-had I been able to set before you a splendour more desirable than the pomps and luxuries of opulence, a greatness less dazzling but more genuine, joys less turbulent but more substantial could I have exhibited that greatness and those delights which consist in doing good, in colours so attractive as to lead you to prefer them before that luxury which perverts the application of your riches, which stifles Beneficence at its very birth, which, by confining the attention exclusively to self, engenders a contempt or forgetfulness of the poor, and excludes the indigent from your calculations of means and plans of expenditure, which impoverishes those of narrow income by their attempts to rival you, and so multiplies the number of the indigent while it contracts their resources ;-had I been able to withdraw you from the seductions of that luxury, but for which, Oh, my country! thou hadst still survived in thy unsullied prosperity, but which now is silently mining beneath thy strength;-had but I been able to teach you to place your glory in your munificence, and to rest your greatness upon the multitude of your benefits,-how might we have rejoiced in the fruits of this present exercise of devotion! O God of love, teach us Thyself to resemble Thee! Amen. SERMON XI. 2 COR. ii. 16. Who is sufficient for these things? SUCH was the reflection of St. Paul, upon a view of the labours of his apostleship: How then shall unassisted individuals like ourselves form such an union with the Almighty, and with his Holy Spirit, as may enable us to dispel the clouds of superstition; to overthrow the idols of human passion; to spread abroad the light of truth; to re-establish the empire of virtue; to act as the regenerators of the world?SUFFICIENT FOR THESE THINGS ?" "WHO IS |