244 AUTHENTIC HISTORY 



great ricli divine plan he has revealed in the holy Bible, such sinful crea- 

 tures as we are, may be sanctified and pardoned, and made fit for useful- 

 ness in this life, and the enjoyment of God in heaven. 



6. Our subject teaches us to be reconciled to the thoughts of death, 

 on the true principles of gospel holiness, whenever it shall please God to 

 call us hence ; as all in this sinning, teasing, mortifying disappointing 

 world, as Solomon justly expresses it, is vanity and vexation of spirit ; and 

 yet on the other hand, we must not repine at the hand of God, if we are 

 continued long even in a state of affliction ; but should say with that 

 old Testament saint, all the days of my apjwinted time loill I wait ^ till my 

 change come. It is our great wisdom and interest, to take heed, that we 

 have not with Dives our good things here, but would make the best of 

 this present life, as a wilderness passage, through which we would journey 

 to the better country, the heavenly. 



7. We hence learn how much it is our duty to be both frequent and 

 very fervent in praj^er to God, for the spiritual kingdom of the Lord 

 Jesus Christ, which consists so much in peace and love, to come with 

 divine power and energy, to check and stop those evils that now rage in 

 the world, as it is well known, by long experience, that it is the holy 

 spirit accompanying a preached gospel, that is the only foreign remedy, 

 to cure the evils that are in the hearts of men, to qualify them to be 

 real blessings to each other, as members of society in this life, and to 

 put them in a capacity for communion with the holy Trinity and saints 

 and angels in heaven. 



8thly. And lastly. Our subject teaches us, how much we should depre- 

 cate the calamities of war — especially those of a civil war; the most 

 awful of any, if it could be avoided. And what an awful dark cloud, 

 pregnant with all the horrors of civil war, hangs now over this whole 

 continent of British America; and this terrifying thought leads me to 

 close this discourse in two addresses. 



1st. To all my hearers in general — you are, in this town, now at ease, 

 in the lap of peace and plenty; far from any scene of either blood or 

 slaughter— in the heart of a rich province, situated in the centre of the 

 whole American Continent — you hear of distress, but you do not yet 

 feel it; and God forbid you ever should, as some of your worthy brethren 

 now do in Boston. But know, my dear hearers, that if you abuse these 

 rich, temporal good things (Avith which the God of heaven has distin- 

 guished you) in luxury, profaneness. Sabbath-breaking, swearing, unoleau- 

 ness, drunkenness, worldliness, pride and contempt of the sacred and 

 divine instructions of his holy word and ordinances, your sins will find 

 you out, and God will visit you with his chastising rod for your iniqui- 

 quities. Let all then be exhorted by a sincere, unfeigned repentance, 

 for past sins and reformation of life and manners, to fly to the Lord 



