Page images
PDF
EPUB

alfo. Difeafe may opprefs you-your faculties may be gone-you may be fuddenly called out of the world: all thefe are cafes which daily happen.

LET these things, then, have their proper weight. Confider yourfelves as labourers hired into your master's vineyard. Labour honestly through the day, and look in the evening for your reward. The evening will foon clofe in: whether you are rich, or whether you are poor, all will foon be reduced to one level. This world is not your home: it is a place only of fhort abode. Whatever your poffeffions are--your enjoyments, your amufements, your friends, your houfes, and every thing your hearts have most been fet on, will all foon vanish.-What is to come in their room, it is your business to confider --it is an awful thought. It behoves you furely to make fome provifion for this great change; and to fit yourselves for the enjoyment of other things, fince you are fo foon to be difpoffeffed of thefe; that when God calls you from your fiation here, you may not be wholly unqualified for a better station hereafter.

That

That we may all confider what is our real business, and true intereft, in this world, and not put it off till too late an hour, may God Almighty of his infinite goodness grant, through Jefus Chrift our Lord!

SERMON XII.

GAL. vi. 7.

WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP: FOR HE THAT SOWETH TO HIS FLESH, SHALL OF THE FLESH REAP CORRUPTION; BUT HE THAT SOWETH TO THE SPIRIT, SHALL OF THE SPIRIT REAP LIFE

EVERLASTING.

THE

HE text may be thus in general explained: In whatever way a man lives, he shall be treated in the fame way by God Almighty. If he lead a wicked life, he fhall feel the mischief of it; and if he lead a pious one, he fhall experience its advantages. And all this follows as naturally, as the grain you reap from the grain you fow. Wheat or barley will not more surely produce its kindred feed, than goodness will produce happiness, and wickedness mifery. The apostle

apostle does not appear to confine the obfervation either to this world or the next; but feems to take them both together, declaring, in general, that a man's happiness, or mifery, fhall on the whole depend upon his conduct in this pre fent life.

Neither does the apoftle mention the merits of Chrift, as the ground of our falvation; taking it for granted, that this will easily be understood; and that he who foweth to the fpirit can only, after his beft endeavours, reap life everlasting through Jefus Chrift,

Having thus explained the apoftle's general meaning, I fhall, in the following difcourfe, firft endeavour to prove the truth of it; and shall, fecondly, add a few obfervations, which arife from it.

Now in many cafes, even in this world, a man's reaping as he fows is fo plain, that we cannot avoid feeing it. The virtue and the reward-the fin and the punishment, follow fo closely upon each other, that the most careless obferver cannot but acknowledge the connection. -Thus, when we obferve a course of prudent actions crowned with fuccefs, it is easy to fee the

effe&

effect following the caufe. Or, when we fee a man ruin his fortune at a gaming-table, we need nobody to point out the fource of the mischief.

But, in many cafes, the good or the bad confequence is not fo eafily traced. It may be fome time before industry and frugality meet their deferved fuccefs; or the punishment may follow the offence so very flowly, that we may not difcern the progrefs. When this is the cafe-when fuffering does not immediately follow the tranfgreffion, men are apt to run blindly on, without confidering confequences. Thus the man, who would not directly destroy himself by drinking poison, will without fcruple indulge in continued acts of intemperance; notwithstanding this vice will as generally bring on his ruin in the end, as if he had destroyed himself at once by poifon. The only difference is, that in one cafe the mifchief works immediately; in the other, by degrees. But though a variety of circumstances may for a while keep off the evil or the good, yet they are ftill advancing with a steady pace, though perhaps too flow for common obfervation. Thus, for instance, a man may fometimes live imprudently: he may never look into his affairs, nor compare his expençes with his in

come;

« EelmineJätka »