have here on earth,) "who will commit to your trust the true riches," (that is, your salvation?)

Recollect then, he that is faithful in that which is least, that is, in his conduct here, will be faithful also in much, that is, in the everlasting habitations of Heaven hereafter.

SERMON II.

CHRISTIAN THANKFULNESS.

PSALM CV. 1.

O give thanks unto the Lord, and call upon his name: tell the people what things he has done.

As long as we live in the body here, the manner of fulfilling our duty to ourselves seems to consist in fulfilling it to GoD and to our neighbour: that is, no man who fulfils his duty to God and to his neighbour, will have omitted any part of what is due to himself; and no man who fulfils his duty to himself, will have been able to fulfil it but by fulfilling his duty to God and his neighbour. Such is the simple scheme of Christian morals.

And this perfect balancing of the conduct of a man's life is not only belonging to Christian morals, but belongs to none other. We find in unchristian nations,

both those of antiquity and those of whom we have but lately come to the knowledge, that the duties which we have to perform are not understood in their relation to each other. Thus, one people will be superstitious in their reverence to their idols of wood and stone, but will be cruel and discourteous to their fellow men, and full of uncleanness and vice themselves. Another will be in a degree personally moral, but entirely irrespective of the existence of a God. In none however is or was it ever understood how the duty of man to himself is concerned in his duty to GoD and his neighbour. The servants of GOD in all times have understood it, and David tells us our duty here plainly.

He puts first what has the first place in every man's mind who thinks-our duty to our God and Father: "O give thanks unto the Lord, and call upon his name: tell the people what things he has done."

I. Thanksgiving then, you see, is to form a principal part of our service let us see how fit and reasonable a service this

is for us to offer. I know that many with discontented minds will meet us at this point and say, that life, after all, gives us no cause for the grateful thanksgiving which we Christians declare to be due. They will bid us look around and see the misery of the world-its confusion and turbulence-the conflicts never-endingly carried on in it—the uncertainty of all possessions-the certainty of calamity and disappointment-the uncertainty of life itself, and the unfailing, unavoidable certainty of death. These, they will say, are not things which lead us to giving of thanks; and if we do abstain from murmuring we have done all that can be looked for. If the world were one scene of luxurious sensitive enjoyment-without the fatigue, the satiety, the anxiety of pleasure-the fear and the misery of suffering and of death, we might then be thankful and join with you in saying, "O give thanks unto the Lord."

We are glad to meet them on their own ground, and tell them that withal we shall give thanks, and be thankful

that we are enabled to do what we will hope they will one day join us in doing to their souls' health.

Now we may begin our thankfulness at a very low point and carry it up to the highest. For example.-We find ourselves in the world consisting of what we call two parts, of body and soul : how put together, how related to each other, where each begins and ends, we know not, and never shall know till they are joined together for ever in the kingdom of Heaven, but such we find ourselves. We go on to examine the fitness of our minds and bodies for the state in which we are we find our minds capable of comprehending just what is necessary to carry on the business of life as it is constituted they do not carry us beyond the world with certainty, nor are they unfit for anything which there is in it,—in a word they are suited to the frame of things in which we find ourselves. Suitable to such minds we find our bodies. They are capable of obeying readily the impulses which they have from within,