our humble and earnest prayers to him, that he would put into our minds good defires, that he would protect us from all error, and would lead us into all truth; and that he will give us fuch a measure of holiness, as may entitle us, through the merits of his Son, to his favour and protection,

all

There are, indeed, other means of improving in holiness, which we may use with advantage: but, without this of prayer, others will be vain and fruitlefs. We may profit, by reading the word of God, or by the perufal of books of piety, with which our language abounds in a more eminent degree, perhaps, than any other. We may profit too, by hearing the inftructions of the minifters of the Gofpel. But we fhould ever remember, that the fublimeft books of devotion, nay even the book of God himself, can be no further useful, than as they lead us to the practice of devotion and piety. We fhould remember too, that the ministers of God, though they could fpeak with the tongue "of men and angels," unless they lead us to devotion, are no better to us, than founding brafs or a tinkling cymbal.

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But

But no man ever practifed the duty of conftant and fervent prayer, without finding the advantage of it, in every part and stage of life. It is our shield in the hour of temptation, it is our comfort in the hour of distress, it is our joy in profperity, it is our support against despair; and when all our earthly hopes and fears begin to vanish, when we lie down on that bed of sickness and mortality from which we shall never rife, it will be our best support against the horrors of diffolution and the agonies of death,

Let us then daily, both in public and private, fall down on our knees before the footftool of God. And may God fo graciously accept the imperfect prayers we offer to him, that when we shall ftand together in judgment at his throne, they may plead for us, and that our "whole spirit and foul and body $6 may be presented blameless," at that great and awful hour!

SERMON III.

GENESIS xxii. 1, 2.

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham. And he faid, Behold, here I am. And he faid, Take now thy Jon, thine only fon Ifaac, whom thou loveft, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt-offering, upon one of the mountains, which I will tell thee of.

HE pages of prophane history record

TH

many inftances of heroic fortitude and refolution, which juftly challenge our profoundeft admiration and esteem. When, for example, we fee a Brutus or a Manlius Torquatus, rifing up from the feat of judgment, to pronounce the fentence of death upon their own children, and with firm and unaltered looks, beholding their bodies mangled by the bloody

D3

bloody axe of the executioner,—we cannot forbear admiring the determined severity of that virtue, which could prefer the dictates of duty to the feelings of natural affection, and which thus enabled the uprightness of the judge to triumph over the tenderness of the parent. But, allowing to thefe examples their due share of merit and commendation, there is ftill fomething much more affecting, much more deferving of admiration, in the conduct of Abraham, now before us. It required, indeed, no fmall degree of fortitude in the Roman fathers, to ftifle the ftrong pleadings of nature in favour of their offending fons: but, at the fame time, it must be remembered, that thofe fathers had been educated with the most ardent and enthusiastic notions of the love of their country, and therefore were ready to facrifice every thing to it; and that their fons had been guilty of high misdemeanors, which justice, which the safety of their country, and the fupport of military discipline, loudly required to be punished with exemplary severity.

But, in the history before us, the circumftances are widely different. The child to

be