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tage, where poverty and affliction reign together. There let him behold the difconfolate widow fitting - fteeped in tears; thus forrowing over the infant, fhe knows not how to fuccour "O my child, thou art now left excc posed to a wide and a vicious world, too full of fnares and temptations for thy tender and unpractifed age. Perhaps a parent's love may magnify "thofe dangers. But when I confider

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"thou art driven out naked into the "midft of them, without friends, with

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out fortune, without inftruction, my "heart bleeds beforehand for the evils "which may come upon thee. GOD, "in whom we trufted, is witness, fo

low had his providence placed us, "that we never indulged one wish to "have made thee rich, L3

virtuous we "would

"would have made thee

for thy

"father, my husband, was a good man " and feared the Lord, and though "all the fruits of his care and industry were little enough for our fupport, yet he honeftly had determined to "have fpared fome portion of it, fcanty

as it was, to have placed thee fafely "in the way of knowledge and inftruc"tion-But alas! he is gone from us, << never to return more, and with him are fled the means of doing it: "For, Behold the creditor is come upon us, "to take all that we have." Grief is

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eloquent, and will not eafily be imitated.

But let the man, who is the leaft friend to diftreffes of this nature, conceive fome difconfolate widow uttering her complaint even in this manner, and then let him confider, if there is any for

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row like this forrow, wherewith the Lord has afflicted her? or, whether there can be any charity like that, of taking the child out of the mother's bofom, and rescuing her from these apprehenfions. Should a heathen, a ftranger to our holy religion and the love it teaches, fhould he, as he journeyed, come to the place where the lay, when be faw, would be not have compaffion on her? Gop forbid, a christian fhould this day want it; or at any time look upon fuch a diftrefs, and pass by on the other fide.

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Rather, let him do, as his Saviour taught him, bind up the wounds, and pour comfort into the heart of one, whom the hand of GoD has fo bruifed. Let him practise what it is, with Elijah's tranfport, to fay to the afflicted widow L 4

-See,

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-See, thy fon liveth!

liveth by my

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charity, and the bounty of this hour, to all the purposes which make life defirable, -to be made a good man, and a profitable fubject: on one hand to be trained up to fuch a fenfe of his duty, as may fecure him an intereft in the world to come; and with regard to this world, to be fo brought up in it, to a love of honeft labour and industry, as. all his life long to earn and eat his bread with joy and thankfulness.

"Much peace and happiness rest up"on the head and heart of every one "who thus brings children to CHRIST - May the bleffing of him that was ready to perifh come feasonably upon "him. The, Lord comfort him, when

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be moft wants it, when he lays fick

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upon his bed; make thou, O GOD! all his bed in his ficknefs; and for "what he now fcatters, give him, then, that peace of thine which paffeth all understanding, and which nothing in "this world can either give or take away." Amen.

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