prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight his paths. Come ye miserable sinners loaden with the insupportable burdens of your sins; come ye troubled consciences, uneasy at the remembrance of your many idle words, many criminal thoughts, many abominable. actions; come ye poor mortals, condemned first to bear the infirmities of nature, the caprices of society, the vicissitudes of age, the turns of fortune, and then the horrors of death, and the frightful night of the tomb; come, behold the wonderful, the Counsellor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace; take him into your arms, learn to desire nothing more when you possess him. I conjure you, by that adorable goodness, by those ineffable mercies which our imaginations cannot fully comprehend, which our minds cannot sufficiently admire, nor all the emotions of our hearts sufficiently esteem; I conjure you to look at, and, if you will pardon the expression, to lose yourselves in these grand objects; I conjure you not to turn our solemn festivals and our devotional days, into seasons of gaming, irreligion and dissipation. Let us submit ourselves to the King messiah; let us engage ourselves in his government, let his dominion be the ground of all our joy. And thou, O blessed Saviour, give us such a lively sense of thy marvellous love, in leaving thy glory and taking human flesh upon thee, that thou mightest dwell among us and instruct us in our duty, and assist us in the performance of it, and encourage us thereto by the glorious hopes of immortal happiness! O, let these things sink * Mat. iii. 3. deep into our minds, and so wholly possess our hearts, that we may entirely give up ourselves to thee! that we may with our whole souls embrace all thy doctrines; that we may endeavour in all our actions, to conform ourselves to thy example, and make it the business of our lives to be obedient to thy precepts, to submit to thy will. O let nothing in thy religion be an offence to us! but enable us to hold firm the profession of our faith without wavering, that so in faith and obedience, in patience and perseverance, we may ever wait for, and at last obtain that crown, which thou hast promised to all who love and obey thee! To thee, O eternal Son of God, thou great lover of mankind, to thee who tookest upon thee to deliver man, and didst not abhor the virgin's womb, to thee, O most dear, O most beloved, O most adorable Jesus, be for ever given by us, and by all the souls whom thou hast redeemed, and by all the creatures in heaven and on earth, all honour and glory, praise, love, and obedience, for evermore. Amen. SERMON V. SUNDAY WITHIN THE OCTAVE OF THE On the advantages of Affliction. And thine own soul shall a sword pierce. Luke ii. 35. To the prophecies which holy Simeon addresses to the Mother of God concerning her son, he adds one relative to herself, which is, that her soul shall be pierced with a sword, and delivered up to sorrow and affliction. It is the very moment after he had announced the future glory of Jesus, and thereby filled with joy the heart of the virgin mother, that he announces also the many sufferings she was to endure. Such is the ordinary conduct of Providence, towards the just and elect. The Almighty generally checquers prosperity with reverses, through an effect of his goodness to them, in order that they may be induced to transfer still more and more their affections to things above, and to elevate their hearts to those mansions, where only true joy is to be found. In my discourse of the second Sunday of Advent, I have endeavoured to vindicate the ways of the providence of God, in suffering his children to be afflicted. But the subject being too copious to be exhausted in a single discourse, I shall proceed to shew, that there is no real cause why the children of God and the faithful followers of Christ Jesus, should faint under the chastisements of their heavenly Father, and the rebukes of their compassionate Lord and secondly, give some short and useful advice to persons under affliction. And may he who is the refuge of the oppressed accompany with his effectual blessing, my feeble efforts to infuse the balm of comfort and consolation into the mourning and drooping soul, that is groaning under the chastisements of her heavenly Father, and ready to faint under the rebukes of her God! : St. Paul in his twelfth chapter to the Hebrews, exhorting them to constancy under their crosses, says in the fifth verse, "And you have forgotten the consolation, which speaketh to you as to children, saying: My son, neglect not the discipline of the Lord: neither be thou wearied, whilst thou art rebuked by him; for whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Persevere under chastisement. God offereth himself to you as sons : for what son is he, whom the Father doth not correct ?"* God's corrections are tokens of his love, and the means which he often uses for bringing his children into glory. "You only (saith the Lord, speaking to his own inheritance,) have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I visit upon you all your iniquities."+ Would we reckon it any proof of a parent's † Amos, iii. 2. * Heb. xii. 5, 6, 7. · love to his child, if when he sees him commit a fault, he lets him go unpunished? Should we not rather think that his father hated him, and had left him to himself? And have not we much more reason to look upon it as an unerring mark of our heavenly Father's love, that he does not withhold proper nurture from his children, nor suffer them to go on in a course of sinful prosperity? Prosperity is not the field where virtue flourishes: the soil is too rich; a luxuriancy of baleful weeds choaks the good plants and renders them unfruitful: when "Israel grew fat, and thick, and gross, he forsook God who made him, Adam's and departed from God his Saviour."* fall was in Paradise. Noah's abundance proved a snare and temptation to him. Sodom was a nursery of filthiness, and the most shameful sins, whilst pride, fulness of bread and abundance of idleness were in her. David, in the midst of happiness, became an adulterer and a murderer. Solomon, in the midst of his opulence, apostatized from his God. Such has been the opinion of some of the wisest men concerning an uninterrupted course of prosperity, that they have even shunned the company, and broke off all connexions with those who enjoyed it. It is written of St. Ambrose, that being upon a journey, and coming to an inn, he heard the landlord boast, that through his whole life he had never known what it was to be under trouble or affliction; upon which, that father would not so much as lodge for a night in his house, but foretold a sudden destruction to him and his, which soon after came to pass. It is, my beloved, alas! but too true, that for * Deut. xxxii. 15. |