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they may learn piety and virtue, from your inftructions and example-Above all, recommend them to God in your daily prayers; prayers draw down the bleffings of Heaven" It cannot be," faid the devout mother of St.Auftin concerning her fon who then feemed abandoned to profane and diffolute courfes, "It cannot be, that the child of fo many prayers and tears fhould perish." The Almighty does fuffer himself to be overcome by prayer. Wrestling with God, like Jacob, we may extort a bleffing from him: We may hold him faft by his promifes, and fay, I will not let thee go, except thou blefs me. And if the prayer of faith be fo powerful a thing, why may it not prevail to obtain a bleffing for others, as well as for ourselves? The patriarch Jacob was perfuaded of

the prevalence of prayer, when he bleffed the two fons of Jofeph: When his flefhly tabernacle was weakest, then was his faith ftrongeft, and of confequence, his prayers moft prevalent, for according to a man's faith, fo fhall it be done unto him.

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SERMON XIV.

JACOB'S PROPHESY.

GENESIS, xlix. 1.

And Jacob called unto his fons, and faid, Gather yourfelves together, that I may tell you that which fhall befal you in the last days.

Ir was a prevailing opinion with the people of ancient times, that dying perfons were often favoured with very peculiar infights into futurity. They fuppofed the foul, on its approaching feparation from the body, to become more divine; perhaps to hold converse with fuperior intelligencies, or to be favoured at leaft with fome tranfient

glimpses of the world to come. Contemplating the weakness and languor of the dying man, and confidering his impreffive tone of voice, and the elevation of his language, contrafted with the manifest debility of the finking frame, they might naturally conlude, that he spoke not from himself, but prophefied; that they heard, not the uncertainties of human conjecture, but the dictates of a divine infpiration.

The fenfe of prophefy is generally obfcure; and rarely to be understood, till explained by the event. In the prophefy we are about to confider, there is much obfcurity, both from its highly figurative language, and the difficulty of tracing its fulfilment in the hiftory of the pofterity of Jacob. However, here, as in other fcriptures of doubtful meaning, we may learn

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