treasures, and make your heart not the temple of the Holy Ghost, but the temple of mammon; you who are so ungenerous, so unnatural, so barbarous, as to shut up every avenue of compassion from your breast, neither blessing, nor blest; you who heap up riches, anxious that no one should gather them, eager to catch at every present, and unmindful of every future advan tage, grasping at an imaginary happiness which you can never reach, the unprofitable guardian of your own stores, whose grovelling soul is ever bent to the earth, and your own miserable interests, who never lift your lowering eye beyond the sphere of your own advantages; wretch, who are never communicative, but where you expect a greater return, wishing to draw all to yourself, but never willing to disperse abroad in blessings to others, greedy as the sea, barren as the shore; you who are rolled up in yourself like the porcupine, proof against all the petitions of supplicating misery; wretch, you are a robber of the worst kind, a robber of the poor; you are as capital offender against the laws of Heaven, as the highwaymen is against the laws of his country! Then when you shall stand at the bar of Almighty justice, what answer shall you make to that God, whose entreaties in behalf of his poor brethren you have so often resisted; to that God who has created all things for your use, your comfort, and your pleasure?

Look around, wretch, and say do you behold any thing like yourself? No, you shall see nothing made for its own use. Look up to the magnificent regular order of the Heavens, to the uniform arrangement and motion of the stars and planets. The sun rises, sets, and returns to his place, and there rising again, makes his round to the south, till at a fixed and certain.

point he turns back towards the north, without ever deviating from his track, without ever shortening or protracting his annual course, without ever refusing his usual light to the earth. The

moon, though changeable in her aspect, never fails in her attendance on him. Nor of all the shining host of Heaven, is a single star ever seen to break the 'order, or to wander from the station assigned by Providence. Why all this, but to spread light and comfort more widely in their

course?

Behold again the alternate vicissitudes of night and day, the charming, regular, and continual succession of the seasons, that enrich and diversify the year. Behold the multiplicity of flowers, plants, and trees that adorn the earth, producing not only necessaries but delicacies for you. Warmed by the genial rays of the sun, the earth renews its annual crops for your nourishment. The mountains rise above the valleys and receive the dews of Heaven in greater abundance, in order to collect and disperse them over the inferior plains. The ocean receives the tributary rivers from every country, to return them again in refreshing vapours, and to recruit the fountains that support its greatness. Carry your views in the same manner through the tribes of animal and vegetable life, and you will find the same order and connexion. "Ask the beasts," says the holy Job, "and they will teach thee thy duty. Ask the birds, and they will instruct thee in it. Speak to the earth and it will answer thee."* In fine, all creatures contribute to the general happiness, and obey the will of the Almighty, while you alone, sordid miser, counteract it!

*Job xii. 7, 8.

Above all, attend to the steps of your God, and you will find charity impressed in them whatever way he traversed. In his descent to earth, in clothing himself in flesh, in his meekness under injuries, in his preaching, in his fasting in the wilderness, in his watching, in his suffering on the Cross. Take but a feature of his picture, and what a subject for admiration! Take the whole, and we are lost in gratitude and love! But is goodness of such purity expected from mankind? No, no, my brethren, our divine Ruler does not so severely exact from the inequality of his subjects. No more does he require of us than we have the capacity to perform: nay, ourselves are made the judges of the tax he imposes. We are commanded to do to others, as we would wish they in like case should minister to us. With what appetite, then, O churlish glutton, can you sit down to feasting, and behold famine at your window? Christians,

mark me well: the God of justice will not be mocked. In vain are all your prayers, vain is all your attention to the externals of religion, if you treat not others with benificence, when you pine for it yourselves.

Come hither Calculation, with thy pen, and I will shew thee, though usury be thy guide, that charity gives an interest which would beggar prodigality, and tire itself in the happiness of hoarding. Cheerfully, then, cautious niggard, lend thy mite to the poor orphan, and give a loose to appetite for a return of thy loan. Will an hundred fold appease thee? Thou noddest discontent. Take thousands then, and thousands superadded, and if still thou art dissatisfied, let numeration be exhausted by the greediness of thy wish. Let Methusala's be your years, and. counting be your business: charity is still offer

ing, and makes her premium bear the character of immensity at last, and, to secure you the possession, she stamps on it her seal of life. This earth, yon sun, the firmament itself will be in flames, yet still the deed of charity endures the conflagration, and bears your title unimpaired to the judgment seat of Christ.

But if all I have said hitherto cannot move you to compassion for these orphans, at least let the love of your Redeemer melt your flinty hearts. God of glory, what a sight dost thou present to us at this moment, stooping from high Heaven to supplicate from man! Behold your dying Saviour bespeaking your attention. From the cross he addresses you at the close of his life; what anguish overspreads his face, yet what benevolence beams from his eyes. His parched tongue scarce allows him to pour out his whole heart. For your sake I am suffering all you see, and still to greater sufferings do I hasten to deliver you from sufferings, that to think of would harrow up your souls. But not to save you alone do I submit to this cross; I die not merely that you may live; I die that you may stand in that presence which is fulness of joy, and at his righthand, where there are pleasures for evermore; 66 pleasures which eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man to conceive."* Yet, from all this happiness, I descend, that through my sacrifice, you may be admitted to its perfect enjoyment. And for all this exuberance of affection, the only return that I desire is, that you love your fellowcreature as I have loved you. Love one another, by this mangled body, I conjure you. By these bloody wounds, which are streaming for your sins, I conjure you to love one another. By this

* 1 Cor. ii. 9.

side which was pierced for your iniquities, I conjure you to love another. By these members transfixed for your sensualities, I conjure you to love one another. By the dews of death, now hanging on my face, I conjure you to love one another. By your own eternal welfare, be entreated, Christians, to that charity, which Jesus thus feelingly recommends to your observance. By

But to what end does man preach, if God be disregarded? Yet, since the God of mercy is also the God of justice, let terror appal, if persuasion cannot bend you. Know, then, that there is not one of his flock, not one of these children now before you, that may go astray through your uncharitableness, that you must not answer for at the judgment seat of Christ, on the last and dreadful day of retribution.

Is there a wicked parent? You are he. Is there an undutiful child? You are he. Is there a robber, a murderer? All these characters doth the uncharitable man sustain. Not a sin

which the abandoned heart of man is actuated to the commission of, through your withholding your charity, not a sin which you might have prevented, not one that will not be accounted to you in that dread moment, which must decide your fate for ever and ever.

If the very best of us will tremble before the judgment seat of Christ for the sins of a long life, the sins of word, and deed, and omission, with all their aggravating circumstances, those sins which we never considered in their true light, or at most looked on as natural effects of human frailty, those shameful sins which we took all possible precaution to conceal from the sight of men, how will that unhappy man meet the tertors of his trial, who adds the sins of his neigh