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dread of God's displeasure, if the hopes of immortal happiness impress your minds; let me prevail with every master of a family here fent, to confecrate his houfe this very night to God, to erect in it an Altar unto God, and to offer upon it "the facrifice of praise and thanksgiving." Let me have the fatisfaction, my brethren, of knowing that the Gospel has not this day, been preached unto you in vain. This night, and every fucceeding one, affemble your families to beg the bleffings of God, to acknowlege your fenfe of his mercies, and to befeech him, "that this life ended, you may dwell with him in the life everlafting."

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SERMON IX.

MATTHEW xvI. 20.

What is a man profited if he fhall gain the whole world, and lofe his own foul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his foul?

IT

pleased the All-wife Creator, after man

had loft his innocency, that his bread fhould be earned by labor, and his wealth acquired by folicitude. . It was ordered, likewife, by All-feeing wisdom, that disappointment should frequently accompany his toil, and fruftrate his intentions; that uncertainty in the poffeffion, and infecurity in the enjoyment fhould always await, with forbidding afpect, and difcouraging intimations, not only the practice of fraud, but the dealings of integrity; teaching us hereby, that we should not be too anxiously careful, about many things in this life; but that we should have a principal regard to" the one thing needful," and exert our

every effort, to fecure" that good part which "fhall not be taken away from us."

But uncertainty and disappointment are not our only difcouragements: be our fuccess what it may, it is limited to a very fhort period: "the duft of which we are made returns to

duft, and the spirit to God who gave it." The foul hath originally impreffed upon it the idea, that it is accountable to a Supreme Being for what it does in the body, and hath received --we Chriftians at least have received-a clear and an express declaration from God, that it fhall be everlaftingly rewarded or punished, together, with the body, for what is done in this life, either with exquifite felicity, or unutterable torments..

We will confider what the foul of man is; its immenfe value; and its dreadful lofs; and then what a man will be profited, if he fhall gain the whole world, and lofe his own foul.

Firft, The foul of man is that spiritual, and invisible part, created by God, and is capable of exifting, when feparate from the body. "God "made man of the duft of the earth, and "breathed into his noftrils the breath of life, "and he became a living foul." The foul then is immaterial. It was not made of mat

ter,

ter, of the duft of the earth, as the body was, but by the breath of God. It has an immediate divine original, and a near refemblance to the purity, and fpirituality, of the Divine Effence.

So that our fouls, deriving their originality from the Divinity itself, are of an unperishable nature. Death is only a tranflation of the foul from its earthly tabernacle, a paffage, through the vale of mortality, to the land of duration.

Secondly, When the whole human race, through the tranfgreffion of our first parents, lay under the fentence of condemnation, the Almighty was pleased to reftore us to his favor, by affuming, in the perfon of Jefus Chrift, the human nature. It appeared to Almighty wif dom, that the only expedient of faving man, was to become man himself. "For us men,

"and for our falvation, he humbled himself "and became obedient unto death, even the "death of the crofs."

Thirdly, If then we could not be restored to the favor of God without this mighty effort of Omnipotence, our own reafon, even if the Scriptures were filent, would fuggest to us, that, unless our condition had been deplorable, God

would