little attention to your spiritual welfare; who perhaps instilled into your mind the moral virtues, but never inculcated the christian virtues of meekness, humility, and love; who loved the world, and conformed to the world, and taught you to do the same; ah! perhaps their unhappy souls are crying out from the bottomless abyss, and entreating the Almighty to allow them to appear before, you enveloped in flames, and to endeavour to reclaim you from the vicious habits you contracted through their neglect. Perhaps a brother, a sister, a friend, an acquaintance with whom you were too familiar, with whom you learned to offend God, whose example and allurements enticed you to sin, are now uttering unavailing lamentations, and soliciting in vain for permission to display before you the horrors of their state, and excite you to repent of faults, of which they were in part the cause. Perhaps many souls, to whom you yourselves have been the occasion of sin, either by dress, example, or allurements, are now immured in the deepest abyss through your fault, and are earnestly entreating to be allowed to exhibit before you the dreadful effects of your irreligious deportment, in order either to move you to repentance, or at least deter you from precipitating others into that place of wo.

But what reply will be given to their entreaties? They have Moses and the prophets, will the Almighty say, and, in addition, the precepts of Jesus Christ. If the scriptures are insufficient to excite them to repentance, it would be to no purpose that a man appeared to them from the dead.. You fondly imagine that the sight of a miracle, of a man risen from the dead, of an angel speaking to you on the part of God, would induce you to reform your conduct, and renounce

the vanities of the world: but you are deceived, it would produce no such effect; you would discover reasons to doubt the reality of the appearance; your corrupted heart would still alledge pretexts to refuse its submission. The miracles of our Saviour removed neither the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, nor the incredulity of the Sadducees. The greatest miracle which you can witness is the sublimity of the christian doctrine, the purity of its moral precepts, the dignity and divine origin of its scriptures, and its wonderful propaga tion over the world. If these miracles. do not move, enlighten, and reform you, in vain would Providence work in your favour any other prodigy. They have Moses and the prophets. If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe if a man arose from the dead.

Let me exhort you, therefore, my beloved friends, to peruse these sacred

books with leisure and attention: it is the advice which is given by our Saviour in the words quoted above: let a chapter both at morning and night be your regular lecture. Ah! if you meditated attentively on these divine writings, it would not be necessary to adduce arguments to prove that a worldly life, a life of luxury and pleasure, although free from vice and excess, is a life of sin; it would not be necessary to inform you that the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, that the Christian must deny himself, and not seek his consolation in this world; that he must use this world as if he used it not; and that if he loves his soul in this life, he will lose it in the next: all this, I say, would be unnecessary, for these are the most simple, the most familiar truths of the gospel.

Besides, what is the duration of our pilgrimage on earth? Is it of sufficient length to warrant our devoting the

greater part of it to pleasure, or is the happiness which awaits us hereafter so insignificant, so trifling, as to excuse our abhorrence of the painful duties which will insure to us the possession of it? Our life on earth is only a moment. In the twinkling of an eye the world vanishes again from our sight, and we are hurried into the abyss of eternity. If the only pleasure which you were to enjoy during a long life, was to be confined within the compass of a dream, and if the remainder of your days was to be devoted to unutterable torments for the pleasure which you indulged during that dream, would your lot appear enviable? And yet this, says St. Chrysostom, is the case of those who live in ease and comfort here, and neglect their eternal welfare. You resemble the man who dreams that he is happy, and who, when he has dreamt his dream, is awakened by the sound of a terrific voice, and, instead