managing his temptations accordingly, he has succeeded in turning what ought to be a season of peculiar seriousness and reflection, into a season of peculiar frivolity and merriment. It is not a matter of mere accident, but of the ingenious contrivance of the devil, that one gambol after another is pressed into the last week of the old, and the few first weeks of the new year; that the important passage may elude observation, and the infatuated multitude be cast adrift upon another stream, and still another, gliding rapidly forward, unconscious of their progress towards eternity.

There is something also in the circumstance of this being the season appointed for settling our various secular accounts, which renders it peculiarly unfavourable to religious impressions. For although it is the bounden, the religious duty of us all, regularly and honestly to settle such accounts, that we may "owe no man any thing;" and although the benefits to society, resulting from such settlements, are incalculable, it being perfectly true that "short accounts make long friends:" yet we are so constituted that these matters entangle our reflections, (to say no worse of it,) and render us unusually callous to the claims and interests of another world. Is it not so? and has there not been among you, within the last

hour, an unusual inattention to the meaning of the words we have been reading, and an unusual degree of mental reckoning going forward, conning over receipts and expenditures, and striking the balance between outgoings and incomings?

How is it that while you settle with your landlord, and your minister, and your tradesmen, and your dress-makers ;-How is it, I repeat, that you forget your chief creditor and neglect to settle with your God? As the steward among you of the manifold grace of God, I demand a hearing for my divine master's claims. Have these formed as they should have done, a large and important feature in your calculations? At the commencement of the last year, there was a long arrear against you you paid nothing. During the whole year, day after day you have been adding to your debt: how much can you now pay? Nothing. And you are beginning again to add

to

your debt at the close of this year, should you live so long, how much will you be able to pay? Nothing. And you will begin again! my brethren where is this to end? It was not last year your debt commenced: there was an arrear against you the year before, and the year before that, and it commenced-when shall I say? I will not embarrass the subject by bringing original sin into the account;

therefore passing over your mysterious conception in sin, and birth in iniquity, passing over also the unconscious sins of your infancy, let us open the book at the commencement of that year in which you first knew what it was to tell a lie, to swear, to steal, to break the sabbath, to dishonour your father or mother. How long is that ago? To some of you ten or twenty or thirty years, to some forty, perhaps to some who hear me, above sixty years ago. What a fearful list it becomes my duty to set in array against you. I find in each of these years, three hundred and sixty-five pages, so to speak, and on every page more entries than I can count; while he who sent me, hath said unto me, that the whole demand is infallibly correct, and that he will exact the very uttermost farthing. Be not deceived with the idea of any per contra of good works, to strike the balance in your favour. In which of your years or days, have such works been performed? On the unspotted purity of which of them would you now deliberately risk your eternity, and confidently challenge the just judgment of the Almighty? Search and look,

if

you have ever spent such a day, nay, such an hour. No; the light of the Lord's countenance would expose the hidden leprosy of the best of your hours, of the holiest of your employments and if this be so with one

favourite hour, what shall we say to the accumulation of sin, the long uninterrupted catalogue which stains the successive days and weeks and months and years of your whole life? Be not deceived: there is nothing, absolutely nothing in any of you, at any time which can contribute in the smallest possible degree, towards procuring your pardon from God.

The full extent of this statement is what you do not believe, and it is precisely this full extent which is of use. This is the charge of actual, personal, wilful transgression which the scripture brings against every man. This is the character of total ruin, which the gospel of Christ presupposes in its first address to every man, proclaiming glad tidings of salvation, to whom? to THE LOST. They who are whole need not a physician, but they who are sick. They who can see need not to have their eyes opened, but they who are blind. They who can speak, need not to have their tongues loosed, but they who are dumb. They who are alive in righteousness, need not a crucified Saviour, but they who are dead in trespasses and sins. This is the ruin which renders the gospel building invaluable: this the poison which will never yield save only to the gospel antidote this the guilt which never can be cleansed save save only in the gospel fountain

opened in Christ Jesus for sin and for uncleanness.

When

1. If such be the character of the days of the years of man's life, how marvellous is the love of God in giving his only begotten Son to such a world, "not to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved! God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." It is a matter of unfeigned astonishment to the reflecting mind impressed with any adequate sense of the revealed character of God, that a Being of such holiness could for a moment endure the frightful exhibition of idolatrous depravity presented by this world: that a Being invested with such uncontrollable power should not have raised an arm of righteous vengeance, of everlasting destruction against the rebellious race. But when, instead of this, we read that the high and holy God hath not only endured this world of wickedness, but also loved it, and so loved it as to give his dear Son to suffering, and shame, and death, that whosoever of the guilty race believeth in him should not perish as he deserves, but should have everlasting life which he does not deserve. When we read this in that same volume of inspiration, which declares so repeatedly the unchanging