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you to the possession of inconceivable and endless glory.

Placed as you are in an evil and ensnaring world, where you have to struggle with the weakness and deceitfulness of your own hearts, with the and power malice of Satan, and with countless temptations on every hand to folly and to sin,-what reasons have you to accept and value the offer of a heavenly guide, who alone can conduct you in peace and in safety through all the windings and snares of the wilderness in which you are wandering? "Refuse," says the same pious author," the offer of his "heavenly guidance, and where will your "trust be placed? You will be like a "vessel in a boisterous sea,

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pilot to direct

your course.

without a The sport

"of every wind, the victim of every cur"rent, you cannot but quickly split on "some of the many rocks and shoals "which wait for your destruction." Then choose the Lord for your guide. However dark or stormy the passage may be, yet know to your comfort and joy, that it is an infallible Pilot who has under

taken to conduct you through all its dangers, that the winds and the waves obey his voice, and that he will bring you at last into the wished-for haven. Amen.

SERMON VIII.

THE LORD, THE GUIDE OF HIS PEOPLE.

PSALM LXXIII. 24.

Thou shalt guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory.

IN

N a former discourse on this text, I showed you the way in which the Lord conducts and guides his people in their journey through life, viz. by his providence, making all things work together for their good;-by his word, pointing out the path of duty, as the pillar of cloud and fire directed the march of the Israelites through the wilderness,—and by his Spirit, enlightening their understandings to fulfil whatever his pleasure is.

But, my friends, the Lord's care of his people does not cease with this present

mortal existence. If he guides them in peace and safety through the storms and tempests of this lower world, it is that they may arrive at last "at a city of ha

bitation," a place of rest where they shall for ever dwell. If he graciously vouchsafes to be their God and their guide uuto death, he will likewise be their portion for evermore. "Thou shalt

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guide me with thy counsel," says the Psalmist, "and afterward receive me to glory."

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It is to this latter part of the subject that I propose to call your attention in the following discourse.-May God be with us by his Spirit, while I endeavour to show what is implied in that glory into which the Lord will receive his people, after he has led and conducted them

through the present life. I need not take up your time to show, that by "glory" here must certainly be meant the happiness of the saints in a future state. There is no expression more frequently employed by the sacred writers, in speaking of the happiness of heaven, than the one now under consideration. "I reckon," saith the apostle, " that the

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sufferings of this present time are not "worthy to be compared with that glory "that shall hereafter be revealed:" "For our light affliction, which is but "for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." Nay, so peculiarly descriptive is this epithet of the heavenly state, that when, in condescension to our weak conceptions, heaven is represented under images borrowed from external objects, this is generally added to ennoble our conceptions, and to teach us that it is a happiness infinitely superior to the highest objects of ambition among men. Thus, Is heaven compared to a crown? it is a crown of glory! Is it a kingdom? it is a kingdom of glory! Is it an inheritance? it is a rich and glorious inheri

tance !

Let us consider, therefore, what may be implied in the description of heaven, or why the happiness of the saints in a future state is called "glory."— The word denotes honour, dignity, and bliss of the highest kind, and most permanent, nay, eternal in respect of duration, and may justly be applied to ex

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