sensible of your failings, and have not a firm faith in the merits of our Saviour's sufferings and death; if you are not truly thankful for his mercies, if you are not in charity with all men-then, pardon me, when I ask you, how have you been employed during the last hour? Your lips have professed these things; and after all, have you mocked God, insulted your Saviour, deceived your neighbour, and, which is worse, deceived yourselves? Then, indeed, you cannot come to the altar, with safety. Then, you must postpone it till the arrival of a more convenient season. But let that season be, if it is possible, the earliest opportunity afforded; for your soul is sick, and it is dangerous to delay the medicine.

Give me leave to remind you, that a solemn, though a festive season is at hand. A new year is approaching. Let us duly consider it, and prepare to celebrate its commencement as Christians. Many such seasons we may not live to see. We may never see another. How many of them whom we knew, has the grave swallowed up in the year that is just elapsed. Let us seize the moment as it passes, while we have health, sense, and life. There can be no danger in communicating, if we communicate with sincerity, and there may be the greatest benefit. Who would neglect so easy a service, when he knows that under these circumstances it can do him no evil; but may smooth the bed of death, and contribute to secure everlasting felicity?

Let all those who have hitherto neglected the Holy Sacrament, as a matter which may concern the neighbours, but which does not concern them, go home pensively, and examine the Gospel faithfully, and consider fairly whether it is not true, as I have already shown, that CHRIST himself has made it necessary to salvation. If so, and so they will

indeed find it to be, let them be alarmed. If there is truth in CHRIST JESUS, they have reason to be alarmed. The danger is great. Awake thou that sleepest, let each say to his conscience, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. Be it their first concern to prepare for the very next celebration of the Lord's Supper. This is the one thing needful; and let them lay it to heart more than all the concerns of their farm or of their merchandise.

But I am sensible I take up too much of your time, especially as your own good dispositions, may render exhortation superfluous. I conclude therefore with a short prayer, suggested by my text, in which, I doubt not, you will join with cordial fervour:

"The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he be not perfectly cleansed according to the strictest purification. The Lord look mercifully on those who approach his table, laden, indeed, with infirmities, and stained with sin; but sensible of their burden and sorry for their pollution. The Lord shower down his grace into their hearts, that they may rise from their knees full of comfort, and return to the duties and employments of life with the cheerfulness resulting from a good conscience, with confirmed piety to Thee, O God, and with enlarged charity to their neighbour; forgiving all that have injured or offended them, as they hope to be forgiven by Thee."

SERMON XXV.

THE PROSPECT OF PERPETUAL AND

UNIVERSAL PEACE TO

BE ESTABLISHED ON THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIAN PHI

LANTHROPY.

[Preached at Brighton, Aug. 18, 1793.]

ST. LUKE, ii. 14.-Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will towards men.

THIS gracious proclamation from Heaven announces the great purpose of Jesus Christ, the promotion of piety to God and benevolence to man. It may indeed be called the motto of Christianity. It may form the inscription on its unstained banners, as it advances in its progress, endeavouring to diffuse the blessings of perpetual peace and universal love.

At a time when atheism has been imputed to a great and polished nation, and many in the highest ranks in our own country, whose examples are seducing among the vulgar, from the false glitter of birth and fortune, seem to plume themselves on the neglect of public worship, as a mark of superior sense, or of peculiar gaiety of heart; the neglect of that public worship, which they allow to be necessary to their inferiors, which they see recommended by royal example, enforced by royal proclamations, and required by law; at a time, when a specious philosophy, under the pretence of removing early prejudices in favour of Christianity, is gradually sapping the foundation of that ancient and venerable fabric; at such a time, so unfavourable to the prevalence of that religion, in which our pious fathers lived and died in peace, under the benign influence of which our country has flourished in unexampled prosperity, and by which human nature has been elevated to all

attainable perfection; at such a time, an invitation to give glory to God, or to Christianity, enforced with seriousness and ardour, will at least have the merit of being seasonable.

Our Saviour's own words of invitation are indeed sweetly persuasive, if the world would hear them, amidst the cares of avarice, the struggles of ambition, and the clangor of arms. Come unto me, says he, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.

Who among us is not concerned in this address, which of us is not labouring with some evil or laden with some sin, some infirmity, some habitual passion or some sore disease?

In what part of Christendom is that Christianity which we all profess, suffered to have its full effect, either on the national character and conduct, or on the regulation of private life?

Give me leave to bring before you, for a few moments, the great picture of the living world, as it is now exhibited, in the most polished part of it, Europe, enlightened as it is by science and professing Christianity. Let us consider whether among those who bear rule, by power or by example, GLORY IS DULY GIVEN TO GOD; whether they do really promote to the utmost of their power, PEACE ON EARTH; and whether they seem to entertain GOOD WILL TOWARDS MEN, in that extent and degree which the Gospel of Jesus Christ requires of all who profess to believe it, and who expect the rewards of the pious and the peaceful,

The picture is sadly shaded with misery. Peace on earth! Alas where is it? amid all our refinement in the modes of cultivated life, all our elegant pleasures, all our boasted humanity, WAR, that giant fiend, is stalking over empires in garments dropping

with the blood of men, shed by men, personally unoffended and unoffending; of men, professing to love as brethren, yet cutting off each other from the land of the living, long before the little time allotted them by nature is elapsed; and increasing beyond measure, all the evils to which man is naturally and morally doomed, at the command of a narrow shortsighted human policy, and an ambition which, considering the calamities it causes, I must call accursed.

The shades of the picture are black as death, the colouring of blood. No; not all the arts of politicians can veil its shocking deformity, from any eyes but those of the vulgar;* the vulgar, I mean, rich as well as poor, titled as well as untitled, swaying sceptres or wielding a spade. By all but the vulgar and the creatures of despotism, offensive war, with all its pompous exterior, must be deprecated as the disgrace and calamity of human nature. Poor outside pageantry! What avails the childish or womanish finery of gaudy feathers on the heads of warriors? Though tinged with the gayest colours by the dyer's art, they appear to the eye of humanity, weeping over the fields of battle, dipt in gore. What avail the tinsel, the trappings, the gold and the scarlet? Ornaments fitter for the pavilions of pleasure than the field of carnage. Can they assuage the anguish of a wound, or call back the departed breath of the pale victims of war; poor victims, unnoticed and unpitied, far from their respective countries, on the plains of neighbouring provinces, the wretched seat of actual war; not of parade, the mere play of soldiers, the pastime of the idle spectator, a summer day's sight for the gazing saunterer;

* Idwraι is the Greek term for the idea, which means men of common coarse minds, uncultivated by philosophy, “et iis studiis quæ ad humanitatem pertinent.” 2 A

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