offensive to God to administer a medicine to a man sick of any common distemper. The province of God, who wills that at all times we rely upon his blessing as the first cause of deliverance in all distress, but forbids not that we use the instruments which his mercy hath put in our own hands, -his province is no more invaded in the one case than in the other. On the contrary, it is not less criminal, less uncharitable, less offensive to God, to neglect the man under the recent symptoms of death, than to neglect the sick man, in whom those symptoms have not taken place; since the true condition of both, for any thing we can possibly know to the contrary, is only that of sickness.

Nor let us be deterred from promoting the attempts to reanimate, by another superstition, that if we recover the man apparently dead, we do him no good office; we only bring him back from the seats of rest and bliss to the regions of misery. Elijah had no such apprehension, when he revived the widow's son; nor our Lord, when he reanimated the daughter of Jairus,

or the widow's son of Nain,

nor even

He

when he recalled the soul of Lazarus. recalled the soul of Lazarus! The soul once gone no human effort ever shall recall; but if it were criminal to stay the soul not yet gone but upon the point of her departure, the cure of diseases and of wounds, and the whole art of medicine and of surgery, by parity of reason would be criminal. But in truth, whatever might be the case of St. Paul and others of the first preachers and martyrs, who had no expectation in this world but misery, and were secure of their crown of glory in the next,— to the generality of men, even of Christians, continuance in the present life is highly desirable; and that without regard to secular interests and enjoyments (which claim however a moderate subordinate regard), but purely with a view to the better preparation for the next. Upon this ground we pray against sudden death; and we may lawfully use other means besides our prayers to rescue ourselves and our brethren from it. The continuance of the present life gives the good leisure to improve, and affords the sinner space for repentance. Nor is it the

least part of the praise of this Society, that the restoration of the present life, effected by its means, hath been to many, by the salutary instruction and admonition which they have received from their deliverers, the occasion that they have been begotten anew, by the word of God and the aid of his Holy Spirit, to the hope of immortality.

They stand here before you whose recovered and reformed lives are the proof of my assertions. Let them plead, if my persuasion fail, let them plead the cause of their benefactors. Stand forth, and tell, my brethren, to whom you owe it under God that you stand here this day alive! Tell what in those dreadful moments were your feelings, when on a sudden you found yourselves surrounded with the snares of death, when the gates of destruction seemed opening to receive you, and the overflowings of your own ungodliness made you horribly afraid! Tell what were your

feelings, when the bright scene of life opened afresh upon the wondering eye, and all you had suffered and all you had feared seemed vanished like a dream! Tell

you

what were the mutual feelings, when first revisited your families and friends! of the child returning to the fond parent's care of the father receiving back from the grave the joy, the solace of his age-of

the husband restored to the wife of his bosom of the wife, not yet a widow, again embracing her yet living lord! Tell what are now your happy feelings of inward peace and satisfaction, sinners rescued from the power of darkness, awakened to repentance, and reconciled to God! Your interesting tale will touch each charitable heart, and be the means of procuring deliverance for many from the like dangers which threatened your bodies and your souls. Let it be the business of your days, so unexpectedly lengthened, first to pay to God the true thanksgiving of a holy life'; next, to acknowledge, for the good of others, the instruments of his mercy. Say, "These are they who saved our bodies from the power of the grave, and have restored us to thy fold, O Shepherd and Bishop of our souls!" What though the dead praise thee not, nor they that go down to the regions of silence? yet we will bless the Lord from this time forth for evermore!"

SERMON XL.

MATTHEW, xxiv. 12.

Because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. *

COMPARING the actual manners of mankind with those magnificent descriptions which occur in every page of prophecy, of the prosperous state of religion, both speculative and practical, under the Christian dispensation,-in those happy times "when the mountain of the Lord's house should be exalted above all hills, and all nations should flow unto it" "when the earth should be filled with the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" when this knowledge should not only be imparted to all nations, but indiscriminately dis

*Preached for the Philanthropic Society, March 25. 1792.