one would think it impossible to consider without embracing it, or to contemplate with'out making it our own.

Yet all amiable, all engaging as charity appears, instead of being admired as an angel, she is avoided as a syren. The reversions she promises are looked upon as flattering delusions, designed only to draw us into a present expence. We are not liberal enough to take her unportioned to our favour, and therefore we determine to depreciate her virtues. Her generosity we call profusion, and her benevolence weakness.

The cause of all this is the prepossession of the heart. Wealth is an object that brings present gratifications along with it; and how low or how mean soever those gratifications may be, they prevail over the influence of greater, because distant hopes.

To overcome this false attachment, and mistaken choice, there is no better method than to reflect how vain and transitory is every temporal possession! How soon the imagined charms of riches vanish away, and leave the owner convinced that the privilege of food and raiment is all that they can boast! How delusive are those pleasures which fortune promises, and novelty for a while endears! and how certain that disgust and dis

content which attend the decline of a life whose only hopes repose on this world!

If truth could obtain admittance for such reflections as these, and if the mind could be persuaded to consider things in this light, it might not, perhaps, be difficult to recommend to it better hopes and more perfect enjoy

He who should be convinced of the insufficiency of wealth to obtain any lasting happiness in this world, might not be displeased to find that it was possible to invest it in the security of another. He who had vainly wearied himself in the pursuit of fugitive enjoyments, might be gratified by discovering the means of that permanent happiness, which by experience he had found unattainable on earth.

Such are the prospects which charity brings along with her, and such is the happiness which she has the power to give..

He who hath contributed to feed the hungry, and to clothe the naked; who hath been a friend to the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner; hath a moral right to hope for an interest with that Saviour, who has declared that he would accept these offices as done to himself.

Involved in this interest are the most ex

N n

alted and magnificent hopes! Prospects that bring to sight the regions of eternal felicity; ages that glide away in intellectual joy and love; where the faculties spread and bloom for ever; stretching forward to the excellence of superior natures; unbroken by exercise, and unimpaired by time.

These, these are hopes which it is in the power of Beneficence to give. O exalted virtue! O glorious power! which if we exercise it in this scene of imperfection, shall lead us hereafter to an innumerable company of saints and angels; where we shall experience a greater and more perfect harmony of affections; where sympathy shall be warm without weakness; and where the reciprocations of love shall be more tender and more dear!

Does emulation warm us? Are we affected with a generous desire of excellence? Behold it here! To be charitable, is to make approaches towards the nature of God; to do good, is to act like him.

If it be impossible for human beings even to make approaches towards the Divine nature, yet it must be their glory and their happiness to resemble, in disposition, the angelic powers; to imitate those exalted spirits, that leave their mansions of felicity to attend inferior creatures, nor deem it unequivalent to the

enjoyments of heaven to relieve the conflicts of suffering virtue, and to rescue misery from the horrors of despair.

Those exalted spirits that rejoiced with the Father of everlasting mercies when the foundations of the earth were laid! that sung together for joy when, in kindness, he called forth this smiling creation, and appointed the sun to run his race; that exulted at the rising of the star in Jacob, and proclaimed BENEVOLENCE to the inhabitants of the earth! those distinguished beings, as their gracious Master has told us, actuated by the spirit of invariable kindness, rejoice upon the repentance of a sinner; and many have believed, possibly upon good foundations, that they frequently interpose their care for the preservation and happiness of the human race.

Led by the example of these glorious spirits, and obedient to the precepts of our God and our Redeemer, let us diligently embrace the Apostle's advice, and, as we have opportunity, do good unto all men.

Upon this occasion, when our Sovereign and our Diocesan have called upon us to exercise our beneficence in the relief of our poor brethren, let us not be inattentive to their benevolent exhortations, but exert those abilities which God hath given us, in pro

moting the happiness and comfort of his crea

tures.

A state of indigence very frequently becomes the lot of man, and, many times, from misfortune more than from misconduct. God only knows whether those, who now enjoy a comfortable subsistence, may not, through some unforeseen accident, become the objects of that charity which is this day solicited from them.

Let it not then be in vain that it is solicited; but let them do unto others, even as they would have others do unto them.

THE END.

W. BAXTER, PRINTER, OXFORD.