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do to be saved, or how they may find the road which will lead them to God, and to meet their father and mother again in heaven!

Oh! my Christian friends, on your individual contribution, the fate of one of these little ones, may depend. God acts by means and your contribution may open a door, not only of temporal deliverance, but of eternal salvation, to some lamb of the flock, now wandering amongst wolves; but destined, through your instrumentality, to join the band of innocents above, and to rest in the arms of the great Shepherd of the sheep. If you are now doubting, how much you ought to give, lean to the side of mercy; let compassion for the fatherless turn the scale. If you are hesitating between two sums, think of your own children; and remember how you would feel, if called upon to leave them, without your care, upon the world. Can you take a means, more likely to draw down the Divine blessing upon them, and secure your continuance with them, than to hear the orphan's prayers, and wipe away the orphan's tears?

Believe me that, if you give, this day, something more than you intended, on coming here, you will never repent it. You will lay out your money on good security. What you bestow in faith, what you give for Christ's sake, will be abundantly repaid; for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

The Lord will deliver you in the time of trouble. The Lord will strengthen you upon the bed of languishing, and make all your bed in your sickness. The Lord will recompense you, at the resurrection of the just. And oh! when, through the merits of Him who died, the just, for the unjust, we reach that happy country, where there is no death, neither sorrow, nor crying, what joyful re-unions shall we see! Parents and children, friends and relations, all that were one in Jesus, and soldiers of the cross, will meet again. Yes, my brethren; win souls to God, and your reward will be, to behold them in glory. Provide the means, by which these little ones may be brought to their Saviour; and they will arise before an assembled world, and call you blessed. Their parents, if numbered with the Lord's people, will stand up in the assembly of the saints, and say; "Behold the man, who saved our child from temporal and eternal misery." Their angels, who always behold the face of God, will descend from their thrones, to meet you, and to claim your everlasting friendship. Their Saviour, whom all the angels worship, will say, "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me." Yes, he will call you up, to sit among the princes and nobles of his kingdom. He will

distinguish you by a name, far above all ranks and orders of this world below. Amongst the high aristocracy of heaven, your style and title shall be, "The father of the fatherless, and the orphan's friend."

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SERMON XIX.

REVELATIONS, vii. 14.

"THESE ARE THEY WHICH CAME OUT OF GREAT TRIBULATION, AND HAVE WASHED THEIR ROBES, AND MADE THEM WHITE, IN THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB.”

No man who reads the Scripture, can deny that it is his duty, and no man who reads the Scripture to advantage, can doubt that it is his happiness, to set the Lord always before him, to meditate on him continually, to remember him upon his bed, and to think of him when he is waking. Nor can the human understanding, thus employed upon so vast an object, fail to exult in the immensity of its prospects, and give full range to its capacities and powers, upon so various and boundless a field of exercise. And though the light of revelation, alone, can guide our footsteps safely, through the trackless space; and though to be wise above what is written, is but to grope in the darkness of our own presumption; yet it is the nature of that truth which shines from heaven, to set us free: and, therefore, to compare spiritual things with spiritual, and to deduce from plain principles of Scripture, such general notions of the divine character, as

may vindicate the ways of God to man, is but to give him that tribute of the mind and understanding, which is, in truth, a part of the first and great commandment.

It is clearly revealed, then, that God is love. It is clearly revealed, that he delights in the happiness of his creatures. It is clearly revealed, that man has been, not a loser, but a gainer by his fall in Adam. From a comparison, then, of these truths together, can we, if asked, in the words of the Psalmist, "what is man?"-can we feel any reluctance in answering; Man is a creature formed for happiness; and that happiness to spring from his loss in Adam, and his redemption from sin and sorrow, through the merits and mediation of the Lord Jesus Christ?

And, here, I would invite your footsteps, into a field, which we should, assuredly, tread with awe and reverence; but which we may tread, I trust, without presumption. If, then, the nature of God be love, and if the true element of love, be the communication of happiness; can we conceive a more suitable or amiable exercise of the mind of a beneficent Creator, than that of planning means and instruments, by which He may send forth streams, from the fountain of that bosom which is the fulness of joy; and thus scatter, far and wide, around him, some portion of his own essential

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