ment!' vibrating upon his ears?

How few attend to this voice? How small, it is to be feared, is the number of those who speak, think, and act, with a conscientious regard to the decisions of that awful tribunal at which our very thoughts and words shall undergo a fearful scrutiny? That we are so insensible to the importance of looking forward to the day of the Lord, notwithstanding the number and weight of those arguments which are calculated to bring it before our eyes, and to keep it in our thoughts, can only be imputed to that deteriorated condition of our minds and affections as fallen creatures, whereby it comes to pass as I before observed, that the things of time and sense are made to predominate over those that are unseen, and eternal. Hence also it happens, that men may, and do, so give themselves over to worldly pursuits, and sensual gratifications, as to blunt and turn the point of the strongest arguments-deaden the force of the deepest convictions. Moral arguments, the truths even of revelation, (and the observation is worthy, my brethren, of the deepest consideration, especially with the young and unhacknied in the ways of the world,) the truths even of revelation, like the most sovereign medicines, come to lose their efficacy, when often repeated, but as often

resisted. Stimulants, therefore, such for instance, as awful denunciations of God's wrath against sin, and fearful descriptions of eternal punishment, are necessary in order to give them, if possible, fresh weight and pungency. The mind becomes, at length, from the habit of resistance, and of tampering with sophistical arguments, insensible to those very proofs which once darted conviction. A sort of film obscures and confuses the moral sense, whereby it cannot, as formerly, feel the force of truth, and yield a saving assent to convictions. Thus truth, like the light of heaven, is incapable, by being abused, of producing its first and proper effects, and instead of enlightening, directing, and cheering, it only dazzles, perplexes and condemns. Whereas, let the mind be kept tender under first impressions; let those impressions be improved and cherished; above all, let the life and conduct be conformable and coincident with those impressions; let men so live, as they profess speculatively to believe in a future judgment; and every succeeding argument (and the world is full of such arguments,) brings with it a new proof, a fresh conviction, in addition to those by which the mind was originally convinced.

The scoffer and the libertine, on the contrary, come by degrees, as I just observed, to lose the

force even of those first proofs: their natural freshness is gone, and nothing but a thorn beneath serves to show that the flower they so wantonly rifled and threw away, once existed. Thus do they verify the remark of our Lord, that "whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath, or seemeth to have."

Let these remarks serve to show the superlative importance it is of, that we be careful to keep alive those first sacred impressions which the word of truth has produced upon our minds. If we are inattentive to do so, in a world like this, truth will soon be either entirely effaced, or what is as bad, if not worse, will become so mixed up with the false lineaments of sophistry and infidelity, that it will lose all the force, the nature, the effect, peculiar to first convictions. Many there are, my brethren, who would fain recall the vividness of first impressions. Recollecting the period when they first believed with all the honesty and simplicity of early convictions, how do they prefer those healthful moments of their religious existence, to the doubt, the coldness, the deadness of their present feelings concerning the truth of religion!

Has no one among us, my brethren, so tam

Y

pered with unbelief, as to feel nothing of the regret I am speaking of? Do we all of us believe with as much simplicity and joy of heart in the word of God, as we did in our nurseries, when as new-born babes, we desired the sincere milk of the word? And are not those sacred impressions of religion, of God, of death, judgment, heaven, and hell, enviable, when compared with that half assent, that forced, reluctant conviction, we now yield thereto?

The fault, that we do not retain them still, that we are children in understanding, and have need to be taught again which be the first principles of the oracles of God, is not to be imputed to the truths themselves. They, like their Divine Author, are "the same yesterday, to day, and for ever;" eternal, unchangeable. No. The things of time and sense, the pleasures of the world, the eagerness with which we pursue trifles and let go substance, these co-operating with our natural deadness to divine things, will produce if not confirmed infidelity, at least the lower degrees and modifications of the same principle, such as lukewarmness in religion,' a fear of the world,' an apprehension of being thought singular.' These are all incompatible with a hearty reception of divine truth. A careless, sensual life, ever has had, and ever will have,

the most sure and fatal effects in producing on the mind a practical disbelief of the things which belong to our peace.

We know from experience, that the feelings and passions in their natural effects, when not goaded on by vice, or heated by intemperance, have so much to do with our coolest speculations, our most dispassionate deliberations, that often even in the commonest questions, it is difficult to distinguish between what we really believe, and what we only wish (for the sake of some interest or other,) to believe: between the sober conclusions of reason, and the warpings of prejudice or of some other of our corrupt passions. Hence it is, that in matters relating to the next life, and our responsibility at the tribunal of a just God, truths which men of loose lives wish not to believe, they reject as false: and their own foolish theories come in time to have with them the force of truth. They have so long amused and flattered themselves with the creatures of their wicked fancies, so moulded and caressed them, that they at length assume, or seem to assume, all the reality they could wish. Thus error usurps the place of truth. Thus a false Dagon is set up in that shrine which the true God made and would sanctify for himself. We bow down before the unreal and empty