iffuing from the tombs around, and the graves below, that ought to penetrate the hearts of every one here, and will pierce like a twoedged fword, unless they are petrified, fteeled, cafe hardened, by unrepented luft and pride. Go, therefore, to your homes, penfive and confiderate. Say to yourselves, Should God require my foul of me this night, can I expect mercy at his hands? Make your peace with God, be at peace with man, be at peace with your confciences. Reform whatever is wrong in your lives, prepare rationally and cheerfully for your death; that when difease, or accident, or violence, fhall destroy the life of your bodies, your fouls may be received into the bofom of your father and your God; and that you may reft in him, as our hope is, this our fifter doth; and that you may fmile even in the arms of death, and say to those who love you, and stand weeping round the curtains of your beds, in the words of our Saviour, "I am going; but it is to my Father and to your Father; to my God and to your God*"

John, xx. 17.

2 CHRON. XXX. part of the 18th and 19th Verses.~ tion at C) (1999

The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his HEART to feek God, the Lord God of his -fathers, though he be not cleanfed according to the purification of the fanctuary.

FOR

OR the particular occasion of these words, I muft refer you to the chapter in the facred hiftory from which they were felected. I have chofen them merely as introductory to the fubject on which we are affembled to meditate, the SACRAMENT OF THE LORD'S SUPPER, OR THE CHRISTIAN'S SACRIFICE.

Whoever takes a comprehenfive view of mankind as described either in history, or in the L1 2 voyages

1

t

voyages of circumnavigators, will be ftruck with the universality of SACRIFICIAL RITES, and the Shedding of the blood of brutes, to atone for buman tranfgreffion. Wonderful, yet uniform perfuafion, that the flaughter of animals should contribute to appease the wrath of an offended Deity! an opinion, at which common sense revolts, and philosophy is disgusted: yet we see it prevailing at early periods in all nations; not only in the barbarous and rude, but in the polished, the lettered, the humane. We trace its veftiges from the Jews, the Greeks, the Romans, even to the natives of the newly-difcovered iflands in the Pacific Ocean*.Reafon alone, with all her penetrating fagacity, cannot explain this aftonishing phænomenon, and relinquishes her refearches in defpair. Profane learning is foiled in her inveftigation of it, fcience acknowledges herself perplexed at it, logic denies its rationality, metaphyfics are wrapt in tenfold darknefs when they attempt to explain it; but RELIGION draws afide the veil, and truth: inftantly advances in her native luftre. Religion humbly feeks, and joyfully finds the cause of this and other inexplicable appear

See a very ftriking account of a human facrifice in the voyages of Captain Cook,

ances,

ances, whether in the world of grace, the world of morals, or the world of nature, in the GREAT FIRST CAUSE.

After all that has been argued on the fub

ject, it is certain that the facrifice of animals as a propitiation* of the Deity, is of divine vis inftitution. Every believer in the Scriptures muft acknowledge with reverence, that it is the ordinance of God. At the promulgation of the Law, and in the twenty-fourth verfe of the twentieth chapter of Exodus, God himfelf condescended to give particular directions concerning the altar and the facrifices. An altar of earth, fays he, thou shalt make unto me, and fhalt facrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and thy peace offerings, thy fheep and thy oxen. And his meffage to Pharaoh by Mofes was, Let my people go, that they may SACRIFICE to the Lord, their God.

Since then this inftitution originated in the command of the all-wife and beneficent God, we may reft affured that it was not without its ufe, even if we could not difcover it. It comes from God, it is therefore wife. But we may venture to conjecture its beneficial purpose.

* Qui facrificat, id idem fignificat actione et geftu, quod qui precatur ore fuo profitetur.

Vitringa Diff. Vol. i. p. 289. L13

The

The facrifice of animals, according to the opinion of learned and judicious divines, was designed to answer these three ends: First, to reprefent to MAN, in a moft forcible manner, the forfeiture of life which he had incurred: fecondly, to fignify God's gracious condefcenfion in accepting a SUBSTITUTE: and thirdly, to prefigure that great and availing Subftitute, which in the fulness of time was to be offered, even JESUS CHRIST.

In this great facrifice all men were deeply interested; and facrifices therefore became a part of the UNIVERSAL RELIGION. In fome mode, or at fome period, all nations have adopted them. Previously to the existence or the diffufion of BOOKS, religion was preferved in the world by rites, ceremonies, types, figns, and hieroglyphics; and the Sacrifice of the Lamb of God, Jefus Christ the rightcous, was fhadowed out by the facrifice of the innoxious beafts of the field, the playful goat from the mountain, the spotless lamb from the shepherd's fold, and the placid bullock from the green pafture*. But when men began to forget the true and only God, the

Reafoning was in a very low ftate; and among men little removed from favages, fome ftriking action or exhibition was neceffary to excite and preferve religious ideas.

reafone