and to lift under the banner of God, after I have fought and conquered for Mammon. A third fays, I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come. That is, I am the votary of pleasure, and will acknowledge no other fovereign; I am already fet down to a fenfual, and therefore have no relish for a mental entertainment; too ftrongly attached to corporeal, to receive any fatisfaction from fpiritual enjoyments; I prefer, therefore, the tumult of riot and debauchery among the fons of Belial, to the fober feast of reafon and religion at the table of the Lord. Such, if men would fairly fpeak their thoughts, would be the idle frivolous excufes daily made for the neglect of our duty fuch they were in the times when the parable was fpoken, and fuch they have remained even to this day. When God in

vites men to his feaft, there is always a farm to be vifited, oxen to be proved, and a wife to be attended. That is, ambition withholds, covetoufnefs detains, or pleasure. drives them away from it; the pride, riches, and pleasures of this world fo engross our attention, that we have no thought of any other, no regard to a pride which is meritorious, riches that are unalienable, pleasures that are unfading and immortal. The Jews reprefented in the parable were an ungrateful and perfidious people: let us be ashamed to follow fuch bad examples. If we are not ashamed, furely we shall be afraid. Let us remember their fate, and reft affured, that if we are guilty of the fame crime, we muft expect the fame punishment. If we reject the first gracious invitation,

vitation, we must not dare to hope that he will ever fend us another. None of thofe, fays the parable, which, were bidden, hall tafle of my fupper. If we refufe to accept the terms of mercy offered to us, he will fend for other guefts more worthy of his table, even the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind. Christ may one day adopt into his flock all those barbarous and favage nations who are yet strangers to his word: they perhaps will gladly accept that falvation which we refufe, and eagerly embrace that knowledge which we thus impiously and ungratefully defpife. Even if we fhould hereafter be ever fo defirous of coming to his feaft, his table may be filled without us; his doors, which are now open to receive, may then be shut against us, and none of us who are now bidden may be permitted, however earnestly we folicit for it, to tafte of his fupper. Let us then, my brethren, make the proper ufe of the parable before us. We are invited to the feaft: let each of us put on the wedding garment of righteoufnefs, without which we must by no means appear before our Sovereign. If we do not come as foon as we are called, if we are not cloathed as we ought to be, and if we do not behave ourselves when there in a manner fitable to the occafion, we had better never come at all. And lastly, let us remember that this feaft is but preparatory to a better, even a feaft of joy and happiness in the manfions of the bleft, where we fall celebrate the marriage of the King's Son with fongs of thanksgiving: a feaft where the appetite will never pall, the

enjoy

enjoyment never fatiate, and the converse never tire; where we shall meet and affociate with the fpirits of good men made perfect, where out of the many that are called we fhall fee the few that are chofen, those happy and exalted few, who fhall have left the infipid feaft of human life, for an eternal banquet of and immortality; where they fhall eat the bread of happiness from the hands of the Almighty, and quench their thirst in those rivers of blifs which flow at God's right hand for

evermore.

peace

ON THE DEATH OF THE RIGHTEOUS.

SERMON

XXII.

NUMBERS XXIII. IO.

Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.

THE

HE confideration of our latter end, tho' a point of the utmoft confequence and importance, is, notwithstanding, fo conftantly and so industriously removed from our thoughts, as feldom to enter into them: as death is the ob ject not of our hopes, but of our fears, few, very few among us, can bring themselves to form any wifh concerning it. Such is the folly and inconfiftency of mankind, that whilft we are

every day preparing against accidents which never may, we will not give ourselves the leaft care or concern about that which inevitably must happen; and it is with the utmoft difficulty that any of us can be perfuaded to learn a leffon which all must one day be ohliged to put in practice. Whilft we are on the bufy ftage of this life, a mutual commerce of fraud and diffimulation is perpetually carried on amongst us, and the univerfality of the practice difguifes even from ourselves the folly and the iniquity of it; but a time will come to every one of us, when it can answer no end to deceive, when it can ferve no purpose to dif femble, when hypocrify muft throw off the mask, and falsehood lay afide her delufion; a death-bed detects all the fophiftry of human artifice, unveils the hidden heart, and fhews the man in his true fhape and form.

The prefent age is fo gay and diffolute, fo immerfed in pleasure, that they have neither time or inclination to vifit the chambers of pain and forrow; the bed of fickness has very few attendants, and the house of mourning is most induftriously avoided, left it fhould embitter the fweet draught of luxury, interrupt the course of our amufements, and lay us under the difagreeable neceffity of being ferious. Some indeed are obliged by their neceffities to attend the couch of the fick, and to wait near the bed of death: happy would it be for us, if we could make fcenes of this nature much more familiar to us; for few, I believe, ever returned from them without fome improve

ment,

ment, without fome ferious thoughts, that had a temporary influence over their enfuing conduct.

Surely, if a wifh is to be formed with regard to this awful fubject, it must be that which is expreffed in the words of my text, let me die the death of the righteous, and let my laft end be like his. However we may diflike the means, we fhall all readily embrace the benefits refulting from it; however unwilling we may be to live the life, we should all be glad to die the death of the righteous.

Even amongst the heathens, who had fuch poor and uncertain profpects of a future ftate, the admonitions of a death-bed were not unregarded; they watched the laft moments of their departing friends with the utmost care, and confidered them with a kind of religious awe and veneration; they looked on every action of the dying man as inftructive, on every word as prophetic, and as fuch liftened to them with the deepest attention; but furely, if the words and the actions of a pagan at this important hour were worthy of observation, what should be our regard to thofe of the dying Chriftian, who has fo much more reafon to fear, or to hope for immortality.

What then if we fhould for a while vifit, though but in imagination, thofe fcenes which would be still more forcible in reality; perhaps even a distant view of them may convey fome powerful inftruction. Permit me to introduce you to the chambers of vice and virtue, to point out to you the very different form which death affumes in each of them, and to give you an imperfect