your fick, your prifoners, your poor. That affistance, then, which we are ever disposed to give, we now hope in our turn to receive. Strike out into as many different paths of benevolence as you please; yet defert not, we befeech you, the old, the tried, the approved one, to which you have been fo long accustomed. This charity has always been your favourite child; it has been born and bred amongst you; you have hitherto nurfed and cherished it with the tendereft care; do not now abandon it to the wide world, where it is not yet ftrong enough to make its way without your help. You have seen, I truft, upon the whole, that they for whofe families we beg relief, "are "worthy for whom you should do this‡:" that thofe on whom they depended for fupport, and whose help they have loft, were, both by profeffion and by principle, most useful members of fociety; and yet were unable to leave their children any other inheritance than that of extreme poverty, aggravated by the remembrance of happier days, and by minds fufcep

Including the three different branches of it above-mentioned, p. 152, 153.

I

Luke vii. 4.

tible

tible of the keeneft feelings. May these confiderations have their due influence on your hearts! And may we, my reverend brethren, never forget that it is in our power, by our future conduct, to give these confiderations whatever weight we think fit! If we do not give them all we can; if, in proportion as we ftand more in need of public favour, we do not redouble our endeavours to deferve it; by a discreet inoffenfive behaviour and converfation, by refidence on our preferments, by a close attention to the proper studies and functions of our profeffion, by fervent piety, by extenfive charity, by meekness and humility, by a difinterested and ardent zeal for the advancement of religion, and the falvation of mankind; if, I fay, by these, and fuch like evangelical virtues, we do not support the credit of our character, and by real usefulness acquire veneration and esteem; we shall be no less blind to our intereft, than unmindful of our duty both to God and man†.

+ See Archbishop Secker's truly paftoral Charges throughout; which well deferve the serious attention of every fincere and confcientious clergyman in every rank of the profeffion.

SERMON

SERMON VIII.

ECCLESIASTES, xii. 1.

REMEMBER NOW THY CREATOR IN THE

DAYS OF THY YOUTH.

TH

HE reason why we are here, and in other places of Scripture, more particularly enjoined to remember God IN OUR YOUTH, is obvious; it is, because we are then most apt to forget him. Indeed, in every stage of life as well as this, the cares and pleasures of the world too often engross our chief attention, and banish for a while the remembrance of our Maker. But it is in youth only we seem to be funk in a total forgetfulness of Religion, and "to have not God in all our thoughts." In a more advanced age, reafon becomes so strong, or appetite so weak, that even in the busieft and the gayeft scenes, we must have fome intervals

VOL. II.

N

tervals of thinking, we must have our folitary and ferious moments, in which the idea of a God will recur and force itself upon our minds. The calamities and disappointments which we meet with, as we travel forwards in this vale of tears, the lofs of friends or of fortune, acute pains, and lingering diseases, are so many awakening inftances of our weakness and dependence, and compel us, in spite of indolence or pride, to look up to Heaven, and our Father that is in Heaven, for affiftance and protection. But in youth, these faithful monitors are wanting; there are, then, generally fpeaking, no cares or afflictions to remind us of our Creator, and bring us to a juft fenfe of our duty. The novelty of the objects that fucceffively surround us at our first entrance into life, fupplies us with a perpetual fund of entertainment; and an uninterrupted flow of health and spirits "fills "our mouth with laughter, and our tongue with "joy." We find ourfelves happy, and confider not who it was that made us fo; we find ourfelves in a wide theatre of action, and without thinking how we are to perform our refpective parts upon it, furvey with rapture those alluring fcenes that every where open to our