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frequency of these blessings is apt to render us less attentive to them, so that we are sometimes insensible from whom they come, till some of the most precious of them are withdrawn. But, surely, the constancy of the Divine Bounty will, when we reflect, have a very different influence upon our minds; we must love our great Benefactor more when we perceive that his gifts are not the occasional effects of uncertain affections, but are the steady results of systematic goodness and if they are dispensed with so little ostentation, that we are scarcely reminded of their frequency and value, this ought only to be another ground for our love and adoration of that gracious Being, who has no other view in the good which He does but that it may be done.

II. The gifts of God, my brethren, are not only constant, but they are likewise common to all mankind, and this, perhaps, may be another reason why every individual is less grateful for them in his own particular case. We find that it is not an unusual error among men of enthusiastic devotion, to look for some distinction peculiar to themselves-some impulse of Divine

Grace, which is not equally communicated to all; and their gratitude is apt to be excited more from the imagination of such intercourse, than from those innumerable gifts which are showered upon them, but which are equally the portion of the whole human race. This, alas is the weakness of human vanity.-If our love to our Divine Benefactor is, in the first place, called forth by gratitude for the blessings which he has bestowed upon ourselves, surely it ought, in the second place, to become much warmer and more extensive, when we find that the same, or similar blessings, have been liberally poured forth upon every individual of the race of man, whatever may be the distinctions of nation or of climate, and throughout the long course of his generations. It is not only the care of our little concerns, or those of the individuals, or of the class or tribe with which we are connected, that exercises the love of the great Father of men; but ought not our love of His goodness to become infinitely wider, and more ardent, when we consider, that wherever his sun arises, amidst all the diversities in which man appears, there His Paternal care extends; that his goodness watches

over the savage in the forest, no less than over the inhabitant of civilized realms; that the waiting eyes of all are turned to Him, and that he alone "filleth the hearts of all with food and gladness." Such is the aspect in which the Divine Beneficence appears, when we throw our eyes over the wide circuit of the world! In like manner, when we look back upon the generations that are past, we behold the same guiding Hand conducting them from the first cradle of the human race, and leading them on through all the changes and chances of time to the period at which we now are arrived. In that long and eventful History, stained in so many disastrous particulars with the vices of our wandering race, the care of the Eternal Father has ever been the same-the same Bounty which now supports us, supported "our fathers, and the old time before them;" and the sun which now blesses with its beams the innumerable myriads of men of every race and character, has ever been made to shine with equal impartiality upon all the habitations of "the just and of the unjust." To every reflecting mind, my brethren, this representation must, instead of weakening, add to that love of God

which his bounty naturally calls forth in every individual breast; and when we behold it extending over all, and yet not neglecting any one, we are lost in grateful astonishment, and exclaim, with the Psalmist," O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth."

III. There is yet, however, a third consideration which, when rightly attended to, adds much to the force of this representation. The afflictions and disorders of human life, have ever been a subject of general complaint, and the sad picture of the miseries and the vices of man seems, in the hours of repining, to throw doubts upon the goodness of God. That there are difficulties in this subject it would be vain to deny; yet, at the same time, it opens views of the Divine Goodness which could not otherwise have been perceived or felt. If "man is born to trouble," does not this very circumstance lead him to look up to a Heavenly Father for consolation? and that affecting representation of the Divine character which paints him as "the Father of the fatherless, and the Judge of the widow," would never have been known, were it

not for the common calamities of our feeble existence. Were not man likewise subject to guilt, where would have been that most divine attribute of forgiveness and mercy, which surely, of all conceivable qualities, is the most lovely, and the most attractive of those which draw the heart to God? Nature herself has, in every age, dimly led to the perception of those glorious discoveries; and thus to the reflecting mind, that very part of the arrangements of Providence which at first sight seems to throw a cloud over the benevolence of God, in fact represents him under images of Goodness, which are of all others the most affecting, and the most captivating to the human heart. And if the origin of the guilt and sorrows of man is an inexplicable part of the counsels of God, O Christian, it has been met to thee by a remedy no less wonderful in mercy! Behold the Image of God himself descending in the form of man, to bear the worst of thy afflictions, and bending even his Divine and Innocent Head under the load of thy sins!-Hear his animating voice calling thee to follow Him into the glory into which he returned, into the presence of that Father who will yet wipe all

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