nifeftly follows, that, as a virtuous and pious life is the highest wisdom, fo a vicious and irreligious one, is the extremity of folly and madness.

A PRAYER.

O MOS MOST gracious God, who, out of thy great love and tender regard for mankind, hath fet before us life and death, everlasting happinefs and mifery; and hath endued us with a freedom of will, and a liberty to choose the one, and avoid the other; and to encourage us to make a right choice, hath annexed a prefent as well as future reward to our obedience to thy laws, and made the ways of religion ways of pleasantnefs, and all its paths to be peace: O give me wisdom, that I may not be carried away by the deceitful pleasures of this world, but may understand and choose the things which belong to my

peace, and wherein my true and only happiness confifts.

Convince me more and more, that fin is the greatest of all evils; that guilt and mifery are always infeparable; and that there is no folid and fubftantial happiness to be attained in this life, but that which results from the teftimony of a good confcience, and the hope of thy favour and acceptance; and grant that these momentous truths may be fo deeply impreffed upon my mind, that I may make it the fincere endeavour of my whole life to please and obey thee, who art my fovereign good and happiness; the only fure foundation of all my hopes both here and hereafter; and in comparison of whose favour, all the honours, riches and enjoyments of this world are as nothing.

Deliver me, I befeech thee, from the fhame and anguifh, the horror and confufion of a guilty confcience; and give me that comfort and complacency of mind, which arifes from the consciousness of having been faithful in thy fervice, and obedient to thy will. And fince thou hath been graciously pleased to make thy fervice the

moft perfect freedom, and the practice of our duty conducive as well to our prefent as to our future well being; O! establish thy laws in my heart, and guide me in the ways of thy commandments; that having faithfully ferved thee in this life, I may at laft be made a joyful partaker of that which is to come, through the fole merits and interceffion of our eternal Advocate and Me-diator, Jefus Chrift. Amen.

CHA P. II.

IN the preceding chapter I have endeavou

red to fhew, that religion is the only folid foundation of happiness in this world; the only means by which we can be enabled to proceed in our journey through life, with any tolerable degree of eafe and comfort: I fhall, in the next place, confider the advantage of religion in respect to the prospect it affords us when we come to die.

And this is an advantage peculiar to virtue and religion, and to which a life of folly and wickedness cannot pretend. The most which that promises its votaries, is to regale their fenfes for a little while it gives them no hopes beyond the grave, nor aims at any thing farther than a short-lived happinefs. "When a wicked man dieth, his ' expectation fhall perish." All his enjoyments are then at an end; and thofe schemes upon which he had built his happinefs, vanish forever. But with a good man it is far otherwise. He looks beyond the prefent life, and beholds with an eye of faith the heavenly "Jerufalem, the city of the li

'ving God!" that place of endless blifs and happiness, which God hath prepared for them that love him. In the hope and expectation of this happiness, he confiders himself as a pilgrim and ftranger upon

earth," and through the affiftance of God's Holy Spirit, is daily endeavouring, by a life of virtue and piety, to render himself worthy to become an inhabitant of those heavenly regions ;-to fit himself for the fociety of just men made perfect.

It must indeed be owned, that death is truly the king of terrors; that the difunion of foul and body; a feparation from all thofe objects which have fo long been dear to us, are reflections in the highest degree awful and diftreffing: Yet to the good man, there are confiderations which enable him to meet this formidable tyrant, not only without alarm, but with fmiles, and to welcome him as the messenger of joy. He confiders, that to leave this world is only to quit a place of trouble and vexation, of vanity and emptinefs: That it is to leave a "barren and dry wilderness, where no water is," for the delightful regions of blifs and happiness, where

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