are fled with your affectionate parent who procured them. Anxious to provide against the viciffitudes of fortune, and the cafualties of accident, he funk under the load of evils which his folicitude fuggefted. The bitternefs of death was encreafed with the apprehenfions of what we should fuffer, when we were left behind him. The ftroke is now given, and we feel, what, at a distance, I beheld with gloomy horror. Had it pleased ⚫ God to have spared him, whilst you were able ⚫ to support yourselves, whilst he had impreffed on your minds a strong sense of integrity and Religion, fortified by fuch principles, we would have struggled hard, for an honest livelihood, for a virtuous fupport. But though ⚫ the scene be fo lamentably changed, though every profpect of comfort be vanished, we will ⚫ not, under the Providence of the Almighty • abandon ourselves to defpair. Thy ways, O • God, are unfearchable; and if it feem good

to thee to deprive us of the means of sub' fistence here for all thy difpenfations, how' ever unpalatable, are tender mercies-grant us, gracious God, foon to meet, where tears and forrow, and anguish shall be known no more.'

Let

Let the moft hard-hearted be witnefs to fuch a scene of parental fondness, deep diftrefs, and pious refignation; let him revolve in his mind what fuch a family must suffer, and he cannot, furely, refufe fhewing compaffion to them. I will only obferve that the poorest, the meaneft, the most contemptible are among thofe, for whom the Redeemer of the world is making interceffions to their Father who is in Heaven. And he does not, we know, intercede in vain. Refemble then the Father of the universe. Attend to the fupplicating voice of diftrefs, "Have pity upon me, have pity upon "men, O, ye my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me,

SERMON XXII.

* PSALM XC. 12.

So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

S we have now almost arrived at the end of another year, I cannot addrefs you more properly on any subject, than on the uncertainty of human life; imploring you to befeech the Almighty to give us grace "ber our days"-not to reveal to us the determinate time of our life-but that we may make a right, and true, ufe, of the certainty we all of us have, of our approaching diffolution.

"to num

The Pfalm, from which the text is taken, was written by Mofes, when the children of Ifrael had provoked the Lord in the wildernefs; in confequence of which the Almighty

Preached the laft Sunday in the year.

threatened

threatened that they fhould all perish, and that none should reach the promised land, Caleb and Joshua excepted, but should all die in the space of forty years. When the Lord had "brought his people out of Egypt with a mighty hand, and a stretched-out arm"

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to "

when, during their journey, "he rained down "Manna from heaven, and ftruck the hard rock that the waters gufhed out," in order preferve them alive by a great deliver"ance-when he had brought them to the "borders of the promised land," and there commanded Mofes to fend a ruler out of every tribe, that they might report" whether the in"habitants were strong or weak, few or many, "and the land they dwelt in, whether it was

good or bad what cities they dwelt in, "whether in tents, or strong holds"—that is, whether in open villages, or walled cities— "and commanded them alfo to bring of the "fruit of the land, for it was almost the time "of vintage-and, during their journey, to be "of good courage;"—after an absence of forty days, they returned, and "reported of the land that it was very good," and produced a clufter of grapes of prodigious fize, and pomegranates,