16. Now I'm happy, now I'm free:

My active spirit, heav'n-born mind,
From all the dregs of sense refin❜d,
Feels and enjoys her godlike dignity.
No more oppress'd with the gross atmosphere
Of error, prejudice and sin,
Freely I breath my native air,

And drink ambrosial fragrance in.
O who can think, O who can tell,
The strange sensations now I feel!

17. Awhile my wings unused to flight, I try,
And round and round in sportive bliss I fly:
Then through the opening skies,

In rapt'rous ecstasy I rise,

Up to the flow'ry fields of Paradise,
And as I dart along,

On full expanded wing,

Amid th' angelic throng,

Celestial anthems sing:

Glory to him that left his throne above, "And downward bent his way on wings of love; "That wept, and bled, and died upon the tree, "To conquer death and set the captives free."

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE utility of a compendious view of a Parable, in order to a clear understanding of its general import, and a right improvement of its several parts, must strike every thoughtful person. This was the Author's reason for prefixing so large a table of contents to the following plain discourses. The reader will, therefore, greatly oblige him by attentively looking. over the contents, before he peruses the

sermons.

CONTENTS.

DISCOURSE I.

Of Parables in general; and the leading

ideas of this in particular.

MATT. xiii. 3.

And he spake many things unto them in parables,

saying, Behold a sower went forth to sow.

PART I.

OF PARABLES IN GENERAL.

Occasion of the parable-meaning easy to be un-
derstood-how this reconcilable with our Lord's
reason for addressing these people in parables-
why he so frequently adopted this mode of in-
struction-rules to assist in interpreting para-
bles-temperate use of allegory highly proper-
how abused by some public speakers-other
abuses of preaching-causes of these evils-
common apologies for them futile-pernicious
tendency of injudicious treatment of allegory--
as also of mere declamatory preaching-address
to ministers.

PART II.

THE LEADING IDEAS OF THE PARABLE.
Our Saviour's grand object to draw the characters
of four kinds of hearers-the INATTENTIVE—
ENTHUSIASTIC-WORLDLY-MINDED-SINCERE,
the leading ideas to be first of all explained-
these are the sower-seed-ground-effect.

1. By the sower is meant ministers-their qualifi-

cations, duty, and various success described.

II. By the seed is meant the word of the kingdom,
or gospel-kingdom to be understood of personal
religion, christian dispensation, heavenly state;
the word considered in reference to each of

these.

III. By the ground is meant the soul of man-this,

like the earth, in a different state now from

what it was in the beginning-the natural and

moral powers of the soul weakened and deprav-

ed-this confirmed by the different account our

Lord gives of the several kinds of ground in

which the seed was sown.

IV. The general process of the business expressed
or implied in the parable-how religion rises
into existence and becomes fruitful, through the
concurrence of a divine influence, with the word
dispensed by ministers, and the reasonings of
the mind about it-reflections on the subject.