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on, as in the days of the Patriarchs: ages pass away,

to return no more.

But if he that is guilty in life, be guilty in death,— if he retain, without one pause of intermission, the feeling of his offences,-if he "that is unjust, be unjust "still," and he "that is filthy, filthy still"-the hour of his dissolution will be fearful at distance-on a nearer prospect, full of terror. And the dread of falling imme diately into the hands of the living God, will damp the secret projects of the sinner, and check, in their holder career, "the workers of iniquity."

In the mean time, they who act as under the eye of an omniscient God, and who have comfort and joy in the belief, that they live in " the light of His counte"nance"-if once they relinquish the idea of the Almighty Presence, as sustaining and enlivening the Soul, whether" in the body or out of the body," through every stage of its existence-if they begin to harbour the melancholy thought of its necessary co-existence with the corporeal frame as the one decays, the other languishing,-as the one dies, the other insensible; is it possible, if they extend their meditations to the body mouldering away, till every particle be disunited and dispersed is it possible to preclude from their apprehension the image of the Soul evaporated— extinguished ?-If they yet make an effort to carry their

view thus broken, to the day of Judgment;-will they not shudder at the dreary void immediately in prospect, with scarcely a gleam of light breaking in from beyond it ?—And can such a feeling of inanity consist with active Piety, and Hope, and Resignation ?-But if the religious man be convinced, that as soon as the pangs of death are passed, he shall go thither, where secure from sin and rsorow, he shall rejoice in "the answer of a

good conscience"-where, no longer embarrassed by cares, or allured by vanities, he shall enjoy perpetual serenity, and look to the Eternal Godhead more and more revealed to his contemplation, and live in the expectation of his ultimate reward-when the Soul shall reanimate the body, and the whole man shall partake of the felicities of Heaven ;-these, doubtless, are reflexions, that must operate most powerfully on the moral character-meditations, calculated to correct our follies, to purify the heart from sin, to strengthen our weak, ness, and to subdue our passions; to repress the triumphs of fancy amidst all the affluence of worldly pleasures, and in adversity to dispel the gloom of despondence-to shed a lustre over life, and even to smooth the pillow of death. "Though, therefore, our outward

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man perish; yet the inward man shall be renewed day "by day." And though "the world passeth away, "and the lusts thereof;" "nevertheless we, according "to the promise of God, look for new Heavens and a “ new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness,”

OUTLINE

OF A

SERMON,

Preached at the Parish-Church of Newlyn,

ON SUNDAY, MARCH 31, 1822.

Psalm xxxiv. 11. Come ye Children! and hearken unto me, I will teach you the fear of the Lord.

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THE fear of the Lord is the beginning of wis"dom: A good understanding have all they, who do his "commandments."

Such is the voice of the Psalmist: And it is audibly echoed back in the book of the wisest of men. "The fear "of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: And the knowlege of the Holy, is understanding."

Nothing, indeed, seems less questionable than this

*Ps. iii. 10.

position, whether it hath respect to the poor or to the rich. But, for the poor, I scruple not to affirm, that the fear of the Lord is not only the beginning of wisdom but the beginning, the middle, and the end.

There never was a time, in which the education of the poor was deemed of more importance, than the present-in which more anxiety was discoverable on the subject; in which a greater variety of expedients were devised, or more active measures taken, with this view. Yet I do not perceive, that the fear of the Lord has, in general, been admitted as a first principle; or, if so admitted theoretically, has been sufficiently recognized as such in the process of instruction.

What sort of education, however, that must be, where the fear of the Lord is not acted upon as a first principle, it were easy to determine. I should call it a structure built upon the sands, in danger of falling in the very first storm.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, we are told, that "in "much wisdom is much grief," that "he who increas"eth knowlege, increaseth sorrow" "* and that much

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study is weariness of the flesh." It is the wisdom of this world-it is philosophy falsely so called-it is metaphysical investigation, in particular; which often terminates in scepticism.

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