the temple, a little before the destruction of Jerusalem-"Let us go hence!"

As the house of God therefore is new, let your faith and your devotion be renewed with it. You have invited him to dwell among you; be it your ́endeavour to detain him. He is your God and Father; you are his people and his children. Walk before him as the people of such a God; behave as the children of such a Father. Let the very sight of this holy place recall to your minds these relations, and the duties suggested by them, from day to day, from week to week, from year to year, from age to age. For the blessing is to you and yours. Want

of proper accommodations in the church can no longer be pleaded as an excuse for the absence of yourselves or families. There will be room for all young men and maidens, old men and child"ren"-all may praise the name of the Lord; their prayers to him; all will be

all
may
heard by him.

offer up

That the rising generation may be disposed and qualified to use these advantages, they must be instructed betimes in the first principles of religion. In many cases, the parents are not able themselves to instruct their children, or to be at the expense of having them instructed. Indeed if they were, means have hitherto been wanting to effect it, for want of a proper person to undertake the task, and a proper place in which to perform it. Both are now provided. An institution of this kind is about to be set on foot, and has met with a seasonable support by the judi

cious application of a benefaction, the produce of which, greatly increased since the time of the bequest, seems to have been intended for the very purpose. The design, however, cannot be carried into execution without that kind and generous assistance, which I am this day to ask at your hands, and which English hearts never suffer to be asked in vain.

Vice is the daughter of ignorance, and the mother of shame and pain, of misery and sorrow, temporal and eternal. To rescue the children of the poor from ignorance, is to save them from all its mournful consequences. Nor let any one apprehend they will know too much. They will be taught to know their Maker and themselves; to be contented with their station, and to perform the duties of it. Creatures made in the image of God, and redeemed by the blood of his Son, ought not to know less: and he who knows so much, will have no reason to regret, at the last day, that he did not know more. By contributing towards the fartherance of this pious and charitable undertaking, you do a work acceptable to God, who would have all to be saved, and, as the means of salvation, brought to a knowledge of the truth: you do a work acceptable to Christ, who, when he said, "Suffer little children to come "unto me, and forbid them not," said in the strongest manner, by implication, neglect no possible method of encouraging and assisting them to come: you do a work acceptable to your country, in furnishing it with so many useful members; in rendering those a blessing to it, who would otherwise have been its curse; nay, perhaps, in preserving it (if it can be

preserved) by providing, that the succeeding generation shall be more virtuous than the present: you do a work in the highest degree honourable and advantageous to yourselves, because it is a work which will be acknowledged and rewarded by the world's Redeemer and its Judge, when all the stately and idle monuments of pride, vanity, and folly, shall sink into perdition, and the remeinbrance of them vanish for ever.

There is but one thing more of which you could wish to be assured, namely, that what is liberally given may be rightly applied. And of this, I think, you have sufficient security in the consideration of the person intrusted with the care of it, under whose direction, by the assistance chiefly of those his friends who compose the present illustrious assembly, this fair and goodly fabric, to the astonishment of all around it, hath been begun and completed within the space of a year; who esteems this day to be the happiest day of his life; who requesteth not others to do that which he would be himself unwilling to do; and who seems, through life, to have formed his conduct upon the maxim laid down by that great master of holy living, the excellent Bishop Jeremy Taylor-" The way for a man to be "a saver by his religion, is to deposit one part of "his fortune in the temple, and the other in the "hands of the poor."-That such a shepherd may long be continued a blessing to his flock, and that his flock may ever be sensible of the blessing, hear, O Lord, our supplications in heaven thy dwelling place, and, when thou hearest, grant them

for the sake and through the merits of Jesus Christ, our only Saviour and Redeemer, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, might, majesty, and dominion, for ever, world without end. Amen.

384

DISCOURSE XXVII.

SUBMISSION TO GOVERNNENT.

1 PETER, II. 13.

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake.

RELIGION came down from heaven, and was designed to carry us thither. Its great object is, the everlasting happiness of man with his God in another and a better world. But it neglects not to provide for his comfort, by regulating his behaviour, in this. It labours to persuade him, that virtue best promotes his true interest in both; it has contrived, that he can advance towards the former, only by a performance of his duties in the latter.

His duties are many, springing from the various relations in which his Maker has been pleased to place him. No sooner is he born but he comes under the obligation of duty to his parents as a son, and to his governors as a subject. A state of nature is a state of society; and no society can subsist without government of some kind or other.

In this class of duties, as in all the rest, it is necessary that we should be instructed from time to time; and no time more proper for the purpose, than when we commemorate, as we do upon the an