gift, teach us so to prize salvation as to "count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord;" send down Thy Spirit on our souls, that "denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we may live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." Brethren! for these things "pray without ceasing," and " light shall shine in" and "chains shall fall off," "the iron gate shall open" and you shall be free." "Faithful is He that calleth you, who also will do it ;" hear and rejoice in the blessed words of Him, Who "came to seek and to save that which was lost;" "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord," Luke iv. 18, 19.

Brethren! to you that "acceptable year" as yet holds out; Oh! " exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day, lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin," Heb. iii. 13.

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XVI.

"DO IT WITH THY MIGHT."

ECCLESIASTES ix. 10.

"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest."

AWAKE! thou that sleepest, and give heed to these words, that are of weighty interest to thy soul. They remind thee of "the grave whither thou goest;" they tell thee of the work to be done before thou reachest that silent house; they warn thee, that if that work be not done now, it must be left undone-for ever. Oh! could we but see our nearness to the grave, it may be the strongest might start with wonder to behold, that the years he promiseth himself shall never be his, that "the feet of them that shall carry him forth," are, as it were, "at the door;" the "secret things" indeed "belong to the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed, belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may

do" them, Deut. xxix. 29. Brethren! let us give heed to them while we may.

The Solemn Path to be Trodden,-the Solemn Work to be Done,-and The Solemn Exhortation to Urge Us to the Doing, these demand our prayerful attention this day. Lord! arrest our wandering thoughts, and deeply fix Thy truth in our hearts, for Jesus' sake; Amen!

I. The Solemn Path to be Trodden. "The grave whither thou goest.' With all our journeyings we are journeying to the grave; in all our paths we are treading the pathway to the tomb; "dust" we are, and "unto dust" must we "return."

1. All walk in this Solemn Path. Whether they are walking in the broad way, or the narrow; whether they are nearing heaven, or hell; in this they are travelling together,-it is "the grave" whither they are going. All ages are walking therein. The youth just entering on the business of life, and the aged bowed down with years; the infant of to-day, and the mighty man in the fulness of his strength; one and all have this before them, "the grave whither thou goest." Of all conditions this is the road; some seldom cross each other's path, they dwell apart; some in riches, others

in poverty; some on thrones, others on dunghills; but each and all have this before them, "the graves are ready" for them. The statesman and the mechanic, the labourer and the sage, the noble and the peasant, the afflicted and the prosperous, all are travelling on in this one pathway,-the pathway to "the grave." Of all characters too this is the highway. Thou who art trampling under foot the commandments of thy God, hatred in thine heart, profaneness in thy speech, ungodliness in thy life, doth not this thought sometimes stir thy conscience with forebodings of what shall be hereafter, that it is "the grave whither thou goest;" that that must be the cold and loathsome bed of that body, to gratify which, thou sellest thy soul, that "the worm" shall be "spread under thee" and "the worms" shall

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cover thee?". . . . And thou too, who art wavering, at one time hot, at another cold, thinking that thou hast time enough and to spare; oh! that thou would'st consider how soon the end cometh, that, as with the foolish virgins, so it may be with thee-no oil in your lamp when the Bridegroom comes; purposing, resolving, purposing again, until the grave receive thee. ... And thou, too, my fellow Christian! shrink not back to hear that it is "the grave whither

thou," too. "goest ;" to thee "to die is gain," "for this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,' and "death" shall be "swallowed up in victory," 1 Cor. xv. 53, 54. It is the Saviour's promise to his church, "Thy dead men shall live, together with My dead body shall they arise; Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust, for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead," Isa. xxvi. 19. But as that pathway is solemn from the myriads that crowd it, so also is it solemn

"It

2. As the entrance chamber to eternity. is appointed unto men once to die, but after this, the judgment," Heb. ix. 27. The many would fain that it were otherwise; they shut their eyes to the solemn truth, of a meeting "face to face" with the Most High. Oh that Day of the opening of Books! "The Lord "

indeed "shall come, but who may abide the day of His coming? or, who shall stand when He appeareth?" "The dead" shall be "judged out of those things which are written in the Books, according to their works," Rev. xx. 12. The judgment day again, ushers in ETERNITY. Ah! who can fathom the depths of that mysterious word? and yet men dare to trifle, with awful hardihood they sport, with