and cleave with full purpose of heart to your Redeemer. Why did he leave the bosom of his Father's glory, live and die for our sakes, but that he might "redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works?" The prize before us is worth all our pains; the loss of it is misery unutterable! And if in our Christian course we find, as we shall find, our trials and difficulties great, and our own strength wholly unequal to the conflict; conscious of our own weakness, let us seek with humble and patient earnestness the assistances of that Holy Spirit by which alone we can prevail. Through his converting and purifying influences, "let us run with patience the race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith;" waiting for that happy hour which will set us free from the cares and burdens of mortality, and translate us "to an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away."

SERMON VIII.

(PREACHED FOR THE BATH PENITENTIARY AND
LOCK HOSPITAL.)

1 CORINTHIANS vi. part of the 9th and 10th verses.

Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators nor adulterers

shall enter into the kingdom of God.

THE prophet Jeremiah declares, that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked."1 And St. Paul, with equal solemnity and earnestness, calls upon us to "exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day, lest any of us be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." If the natural heart were not thus hard, dead, and indifferent to spiritual things; if sin were not of such a dreadfully deluding and blinding quality; it never could be that so many who bear the outward name of Christians, who profess to believe in the doctrines and precepts of the Gospel,

or even in the attributes of a just and holy God, could contentedly live in the practice of such things as they do, and yet hope to escape the great judgment of God. Do you want a proof of

this melancholy truth? See first the plain, express, and awful declaration of God in the words before us; then turn and contemplate the world around. Where is the nominally Christian society-where is the professing Christian congregation, in which the minister of the Gospel, when he stands up to proclaim its truths, has not to labour under the painful conviction of beholding too many before him answering to the description in the text? and who yet, perhaps, are quietly and calmly depending on the privileges, and concluding themselves entitled to the promises of Christianity; or who, at least, are under no awakened terrors and apprehensions respecting their final state.

My brethren, what shall we say to these things? the heart mention of them.

sickens and sinks at the very Oh! how many beings are there in this world (perhaps in this very church), standing at this moment on the brink of eternity; how many daily and hourly passing into it, whose lives have been little else than one continued scene of rebellion and ingratitude against their God; who have lived for little else than to

despise "the riches of his mercy, and forbearance, and long-suffering " and to treasure up unto themselves "wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgment of God."1

I have chosen the words of the text, in consequence of being requested to recommend this morning to your charitable and Christian consideration the Bath Penitentiary and Lock Hospital; an institution, in its present form, and upon the extended scale on which it is now carried on, new to this place. And would it could have remained unknown and uncalled for! Would that there were not in a Christian land, and in a Christian city, the sad and urgent necessity which unhappily exists for this house of penitence and Painful however as the subject is, and unequal as I find myself to give it that force which I could wish, I am not sorry for the oppor tunity afforded me of directing your thoughts to the consideration of this common, this fatal, and widely destructive sin. If, as ambassadors of that Saviour who came "to seek and to save that which was lost," who, himself all holy, spotless, and pure, has left us an example that we should follow his steps," we have to reproach ourselves on this head; it is that, restrained by a false

woe!

1 Rom. ii, 4, 5.

delicacy, or a still more criminal indulgence to the conduct and manners of the age, we forbear to put these great and awakening subjects before our hearers with that plainness, and simplicity, and frequency which we should. For the Gospel knows nothing of that perversion of language which can give specious and soft names to wicked passions and foul deeds, which can "call evil good, and good evil, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bittter; the Gospel knows nothing of those spurious refinements or pernicious accommodations which the enemy of souls employs, as some of his most successful weapons, to draw a thoughtless world into sin, and hold them contented in his chains. It calls things by their right names, knowing what man is by nature, and what he must become by grace, before he can be restored to the favour of a pure and holy God. While it is a message of love and mercy, of pardon and peace to every convinced, humbled, and truly penitent sinner; while it contains rich and precious promises, more than heart can conceive or tongue can utter, to those who will leave their sins, and who will come and embrace the great salvation offered them; it warns all who will continue in impenitence or unbelief, that their doom is sealed, that there is no way of escape. "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: