happiness which alone can satisfy your craving heart, your aspiring nature.

·

And what is there that either he can bestow, or we expect, more than ease, abundance, health, and fame? Great blessings as these are, he has something in store infinitely more desirable. It is the emanation of himself; his holy spirit, a heavenly influence, streaming like the electrical fluid, invisible, yet pervading the inmost recesses, exalting our nature, and assimilating it with the divine: a living water of efficacy, to purify and exalt our hearts above all that men of the world are able to conceive. poverty, it maketh rich indeed; and in riches it gives a sanctification, which renders riches the means of happiness to their possessor, and to all who are in the reach of his beneficence.

In

And what, you ask, is to be done, in order to secure this inestimable gift? I ask in return, Do you indeed desire it? are you as anxious, as earnest, as sincere in desiring it, as you were in the pursuit of worldly objects? If you are, fear not. The springs of the living water shall bubble up before you; even the rock in the wilderness shall gush with plenteous

streams.

My understanding, you say, is convinced of the value of God's grace; but my affections are not yet warmed with a devout desire of obtaining it, and how shall I catch the pious flame? I answer, in the scriptural precept, Pray without ceasing. Never lie down on your pillow, nor rise from it, without a fervent prayer to him who has given you safety by day, and repose in the night season; to him in whom you live and move: nor go forth to your labour without a pious ejaculation.

You will thus, at some favourable moment, feel the delight of devotion. Your heart will be warmed

with that fervour, which will render prayer acceptable at the throne of mercy. All your thoughts and actions will be sanctified, the temple of the Holy Ghost will be prepared for his reception: and doubt not, but he will come in blessed influence from the Father, as light issues from the sun.

Though we are not sufficient of ourselves to do any thing, yet our sufficiency from God will enable us to do all that is necessary to salvation. No man, says our Saviour, can come to me unless the Father draw him; and without me ye can do nothing. 'Tis God, says St. Paul, that worketh in you to will and to do.

With all humility then, yet with firm faith and aspiring hope, let us approach the holy Trinity, the living fountain of all knowledge, comfort, and happiness, henceforth fully resolved to forsake the broken cisterns, hewn out by our vanity and pride, which can hold no water. Pour down upon us, O Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the refreshing streams of the waters of comfort; and grant that we may never forsake them to drink at our own scanty and fragile reservoirs! O give us the water and the bread of life, and grace to thirst and hunger after them, with more eagerness than after the food which perisheth! And grant that our spiritual life may be nourished by this heavenly food, till it shall have arrived at such a state of maturity, as shall induce thee to judge us worthy of being admitted to thy presence.

SERMON XV.

THE PRIDE OF HUMAN LEARNING AND FALSE PHILOSOPHY, A GREAT OBSTACLE TO THE RECEPTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

1 CORINTHIANS, iii. 18, 19, 20.—Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world. let him become a fool, that he may be wise.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For

it is written, he taketh the wise in their own craftiness. And again, the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise that they are vain.

THE purport of the passage which I have just recited, appears, on a superficial view, to militate against those profound acquisitions and polite accomplishments of human learning, after which the most generous and enlightened of the human race have esteemed it an honour to aspire. Unfortunate indeed is our condition, if, after all the labours of a comprehensive education, we have accumulated a load of learning, which serves but to augment our folly, and to render us less acceptable in the eye of our heavenly Father, than he whose situation, or whose culpable neglect, has retained him in a state of the grossest ignorance. If thus we are to interpret the passage, farewell all the sweets of knowledge, the sublime contemplations of truth, moral, physical, and religious; and welcome the narrowness, the rudeness, the barbarity of the

savage.

But we learn, both from reason and from the Scriptures, to entertain worthier ideas of the Deity, than are compatible with the divine prohibition of human learning. He whose essence is spirit, cannot but be pleased with the improvements of his creatures in all spiritual excellence. We may rest

assured, that it is not learning, but the abuse, and the pride of learning, which appear thus contemptible in the sight of that omniscient Being, to whom all our improvements are but as the elementary acquisitions of childhood.

It is indeed a melancholy truth, that in many of the professors of learning, who have acquired a considerable share of that little which is given to man to know, the pride and the abuse of learning have been remarkably conspicuous. But it is at the same time true, that this, and all other Christian countries, can exhibit a much more numerous train of learned men, who have most illustriously displayed their talents and attainments in the service of mankind, and in the glory of the gospel. Philosophy has been taught to serve with an amiable humility at the altar of the Christian church, and learning has deemed herself most honoured, when she has been permitted to minister, as the handmaid of religion.

But since both learning and philosophy have too often rebelled against the authority, which ought always to controul them, and have erected themselves into judges and arbiters of that religion, to which they ought to be subservient, it becomes expedient to check their presumption, and obviate its consequences. The following remarks are therefore addressed to all those, who, in the course of their reading and reflection, involve themselves in such metaphysical, or other investigations, as allure them to an excessive admiration of their own powers, and to a contempt of the lovely, though simple system of Christian morality.

It is too evident to require demonstration, that a great number of scholars are prevented from forming an idea of Christianity, by an early and irrational prepossession against it. They have been used, in

the pursuit of polite learning, to the perusal of authors who have adorned their errors with the graces of an artificial style, and a glossy expression. They have felt the beauties of a Cicero, and a Xenophon; of a Plato, a Homer, and a Virgil. When they take up the New Testament, they find not those flowers, to the selection of which they had hitherto devoted their time and attention. Their classical taste is disgusted. They close the volume, or if they proceed with this prejudice against it, discover nothing in it but deformity. Inclined to doubt the authenticity of a book, which recommends not itself by those charms which they have usually admired, they eagerly peruse such authors as have exerted their ingenuity in exploding the revelation of Jesus Christ. In these they commonly discover those external graces which they love, but which are too often misapplied both in life and in learning.

They now no longer trouble themselves to investigate the original Scriptures. They have found a philosopher, as they are pleased to name him, who writes much more politely than the Evangelists and Apostles. They read, mark, and digest him. Their own studies take a predominant tinge from the chan· nel in which they have flowed. From disciples of infidelity, they gradually become masters; and whether they give utterance to their opinions by conversation or by writing, they endeavour to inform their fellow-creatures in those truths, which they flatter themselves they have been so sagacious as to discover. But let them remember the prophecy of St. Peter, and tremble. There shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.

To whatever eminence they arrive in the schools,