgery of common avocations, and mixing in friendly intercourse with thofe, whofe employments and habits of life precluded them from intellectual attainments: Nor can this be efteemed a trivial commendation, fince it hath been remarked by one of the best men, and the most fublime genius of the prefent age, that" a voluntary defcent from the digni ty of science is, perhaps, one of the "hardeft leffons humility can teach." But XIV. SERM. But let not that part of his character be. unnoticed which all may imitate, his purity of morals and warmth of piety.-Let thofe little circumstances be remembered that gave teftimony to his domestick virtues; and laft of all, behold his more than philofophick patience, his Christian fortitude, during the repeated attacks of a flow, but fatal disease. That firm principle of religion, which made no stir or pretenfions in the ordinary concerns of the world, which was not perpetually in his mouth, but rooted in his heart, that principle could make him cheerful in the hour of fickness and pain, and receive that stroke with placid refignation, from which mankind in general would fly with terrour. Can we confider the clofe of a life like this, without steadfastly refolving to live as he lived, that we may die as he died. ON SERMON XV. JOEL ii. I. Blow ye the trumpet in Sion, and found an alarm in my holy mountain; let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at band. HE follies and vices of other men to T open are at once diftinguished in their full magnitude, while our own are beheld as through a dim glass; they are faintly and imperfectly defcried, if not totally hid from our fight. "Let me heal thee of thine SERM. |