siderate conduct is injuring his circumstances, will probably in time lose the inclination, and certainly is depriving himself of the means, of being serviceable to his brethren. Some important exertions, indeed, there are of charity, which have no connexion with giving or bestowing. Candour, forgiveness, gentleness, and sympathy, are due to our brethren at all times, and in every situation of our own fortune. The poor have opportunities of displaying these virtues as well as the rich. They who have nothing to give, can often afford relief to others, by imparting what they feel. But, as far as beneficence is included in charity, we ought always to remember, that justice must, in the first place, be held inviolably sacred.

The wisdom of Scripture remarkably appears, in the connexion pointed out by the text, between charity and good conscience, or integrity; a connexion which I apprehend is often not attended to so much as it deserves. Among the frugal and industrious, great regard is commonly paid to justice. They will not defraud. They will not take any unlawful advantage in their dealings: and, satisfied with this degree of good conscience, they are strangers to that charity which is the end of the commandment. They are hard and unfeeling. They are rigid and severe in their demands. They know nothing of humanity, forgiveness, or compassion. Among another class of men, who have been more liberally educated, and who are generally of a higher rank in life, justice is apt to be considered as a virtue less noble than charity; and which may, on some occasions, be dispensed with. They are humane, perhaps, and tender in their feelings. They are easy to their dependants. They can be liberal, even to profusion. While, at the same time, they are accumu

|lating debts, which they know themselves unable to discharge. Their affairs are allowed to run into confusion. Economy and good order are neglected. The innocent, in great numbers, suffer materially through their mismanagement: and all the while they assume to themselves the praise of being generous and goodhearted men. This surely is not that charity which the gospel enjoins; and which, in its very essence, involves good conscience and integrity. He, who pretends to do good to his brethren without first doing them justice, cannot be accounted their real friend. True charity is not a meteor, which occasionally glares, but a luminary, which, in its orderly and regular course, dispenses a benignant influence.

The third and last adjunct connected in the text with charity is, that it be of faith unfeigned. Faith, in the Scripture sense of it, includes the whole of religious principles respecting God, and respecting Christ.Good principles, without good practice, I confess, are nothing; they are of no avail in the sight of God, nor in the estimation of wise men. But practice not founded on principle, is likely to be always unstable and wavering; and, therefore, the faith of religious principles enters, for a very considerable share, into the proper discharge of the duties of charity.

It will be admitted that, without faith, our duties towards God cannot be properly performed. You may be assured that your duties towards men will always greatly suffer from the want of it. Faith, when pure and genuine, supplies to every part of virtue, and in particular to the virtue of charity, many motives and assistances, of which the unbeliever is destitute. He who acts from faith, acts upon the high principle of regard to the God who hath made him, and to the Saviour who redeems him ;

which will often stimulate him to his duty, when other principles of benevolence become faint and languid, or are crossed by opposite interests. When he considers himself as pursuing the approbation of that Divine Being from whom love descends, a sacred enthusiasm both prompts and consecrates his charitable dispositions. Regardless of men, or of human recompense, he is carried along by a higher impulse. He acts with the spirit of a follower of the Son of God, who not only has enjoined love, but has enforced it by the example of laying down his life for mankind. Whatever he does in behalf of his fellow-creatures, he considers himself as doing, in some degree, to that Divine Person, who hath said, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. (Matt. xxv. 40.) Hence charity is with him not only a moral virtue, but a Christian grace. It acquires additional dignity and energy from being connected with the heavenly state and the heavenly inhabitants. He mingles with beings of a higher order, while he is discharging his duty to his fellow-creatures on earth; and, by joining faith and piety to good works, he completes the cha racter of a Christian.

Thus I have endeavoured to explain the full sense of that comprehensive view of religion which is given in the text. I have shewn in what respects charity, joined with the pure heart, the good conscience, and

faith unfeigned, forms the end of the commandment. Let us ever keep in view those essential parts of a virtuous character, and preserve them in their proper union. Thus shall our religion rise into a regular and well-proportioned edifice, where each part gives firmness and support to another. If any one of those material parts be wanting in the structure; if, out of our system of charity, either purity, or justice, or faith, be left, there will be cracks and flaws in the building, which prepare its ruin.

This is indeed one of the greatest and most frequent errors of men in their moral conduct. They take hold of virtue by pieces and corners only. Few are so depraved as to be without all sense of duty, and all regard to it. To some moral qualities, which appear to them amiable or estimable, almost all men lay claim; and on these they rest their worth, in their own estimation. But these scattered pieces of virtue, not uniting into one whole, nor forming a consistent character, have no powerful influence on their general habits of life. From various unguarded quarters they lie open to temptation. Their lives are full of contradiction, and perpetually fluctuate between good and evil. Virtue can neither rise to its native dignity, nor attain its proper rewards, until all its chief parts be joined together in our character, and exert an equal authority in regulating our conduct.

tants of the earth depend for light, life, and subsistence. But as long

can descry nothing through the obscurity that wraps them up.

While it is thus certain that our times are not at our own disposal, we are taught by the text, that they are in the hand of God. This may be considered in two views. Our times are in the hand of God, as a Supreme Disposer of events. They are in the hand of God, as a Guardian and a Father.

Our times, I say, are in the hand of God as a supreme irresistible Ruler. All that is to happen to us in this and the succeeding years of our life, if any succeeding years we shall be allowed to see,-has been foreknown and arranged by God. The first view under which human affairs present themselves to us, is that of confused and irregular succession. The events of the world seem thrown together by chance, like 'the billows of the sea, tumbling and tossing over each other, without rule or order. All that is apparent to us, is the fluctuation of human caprice, and the operation of human passions. We see the strife of ambition, and the efforts of stratagem, labouring to accomplish their several purposes among the societies of men. is no more than the surface, the outside of things, that we behold. Higher counsels, than it is in our power to trace, are concerned in the transactions of the world. If we believe in God at all, as the Governor of the universe, we must believe that, without his providence, nothing happens on earth. He overrules, at his pleasure, the passions of men. He bends all their designs into subserviency to his decree. He makes the wrath of man to praise him; and restrains, in what measure he thinks fit, the remainder of wrath. (Psal. lxxvi. 10.) He brings forth in their course all the generations of men. When the time is come for their entering into light, they appear on the stage; and

But it

when the time fixed for their dismission arrives, he changes their countenance, and sends them away. The time of our appearing is now come, after our ancestors had left their place, and gone down to the dust. We are at present permitted to act our part freely and without constraint. No violence is done to our inclination or choice. But assuredly there is not a day of our life, nor an event in that day, but was foreseen by God. That succession of occurrences, which to us is full of obscurity and darkness, is all light and order in his view. He sees from the beginning to the end, and brings forward every thing that happens in its due time and place.

Our times are altogether in his hand. Let us take notice, that they are not in the hands either of our enemies, or of our friends. It is not in the power of man to shorten or to prolong our life, more or less than God has decreed. creed. Enemies may employ craft or violence in their attacks; friends may employ skill and vigilance for the preservation of our health and safety; but both the one and the other can have effect only as far as God permits. They work in subserviency to his purpose. By him they are held in invisible bonds. To the exertions of all human agents he says, Hitherto shalt thou come, and no farther.

We are to observe next, that our times are in the hand of God, not only as an Almighty Disposer, but as a merciful Guardian and Father. We are by no means to imagine, that from race to race, and from year to year, God sports with the lives of succeeding generations of men, or, in the mere wantonness of arbitrary power, brings them forth and sends them away. No; if we have any confidence in what either the light of nature suggests to all men, or what the revelation of the gospel has confirm

ed to Christians, we have full ground to believe that the administration of human affairs is conducted with infinite wisdom and goodness. The counsels of the Almighty are indeed too deep for our limited understandings to trace. His path may often, as to us, be in the sea, and his footsteps in the mighty waters; while, nevertheless, all his paths are mercy and truth. He who, from the benignity of his nature, erected this world for the abode of men; He who furnished it so richly for our accommodation, and stored it with so much beauty for our entertainment; He who, since first we entered life, hath followed us with such a variety of mercies, surely can have no pleasure in our disappointment and distress. He knows our frame; He remembers we are dust; and looks to frail man, we are assured, with such pity as a father beareth to his children. (Psal. ciii. 13, 14.) To him we may safely commit ourselves, and all our concerns, as to one who is best qualified, both to direct the incidents proper to happen to us in this world, and to judge of the time when it is fit for us to be removed from it.

Even that ignorance of our future destiny in life, in which we sometimes complain, is a signal proof of his goodness. He hides from us the view of futurity, because the view would be dangerous and overpowering. It would either dispirit us with visions of terror, or intoxicate us by the disclosure of success. The veil which covers from our sight the events of this and of succeeding years, is a veil woven by the hand of mercy. Our times are in his hand; and we have reason to be glad that in his hand they are kept, shut out from our view. Submit to his pleasure as an Almighty Ruler we must, because we cannot resist him. Equal reason there is for trusting in him as a Guardian, under whose disposal we are safe.

Such is the import of the text, that our times are in the hand of God. Our times are unknown to us, and not under our own direction. They are in the hands of God as a Governor and Ruler; in the hands of God as a Guardian and Father. These separate views of the text require, on our part, separate improvements.

Seeing our times are not in our own hand, seeing futurity is unknown to us, let us, first, check the vain curiosity of penetrating into what is to come. Conjecture about futurity we often must; but upon all conjectures of what this year is to produce, let us lay a proper restraint. Let us wait till God shall bring forward events in their proper course, without wishing to discover what he has concealed; lest, if the discovery were granted, we should see many things we would wish not to have seen.

The most common propensity of mankind is to store futurity with whatever is agreeable to them; especially in those periods of life when imagination is lively, and hope is ardent. Looking forward to the year now beginning, they are ready to promise themselves much from the foundations of prosperity which they have laid; from the friendships and connexions which they have secured; from the plans of conduct which they have formed. Alas! how deceitful do all these dreams of happiness often prove! While many are saying in secret to their hearts, To-morrow shall be as this day, and more abundantly, we are obliged in return to say to them, Boast not of thyself of to-morrow, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. I do not mean that in the unknown prospect which lies before us, we shall forebode to ourselves nothing but misfortunes.-May it be the pleasure of Heaven that this year run on in a placid and tranquil tenor to us all!-But this I say, that in such a foresight of futurity as we are