not shut our ears, lest we should cry ourselves another day and not be heard. But neither of them understands his real condition; and if we would understand how to succour either, we must hear what God's word says to both. "Awake,' it says, "thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." They are "dead in trespasses and sins," both parties of them, and in the broad road of death eternal; and "the way of peace have they not known," for "there is no fear of God before their eyes." Both parties therefore want what David actually coveted. They want right views of God, and of the way of God to apprehend him as the chief good of all his creatures, and to know how they may approach him, so that he will on his part accept them, and be their shield and their exceeding great reward. Let them learn these things, and "goodness and mercy shall surely follow them all the days of their life." For they shall "know both how to be abased and how to abound;" and "all things shall work together" for their benefit. But let them abide in ignorance of these things, and though, if they be hungry you still must feed them, and if they be thirsty you still must give them drink-to better their condition effectually, is neither in you nor in themselves. If all that they have were multiplied till their hands * Eph. v. 14. could not hold it, in the judgment of truth they would still be nothing better than "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” So far of the necessities of those around us. II. Look we now to the method by which the distress may best be remedied. Let that course be followed up, upon which God has given you grace to enter. Your restoration of this church, and the care you have taken for increasing the accommodation within its walls, will do much. Let more churches be built, so that whosoever will, may take of the waters of life freely; and your best hopes will be largely realized. For, my brethren, if any half believer is disposed to regard what I exhort you to with scorn —if any person professing himself a Christian, is of doubtful mind respecting it, and deems it improbable that any considerable good effects should follow-to such, and to all, I say, look once more to the text, and consider what I observed upon it in the beginning. When David desires, as his chief good, to "behold the beauty of the Lord," and to obtain his guidance; the Spirit, under whose teaching he writes, prompts him to ask nothing else, in order to this end, but free access to the ordinances of God's house. But what was enough for him, assuredly is enough for any man; and the cases are truly parallel. There is as good ground, I have said, for hoping that the people of this place may obtain what they need for their souls in such churches as you shall provide for them, as there was for hoping that David and others of his day might obtain the like at the tabernacle then standing. This, however, may be thought by some to require confirmation-at least, the consideration of it, if it be maintainable, will be for our comfort and encouragement. I must therefore be permitted to dwell upon it more at large. We believe, I suppose, that every good gift, for spiritual edification especially, is from God. We are assured that the means of grace, as we call them, do actually convey grace by virtue of His choice of them to that end; and therefore we depend simply upon His promise in the use of them. But is not that promise, " Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, a promise as good, as valid, as exceeding broad, as any upon which the faith of David, or of any Old Testament saint, could stay itself? And when the Lord said to those fathers of the christian church to whom the ministers of the present day have succeeded, "Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world;"† did he not give a promise therein which is as truly ours as any promise + Matt. xxviii. 20. *Matt. xviii. 20. VOL III. Y given to David was ever his? Why is it then to be for a moment thought that the end is likely to be separated from the means now, any more than formerly? But I am taking it for granted, it will perhaps be thought, that whensoever a church is built and a minister is set over it who hath been lawfully called to his office, the flock of Christ is necessarily given in charge to a man of faith, and prayer, and piety. But no, I say. It is not necessary for my argument that I should take this for granted; neither will I do so, whatever I may hope or think. For, without assuming so much as that, I can prove all that I have pledged myself to prove, and thereby quite as much as is necessary in order to submit a good case to your benevolence; or, in other words, to show sufficient cause to fair-judging people, why they should persist in their endeavours for the enlargement of the existing places of public worship, and for the erection of new ones where they are wanted. Be it so, that "in the visible church the evil" (as our Article expresses it) "is ever mingled with the good"-be it so, that sometimes the evil may have chief authority "in the ministration of the word and sacraments,-"still, if it be a duty to provide these ordinances for our brethren, this possibility will not exonerate us from the discharge of our duty; neither need it operate as any absolute discouragement, nor will it so operate upon honest and humble minds. For, first-it is only a possibility, not a certainty. And if I have no right to presume that, in this or that particular instance, the ordinances of God will be faithfully and piously administered, you have no right to presume that they will not. And further; though it be abundantly clear that we never can be too solicitous to obtain godly teachers, or well blame ourselves too much if we be not continually praying with our church, "that it may please God to illuminate all bishops, priests, and deacons, with a true knowledge and understanding of his word; that both by their preaching and living they may set it forth and show it accordingly:" though it lies with those who have authority to send ministers into the Lord's vineyard, to take heed that they lay hands suddenly on no man ;* and with those that are sent, to see that they never forget God's awful woe against the "idol shepherd :"+ and though patrons, as they are called, or such as have power of presentation to cures and benefices, have indeed an awful trust and an awful account to give of it, so that woe is unto them if they act not faithfully and in the fear of God, to choose wise, and upright, and pious persons, to the best of their knowledge and belief,-yet, after all, divine ordi |