صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

up our prayers to God for you, that you may for the remainder of your lives live worthy of your Christian profeffion; and that knowing that you are the fervants of the living God, you may walk as in his fight, avoid all fuch things as are contrary to your profeffion, and follow all fuch things as are agreeable to the fame.

And may God, who has made you his children by adoption, bring you in his good time to his everlasting kingdom, for Jefus Chrift's fake, the Son of his love!

To whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, be all honour, thanksgiving, and praise, now and for ever. Amen.

SERMON

4.

SERMON LXXXII.

PREACHED AT A CONFIRMATION.

THE DANGER OF LIVING, LIKE CHILDREN, AT ALL ADVENTURES, WITHOUT THOUGHT, OR REASON, OR FEAR, OR STEADINESS.

I COR. xiii. 11.

WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I SPAKE AS A CHILD, I UNDERSTOOD AS A CHILD, I THOUGHT AS A CHILD: BUT WHEN I RECAME A MAN, I PUT AWAY CHILDISH THINGS.

THE

'HE Apostle's defign in these words is to fhew the great difference there will be betwixt our knowledge in this life and in the life to come, even as great as betwixt the weak and foolish thoughts of children, and the fober reafonings of men.

He fuppofeth, that if men are not very much wanting to themselves, they will think, and live, and reason, and fpeak, at another rate than they did when they were children.

And fo they certainly will, if they have made use of that reafon, and those opportunities of improving their understanding, which God has afforded them in his holy word. But they do not always do fo.

Hence

Hence it comes to pass, that the greatest part of men spend their thoughts and time about things as little to the purpose as the mereft children. People will hardly believe this. It is neceffary, therefore, that they fhould be convinced of it, and fee the danger of living like children, at all adventures, without thought, or reafon, or fear, or fenfe.

If children have no forefight; if they have no serious aim, or defign, in any thing they do; if they fear no evil; if they are apt to be toffed to and fro, and know not what to believe or do; why, this is their character, we look for no better from them.

And if we blame them for being ignorant, foolish in their choices, carelefs of their ways, it is to cure them of their faults, left the vices fhould grow up with them, and when for the time they fhould be men in underftanding, they should continue to have the folly, the weakness, the ignorance of children.

Now, whatever we think of ourselves, this is the cafe of an infinite number of people, who grow older without being wifer to any good purposes. And who, when they leave the world, have no fign of virtue to fhew.

We fhould be convinced of this, if we had but the patience to compare our thoughts, and words, and actions, with the defigns and manners of children, whom we despise for their weaknefles, and correct for their follies.

a Wifd. v. 13.

Now,

Now, though fuch a comparison may be very uneafy, yet, fince it may put us upon confidering whether we are as wife as men should be, I will choose this very plain way of inftruction.

I. And first, This is the character of children, to be very ignorant; or, as God is pleafed to express it, not to know their right hand from their left. We hope that time and age will cure this; and we are often at a great deal of pains and expence to improve their underftandings; and we are well fatisfied when we fee that they know the world, and are like to live in it. But neither we, nor they, confider what a fad thing it is to know the world, without knowing its fnares, and temptations, and dangers, and how to avoid them. And vet this is what men feldom teach their children, feldom learn themselves. And what is the confequence of this? Why, generally fpeaking, both old and young live in a dark ignorance of what concerns another world. And though they are well acquainted with the names of religion, of chriftianity, of God that made them, of heaven the portion of his faithful fervants, and of hell the just reward of the wicked; yet they confider no more how people ought to live, who have heard of these things, than their very children, who only know them by rote.

Now; this is a truth which can never be fufficiently lamented, That when people come

[blocks in formation]
« السابقةمتابعة »