avoid sin. If you
would be happy, and enjoy a long and tranquil life, follow carefully
the directions of our text; for rest assured that a contrary course of
conduct will not only involve you in misery and wretchedness, but
bring you to a premature grave. Let us then take warning, and not
become our own executioners. Let us make the most of life we may, and
not turn our present existence, which is one of heaven's choicest
blessings, into a curse. Let us do good in our day and generation, and
render ourselves blessings to mankind, by living soberly, righteously
and peaceably in the world? Let us do justly, love mercy, and walk
humbly with God--visit the widow and the fatherless in their
affliction, and keep ourselves unspotted from the world.

SERMON III

"And they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with
the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as
oxen, and seven times shall pass over thee until thou know that the
Most High ruleth in the kingdom of, men, and giveth it to whomsoever
he will." Daniel iv:32.

That reason, as well as revelation, teaches an overruling providence,
very few deny. There must exist in nature an omnipotent and benevolent
Being to keep all her works in harmony--to touch the most secret and
subtle springs of the vast machinery of the universe--to regulate seed
time and harvest, summer and winter, day and night; and to throw the
enrapturing charms of countless variety not only over the landscape,
but over all that we behold in the heavens above, or in the earth
beneath. Globes roll in the paths assigned them, and by some unseen
hand are wisely kept from interfering in their orbits, and disturbing
each other's motions. These facts demonstrate the existence of an
omniscient, omnipotent, and Benevolent Being; and every event,
transpiring in the government of the world, proclaims an omnipresent
Jehovah.

He not only works in the majesty of the lightning, and in the grandeur
of the storm regulating and directing the whole in its sublime career,
but he notices the fall of a sparrow, and numbers the very hairs of
our head. Events, the most trivial in their nature, are the objects of
his notice, as well as those of the most momentous character. Were not
this the case, universal disorder and ruin would soon find their way
into his works, break the chain of events, and reduce all, that we now
admire, from its present harmony and glory, down to its general
confusion