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man can see the kingdom of God. He is left alone and he consoles himself, it may be, in his last hour, with some blind imagination, that as, upon the whole, his life was moral, he shall find acceptance; for the wicked, we are warned, have "no bands in their death*" To this state of confirmed indifference, the careless sinner is, naturally, always tending. It is the constitution of the human mind, to be less susceptible of impressions by the repetition of them. Things that once awakened powerful passions soon cease to move us. When familiar with danger, we disregard it; when accustomed to pleasure, it palls upon the sense. And so the denunciations of God's

Psalm lxxiii. 4.

wrath against transgression, which once, perhaps, alarmed men, lose, by degrees, their terrors: the display of his boundless love, which once awakened some kind of emotion, is passed by unregarded: the awful realities of death, and judgment, and eternity, take, by repetition, less hold on the imagination: sin is less hideous, its consequences less feared. Hence the heart is continually hardening, the conscience continually searing, the means of grace becoming less likely to be effectual, the door of mercy continually shutting, tillin how many cases-it closes, and the sinner," sunk in irremovable torpor, is never, never made to know the power and life of spiritual regeneration."

And thus the day of salvation to you is fast waning to its close: the accepted time is rapidly gliding past you. All the indisposition you feel to spiritual religion today, all, and more you will feel to-morrow: the force of evil habit will be strengthened, and Satan, like a cruel gaoler, more secure of his wretched prey, will gloat over the thickening chains which weigh you down. Now, then, is the time: now make the effort for liberty, or alas! it will be too late.

I know that God, in sovereign mercy, saves, even at the eleventh hour, some, to be to the praise of the glory of his eternal goodness; but you have no right to depend on any extraordinary manifestation of power and grace. If you live in light,

and yet shut your eyes against it; if you know that sin is evil, and yet will not forsake it; if you are told of the love of Christ, and yet refuse to apply to it—God, who works by moral means, will naturally leave you alone: it is no more than justice, that he should let you eat of the fruit of your ways, and be filled with your own devices.

Persons persuade themselves, they shall have time to repent upon a death-bedwhen the body is racked with pain, when the mind, disordered with anxiety and agony, can scarcely collect its scattered thoughts, or concentrate for a moment its powers! To have to take the dreadful leap into eternity, with the consciousness that

all that ought to have been done is left

undone, and all that

ought to be left

Even uncertainty

undone has been done!

at such a crisis, how awfully tremendous! I tremble to think how little a deathbed repentance is to be relied on. Far be it from me to pronounce on what is known to God only; but I seem, brethren, to have observed, that if, through life, religion has been habitually neglected - even though some serious thought appear afterwards awakened-a cloud generally hangs upon the bed of death; which, if it give the survivors any room to hope, leaves them, if they choose to think, a thousand times as much to fear. The day of grace is passing: the hour of acceptance is ready to close: now,

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