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adorned with the beauties of immortality, the righteous ascend with their Lord, and, approaching to the fountain of life, partake of those pleasures at the right hand of God, which shall occupy and animate the praises of eternity.

Let me now ask you, my brethren, do you believe what you have now heard? Do you believe that there is a jadgment to come, and that each of you shall bear a part in that tremendous scene? I appeal to a witness that cannot lie. I appeal to your own conduct. Do you live and act in such a manner as becomes those who have one day to answer for their lives and their actions? Is your conversation in heaven from whence you look for the Saviour and the Judge? Are your loins girt about, your lamps burning, and you yourselves like unto men who wait for the coming of their Lord? Were the general judgment now to begin, were these heavens to open, and the sign of the Son of Man to appear overhead, could you face his tribunal? Could you lift up your heads with confidence and joy amidst the ruins of nature, and the crash of a dissolving world! If not, I call upon you to repent, and to reform your lives. You are still under the administration of grace, and have the hope of glory set before you. Heaven and immortality are in your offer. God graciously calls you to repentance and newness of life. The Spirit helps your infirmities, and strives to conquer the stubbornness of your spirits. But he will not always thus wait to be gracious. Your day of grace does not last for ever. If mercy reclaims you not, you are delivered over to the hands of justice. If you reject the golden sceptre when it is held out to you, a rod of iron succeeds to destroy the children of disobedience. Repent you must, in one form or other. If your sins affect you not with sorrow and contrition here, they wil fill you with unavailable remorse and despair hereafter. You must either be affected with the kindly emotions of that repentance which is unto life, or be tormented with the stings of the worm that never dies.

Knowing these terrors, we endeavour to persuade men. Happy for men, if they would endeavour to be persuaded! If these things, my brethren, which you have been now hearing, be true; if it be true that we shall be raised up at the last day; that the day of judgment shall as surely arise as this morning arose, in obedience to laws which

can no more fail to bring it forth than the sun could this morning refuse to arise at the command of its Creator; if it be true that all of us who are here assembled shall be assembled again around the judgment-seat of God; if it be true that this is our only state of probation, and that life and death are now in our choice, that heaven and hell are now set before us; if these things be true (and true they are, otherwise this book is a collection of fables,) if these things be true,-then, O my brethren, what manner of persons ought we to be!-then, O my God, what manner of persons ought we to be!

SERMON XVIII.

2 COR. vi. 2.

-Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

THE

HERE is not a man upon the earth but who has some sense of religion upon his mind, and intends one day or another to work out his salvation. When we look into the world, we find that all men are just about to reform. However loose in their principles, however profligate in their lives, they seriously purpose to amend their conduct, and the sinner of to day resolves to be a saint to-morrow. Seeing then that all men are so favourably disposed towards religion; seeing that all men are in earnest one day to repent; how does it come to pass that so many men never repent; that such multitudes live and die in their sins? It is because they delay their repentance; it is because they put off the day of salvation; because they be-gin not a course of reformation, but are only about to reform. This infatuation is not confined to the inexperience of our early years; it extends through every period of life. In this, the hoary head is no wiser than the youth of yesterday; and the same lying spirit, that deceived us at twenty, is believed at threescore and ten. In this, expe

rience does not make us wise, and when we buy instruction it avails us not. The fool, who wanting to cross the river lay down on its bank till the waters all ran by, is but a just emblem of that man who delays his repentance from time to time, who is always purposing, but never performing, and who, neither warned by the past, nor alarıned for the future, purposes on to the last, and dies the same. Such is the life which numbers of men lead in the world, spending the prime and vigour of their life in vain pursuits; letting all their religion evaporate in empty resolutions, till, in an hour in which they are not aware, the warning is given: at midnight is the cry made, and when they seek to enter in with the bridegroom, the door is shut!

That you may understand the expressions made use of in the text, I must recal to your remembrance, that, in the language of Scripture, the period of our probation is called a time, a season, or a day. There is an accepted time, there is a season of merciful visitation, there is a day of grace, which, if we let slip, the night cometh, in which no man can work, in which we shall grope for the wall like the blind, in which we shall stumble at noon-day as in the night, and be in desolate places as dead men. This does not arise from a defect of mercy in God, from a defect of merit in Christ, or from a defect of grace in the Holy Spirit: it arises from ourselves, and from the nature of things.Almighty God hath appointed this life to be our state of probation. He hath set apart a time to fix the character for eternity. When therefore, by repeated acts and by long habits, this everlasting character is fixed, no alteration can succeed. To give an instance that may have occurred to the observation of you all; you have seen, or you have heard of, criminals who have been trained from their youth, in the practice of vice, who have advanced from lesser to greater crimes, who have been punished according to law, who have been imprisoned, who have been banished, who have returned from banishment, and for greater crimes have been condemned to die, who, from some artifice or incident, have escaped in the critical moment, and who, instead of being reformed by all these punishments, have fallen into the same crimes again, and even grown bolder in wickedness. There have indeed been instances of great sinners who have turned penitents, and been good Christians; but it is much to be

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questioned if there be any such instances among those who have been long sinners, who have committed iniquity, not by fits and starts, but upon a fixed and determined plan, who have spent, in the service of sin, all the fire of youth and coolness of age.

Having explained to you the meaning of the phrase used in the text, before proceeding further, take next a view of life, and you will see, that a great part of men let slip the accepted time and day of salvation, till it be too late. It is the happiness of most men, in countries where the Christian religion is professed, to receive a good education, and to be trained up from their youth in the principles of religion, and in the practice of virtue. But when this period of discipline is over, when a man sets out in life, and becomes his own master, he frequently becomes a different person in that different state, and looks upon the good habits of his youth as some of those childish things which he ought now to put away. If his education has been severe and rigorous; if his parents restrained in hin that gaiety of heart and flow of the spirits which is the portion of youth; if he pined in his closet, whilst his equals in age frequented those entertainments which can be enjoyed with innocence, he then generally goes to the other extreme, and plunges with a precipitant step into all the follies and vices of the age. The prisoner having got loose, grows wild and extravagant. Being formerly shut up, he now wants to know the world; and, in order to this, ventures on forbidden paths, resigns the reins of conduct to inclination, and gives a loose to all his desires. Having found his former principles to be inconsistent with the enjoyment of life, he confounds his early prejudices with true piety; for which cause he throws off religion altogether; he becomes a patron and defender of vice; he laughs at every thing that is serious; and perhaps out of contempt to this day, in which we assemble together to worship the God of our fathers; out of con tempt to the sacred rites of his country, which all wise heathens have revered; out of contempt to the venerable institutions of our holy religion, spends this day in dissipation and profaneness, and open impiety.

But, not to draw the character with such black stains, let us suppose men at that period passing their days in folly rather than in vice, at the head of every idle scheme, first in every fashionable amusement, and, as the

Scripture happily expresseth it, "walking in a vain show." Behold them making amusement one of the cares of life; spending those precious hours, which no power can ever recal, which no future labour can ever compensate, spending those precious hours in vanity and folly, whilst all along they forget the business of their salvation, and are no more affected with the prospect of a world to come, than with a tale that is told. But whilst thus they dance round in a circle of folly; whilst they solace themselves with the prospect of pleasures rising upon pleasures, never to have an end, and say iu secret to their souls, "Tomorrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant;" whilst, like the foolish virgins, they slumber and sleep, at midnight is the cry made, Oman, thy hour is come! And the trembling soul takes its departure unawares and unprepared to God the Judge of all'!

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To guard you against the fatal error which has undone its thousands, allow me to recommend to your practice the necessity of instant repentance and reformation. In the first place, No time is so proper as the present; secondly, If you delay, your reformation will be difficult; thirdly, If you delay long, it may become altogether impossible.

I. There is no time so proper as the present.

The prodigal son exhibits to us a scene which we often see realized in life. A young man, who had been educated in the paths of virtue, declining from these paths, and going astray into forbidden ground, from the fond expectation of meeting with some strange, vast, unknown happiness in the gratification of sensual desire. In the course of this unhallowed pilgrimage, he gives loose rcins to his mind, he indulges every wandering inclination, he denies himself nothing that his heart wishes for. At last he comes to himself, he sees the folly of his ways, he repents, he resolves, he amends. Such a change of life we can easily conceive. In his former situation, he knew not what he did, he was transported by passion, he went headlong down the torrent. But when once he began to reflect, he found that was the critical moment of life, which if he had neglected, his return would have been more difficult. In his former situation, he went forward in the path which seemed right in his own eyes, without looking back. He did not act against the admonitions of conscience, he did not think at all. But if, after his eyes

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