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    care in them can make tolerable , and which no kindness can entirely repress ; the weakness which ever forbids efforts to which imagination incessantly urges , till the mind sinks in its vain struggle with the infirmities of the body , shattered and exhausted , like the bird beating against the bars of its cage ; the thousand anxieties about dear and perhaps helpless survivors , suffering in our sufferings , and orphaned in our loss ; the revoltings of nature at pain , decline , extinction ; these are evils which require an antidote ; the bare

    possibility of exposure to these should make the healthiest ask , How shall I support them ? Banish not that question till the time come ! it will be then too late . There are resources , but they must all be previously accumulated . " —" Pre-eminent is the necessity of religious principle , which should ensure all the rest , and which is essential to crown their work . O , wretched is he who , in that sick room , which may be only the antichamber of the grave , is yet

    wholly unfurnished with the medicine of the mind ; who has never thought of his nature , his prospects , his duty , his God ; who has never applied himself to the enriching his intellect with important truth , to the cultivation of his heart for holy affections , to the formation of his character in righteous habits ! " — " The neglect , the perversion , the rejection of religious principles , idike rob the soul of the best security against that trying season . Then is it that faith triumphs . I mean by faith , not the mere mental act of credence in

    a proposition , but a firm trust in God , our Creator , our Father . This is the one thing needful for religious consolation . To know that all events are ordered by him , atid that he is love , is enough for man to know for his support and hope . Give us but these principles , ( and Nature , Providence , and Christianity , teach and confirm and demonstrate these , ) and you give us all . Death is destroyed , and the grave becomes the passage to a better life . When Jesus taught us to call God our Father in heaven , he poured a flood of consolation on the world "—Pp . 208 , 212 , 213 .

    The nature and extent of this consolation , with the other blessings which result from the paternal relation of ihe Deity to his creatures , are beautifull y developed in the discourse , from the text " When ye pray , say , Our Father who art in heaven . " The name of Father is shewn to be not only the most endearing appellation , hut the most expressive of the great characters of Divine Providence and human duty : as God is the giver and preserver of life and its powers , and superintends their employment , and pours out on the human race his inexhaustible goodness , and exercises them with the discipline of affliction , which , no less than his bounty , is paternal . We give the opening paragraph , and wish that we had room for more .

    " The Scriptures , kindly adapting themselves to the conceptions of man , represent God under various human characters . All such descriptions of the Infinite Creator must be imperfect ; but their purpose is answered , if they impress the mind with a livelier sense of the relation in which we stand to him , or touch the heart with any religious emotion . The character of a Father , under which the Christian i 9 taught to address God in the prayer from which my text is taken , is at once the most interesting and the most comprehensive of all by which he has condescended to make himself known . The

    very name bespeaks our reverence , submission , and love . It brings to our minds the first object of our young affections ; and to him who has been blessed with wise and affectionate parents , calls up an image of authority blended with kindness , of tender care and unwearied watchfulness , of longsuffering indulgence , tempered with salutary restraint . The countenance never wears an expression so truly heavenly as the complacent smile of parental love . In this affection there is no taint of selfishness , no heat of passion ; yet neither selfishness prompts to such exertion , nor passion to such sacrifices What figure , then , could be chosen more adapted to express the qualities of Divine Love , than to call God our Father who is in heaven } " P . 329 .

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    Set mom for Families . 461

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1829, page 461, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2574/page/13/