head, and affects the language of majestywe do not fuppofe the poor creature to be happy, because he tells us that he is fo; but we rather confider his complacence in his fituation, as an effect and proof of his malady. We pity him, and if we were able, would gladly reftore him to his fenfes, though we know a cure would immediately put an end to his pleafing delufions. But, I fay, fuppofing or admitting the world could make its votaries happy in a state of profperity, it will, it muft, leave them without resource in the day of trouble. And they are to be pitied indeed, who, when their gourds are withered, when the defire of their eyes is taken from them with a stroke, or the evil which they most feared touches them, or when death looks them closely in the face, have no acquaintance with God, no access to the throne of grace, but being without Chrift, are without a folid hope of good hereafter, though they are forced to feel the vanity and inconftancy of every thing here. But they who know MESSIAH, who believe in him, and partake of his spirit, cannot be comfortless. They recollect what be fuffered for them, they know that every Circumftance and event of life is under his direction, and defigned to work for their good; that though they fow in tears, they fhall foon reap in joy; and therefore they poffefs their fouls in patience, and are cheerful, yea comfortable, under thofe trying difpenfations of Providence, which when they affect the lovers of pleasure, too often either excite in them a fpirit of presumptuous murmuring against the will of God; or fink them into defpondency, and all the melancholy train of evils, attendant on thofe, who languish and pine away under that depreffion of fpirits, emphatically styled a broken heart. 3: 3. To be capable of the comfort my text proposes, the mind must be in a suitable difpofition. A free pardon is a comfort to a malefactor, but it implies guilt; and therefore they who have no apprehenfion that they have broken the laws, would be rather offended, than comforted, by an offer of pardon. This is one principal cause of that neglect, yea contempt, which the gospel of the grace of God meets with from the world. If we could fuppofe that a company of people who were all trembling under an apprehenfion of his displeasure, conftrained to confefs the juftice of the fentence, but not as yet in-.. formed formed of any way to escape, were to hear this message for the first time, and to be fully afsured of its truth and authority, they would receive it as life from the dead. But it is to be feared, that for want of knowing themselves, and their real state in the fight of him with whom they have to do, many persons, who have received pleasure from the mufic of the Meffiah, have neither found, nor expected, nor desired to find, any comfort from the words, SERMON II, THE HARBINGER. ISAIAH xl. 3-5. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make ftraight in the defert a high-way for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and bill fhall be made low, and the crooked fhall be made ftraight, and the rough places plain. And the glory of the Lord fhall be revealed, and all flefh fhall fee it together, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it. T HE general ftyle of the Prophecies is poetical. The inimitable fimplicity which characterizes every part of divine Revelation, is diversified according to the nature of the fubject and the magnificence and variety of imagery which constitute the life and |