yet be safely begun at some distant time! How hard will that heart seem to him, which, when the King of terrors was knocking at his door, when the judgment was set for him, and the books were opened; when the vail of the invisible world was just rending in twain, and the voice of GoD was heard calling with a most awful sound, “Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee;" when hell was enlarging her mouth to receive him, and the doors of heaven were closing forever: he was still unwarned and unconcerned; a drowsy passenger, saying, “Yet a little more sleep, a little more slumber," while the vessel in which he was embarked was plunging into the abyss. In all these periods, with what emotion will he regard his innumerable sins! How many will he see to have been committed in a single day, a month, a year; of omission, of commission; of childhood, and of riper years! How will he shudder at his insensibility to his enormous guilt; at his union with other fools in making a mock at sin; at his blindness to its dreadful debasement, and most fearful reward! Sins now are seen by him to be the most dangerous and fatal of all enemies; mustered in battle array against his soul, at the most awful of all seasons; and when no ally, no friend, appears to aid him in the unequal conflict.

Among the sins which will most affectingly oppress his heart, his negligence, abuse, and prostitution, of the means of grace will especially overwhelm him. GOD, all along through the various parts of his life, put into his hands with unspeakable kindness his Word, his Sabbath, and the blessings of his sanctuary. He gave him line upon line, and precept upon precept; warnings of his Word and providence without number; and invitations to embrace the Redeemer, and yield himself to him as a free-will offering, which were new every morning and fresh every mo

ment.

Nothing will now more astonish him, than that he could possibly lose, profane, and destroy in amusement, business, idleness or sleep, a single sabbath; that he could ever be absent from the sanctuary; that he could wander after covetousness and pleasure, during a single prayer; or neglect to hear and ponder a single

sermon; that he was not engrossed by the voice of the Divine Charmer, charming him with infinite wisdom and tenderness to life eternal; that he did not tremble at the word of the Lord, resounding in his ears the guilt, the danger, and final doom, of all the workers of iniquity, and proclaiming glad tidings of great joy unto every repenting and returning prodigal.

How naturally, how passionately will he now exclaim, “ Oh, that my lost and squandered days might once more return; that I might again go up to the house of God; that I might again in the invaluable season of Youth, before my sins had become a burden so heavy and so grievous to be borne, be present at the morning and evening sacrifice of prayer and praise; and again hear the Divine voice calling me to faith and repentance in the Lord Jesus Christ, and to the possession of endless glory! Were a thousand worlds mine, how cheerfully would I give them all, for one day to be spent in the Courts of the Lord! Oh that one year, one month, one sabbath, might be added to my wretched, forfeited life! But ah! the day of Grace is past my wishes, nay my prayers, are in vain. In that long eternity which opens be fore me, no sabbath will ever dawn upon my wishful eyes; no sanctuary will unfold the gates of peace and life; no prayers will ever find a gracious ear; no praises will ever ascend to heaven; no sermon will ever call wandering and perishing sinners to repentance; no proffers of endless life will ever be made; the charming sound of a Saviour's voice will never more be heard ; and the music of salvation will be dumb forever."

Such will be the natural retrospect of a dying sinner. What will be his prospects?

Before him, robed in all his terrors, stands Death, the messenger of God, now come to summon him away. To what, to whom is he summoned? To that final Judgment, into which every work of his hands will be speedily brought, with every secret thing to that Judge; from whose sentence there is no appeal, from whose eye there is no concealment, from whose hand there is no escape. Through the last agonies lies his gloomy, dreadful passage into the unseen world; his path to the bar of God.

What a passage! What an interview! He, a hardened, rebellious, impious, ungrateful wretch; who has wasted all the means of salvation, prostituted his talents, squandered his time, despised his Maker, "crucified afresh the Lord of glory, and done despite unto the Spirit of Grace;" now comes before that glorious and offended GOD, who knows all the sins which he has committed. He is here, without an excuse to plead, without a cloak to cover his guilt. What would he now give for an interest in that Atonement which he slighted, rejected, and ridiculed, in the present world; in that Intercession, on which while here he never employed a thought; and in that Salvation, for which perhaps he never uttered a prayer! The smiles of redeeming, forgiving, and sanctifying love are now changed into the frowns of an angry, and irreconcileable Judge. The voice of mercy sounds no more; and the hope of pardon has vanished on this side of the grave.

To the Judgment succeeds the boundless vast of Eternity. Live, he must die, he cannot. But where, how, with whom, is he to live? The world of darkness, sorrow, and despair, is his final habitation. Sin, endless and increasing sin, is his dreadful character; and sinners like himself are his miserable and eternal companions. Alone in the midst of millions, surrounded by enemies only, without a friend, without a comfort, without a hope; he lifts up his eyes, and in deep despair takes a melancholy survey of the immense regions around him, but finds nothing to alleviate his woe, nothing to support his drooping mind, nothing to lessen the pangs of a broken heart.

In a far distant region he sees a faint glimmering of that “ Sun of Righteousness," which shall never more shine upon him. A feeble, dying sound of the praise, the everlasting songs of "the general assembly and church of the first-born" trembles on his ear; and in an agonizing manner reminds him of the blessings in which he also might have shared, and which he voluntarily cast away. In dim, and distant vision those heavens are seen, where multitudes of his former friends and companions dwell; friends and companions, who in this world loved Gop, believed in the Redeemer, and by a patient continuance in well-doing sought for

glory, honour, and immortality. Among them perhaps, his own fond parents; who, with a thousand sighs, and prayers and tears, commended him, while they tabernacled here below, to the mercy of God and to the love of their own Divine Redeemer. His children also, and the wife of his bosom gone before him; have perhaps fondly waited at the gates of glory in the ardent expectation, the cheering hope, of seeing him once so beloved, reunited to their number, and a partaker in their everlasting joy. But they have waited in vain.

The curtain now is drawn ; and the amazing vast is unbosomed to his view. Nature, long decayed, sinks under the united pressure of sickness, sorrow, and despair. His eyes grow dim; his ears deaf; his heart forgets to beat; and his spirit, lingering, terrified, amazed, clings to life, and struggles to keep possession of its earthly tenement. But, hurried by an unseen Almighty hand, it is irresistibly launched into the unseen abyss. Alone and friendless, it ascends to God; to see all its sins set in order before its eyes. With a gloomy and dreadful account of life spent only in sin, without a single act of piety, or voluntary kindness to men, with no faith in Christ, and no sorrow for iniquity; it is cast out as wholly wicked and unprofitable, into the land of darkness and the shadow of death; there to wind its melancholy journey through regions of sorrow and despair, ages without end; and to take up forever the gloomy and distressing lamentation in the text, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended; but I am not saved."

SERMON XXVIII.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE CHARACTER OF NOAH.

II. PETER ii. 5.

-But saved Noah, the eighth person, a preacher of righteousness bringing in the flood upon the world of the ungodly.

In this chapter St. Peter argues from the analogy of God's providence, that, as he punished sinners in the former ages, so, from the immutability of his character, it is to be believed, that he will punish sinners, also, under the dispensation of the Gospel. Among the instances of such punishment, selected by the Apostle for this purpose, one, the most affecting, which he could have chosen, is the destruction of the ungodly by the flood, mentioned in the text. In his account of this subject he remarks, in order to remind his readers of the love and faithfulness of God to the righteous, the preservation of Noah from the general ruin; and characterizes him by this honourable epithet; "a preacher of righteousness."

To understand the import of this character, we must recur to the age, and circumstances, of Noah. In his days, we are informed, "the earth was corrupt before GoD, and was filled with violence." From the account, given us in the sixth chapter of Genesis, it would seem, that the family of Seth, or more probably, the great body of the descendants of Adam, who had been professed worshippers of the true God, relaxing their religious principles, had, much more closely than before, united themselves to that part of their fellow men, who were openly irreligious. The distinction between the friends and the enemies of Religion had, for ages, been strenuously preserved. On this ground opposite