of Christ, or the avowed despisers of the great salvation; you must be enlisted either on Jehovah's side, or on that of his adversary; for on no account can you, in this question, belong to an equivocal race, or occupy an intermediate or middle position.

parties; to maintain a kind of see-sawing | foes of God; either the devoted servants between the votaries of dissipation and the children of holiness-to aim at once for earth and heaven; to "fear the Lord and to serve their own gods ;" to have all the combined happiness which the gratifications of sense and time can afford, and to inherit all the felicities which Christianity can minister, and which immortality can supply.

But surely, my friends, it would be a superfluous waste of time and arguments, to stop to demonstrate the impossibility of uniting things so essentially distinct and discordant in their natures-of reconciling what is so absolutely and perfectly at variance of harmonizing interests so totally dissimilar-of amalgamating elements, in their very essence, of utter and eternal contrariety.

Though the population of this globe is composed of many different races of men, discriminated by a thousand graduated shades of spiritual character and situation, yet are they all comprehended by the Spirit of God under two divisions only the church and the world; believers and unbelievers; those who are in a state of spiritual death and condemnation, and those who are in a state of spiritual life and reconciliation; children of God, and children of the devil; heirs of grace, and heirs of wrath; those who are in Christ Jesus, and those who "lie in the wicked one."

Between those two great and opposite classes, there is, even in this present life, "a great moral gulf fixed," so that they who would pass from the one society to the other, are unable; and the broad line of separation and seclusion cannot, on any account, be violated. "He that is not with me," says Christ, "is against me." "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Be assured, then, that in a matter of such infinite moment as this, it is impossible you can be any thing else than exclusives, or can, with any degree of safety or consistency, stand in doubt or incertitude. You must, of necessity, be either the friends or the

In many cases of every day life, neutrality is not only lawful, but commendable. In many questions of intricate solution, and difficult interpretation, implicating the reputation, the property, or happiness of our fellow-men, where the evidence is dubious, and almost equally balanced, it may be the dictate at once of wisdom and discretion, to hold the judg ment in suspense, and to come to no decision. In domestic feuds, in private dissensions, and in the fierce collision of stormy passions, it may be often advisable to stand neutral, and to take part with neither set of combatants, seeing interference may tend to irritate, rather than to reconcile-to exasperate, rather than to allay, animosities; to foment, rather than to heal, divisions. But it is far otherwise in matters of religion, and in the high interests of immortality. Here no reserve can be admitted-no demur or debate sanctioned-no discreet caution allowed-no indifference tolerated; for in this case, every motive, as it is most obvious, must be urgent and immediate, that you make an option, that you choose your side, and that you resolutely, and inflexibly, and for ever, adhere to it.

As you have, then, been constituted moral agents, left to the freedom of your own wills, with a capacity to choose and determine for yourselves, we ask you, in the language of the text, "whom you will this day serve?" And in propounding to you this question, it is the farthest possible from our intention to insinuate, that we regard it as one of small import, or of trivial or temporary moment, which may be evaded, disregarded, or postponed without great detriment or hazard to your eternal interests. On the contrary, we avow, that we consider this question as one of transcendant consequence, and infinite magnitude, proposed, not as the Shibboleth of a party, but as the grand

wages is death. If you have been smitten with judicial blindness of eyes, and seared hardness of conscience; if the great enemy of souls has, by the potency

and paramount concern of all; that it em- be the incurable fatality of your nature, the braces whatever can, to an immortal invincible hardihood and intractability of spirit, be most dear and vital-being your mind, your confirmed regardlessness auspicious or fatal to all his hopes for of every consideration of glory, happiness, eternity, productive to him of unmeasured and self, and your utter insensibility to benefit, or of incalculable disaster. We the highest claims of tenderness, genedo unequivocally and solemnly avow, that rosity, and gratitude, then choose the the one side of the alternative is life, that service of idolatry-embark in the basest the reverse of the alternative is death; thraldom to which Satan can degrade his that paradise is on the one side, and per- votaries-be the veriest slaves of your dition on the other; that the one choice own natural corruptions-the most delays the foundation of an empire of feli-voted martyrs to the servitude of that city and of glory, greater and happier a iniquity, whose fruit is shame, and whose thousand fold than heart ever conceived; while the other decision will impregnate an infinitude of existence with lamenta tion, wo, and despair. In making your option, too, in this matter, you must stand of his sorceries, and by the brilliancy of solely on your own responsibility. You must of necessity be a party in this case, to your own eternal shame or renown, to your own enduring bliss or misery. The very nature of the case precludes the adoption of all coercive and compulsory measures. It rests with yourselves to determine, on which side the scale shall preponderate. The decision is committed into your own hands. The whole is left to your own discrimination and choice. Nothing remains for us but to make the proposals. Like advocates, we can do no more than state the case and plead the cause. You, the judges, sit and hear it tried, must weigh and sum up the evidence, return the verdict, and by that determination stand or fall for ever.

We propose, then, in the first place, to submit for your adoption, one of the two sides of the alternative specified; and, in the second place, to advert to the particular time when this election is to be made. I. We are to submit to your choice one of the two sides of the alternative proposed. And the first particularized, is the tragical or fatal side.

If you listen to no other but the dictates of your own carnal and unrenewed inclinations; if it seem good unto you to follow the popular current; if you are determined to exhibit the last excess of madness and wretchedness, and to be guilty of the most daring and atrocious deed of self-destruction which it is possible for a creature to perpetrate; if such

his enchantments, so fascinated your minds, and so debauched your hearts, as to make you stumble at every step, and receive erroneous impressions from every object; if, in the science of spiritual arithmetic, you discover such a stultification of intellect, and incapacity of moral discrimination, as to prefer a life fleeting as the shadow, to an existence of infinite duration; if you deem the pampering of the appetites, and the gratification of the propensities of the "vile body," as of weightier consideration than the improvement of the powers, and the assurance of the well-being of the neverdying spirit; if the most evanescent and unsatisfying of animal indulgences far overbalance, in your estimation, the purest and the sublimest of celestial ecstacies; if flames and torments unutterable have deeper charms for you than triumphs and transports inconceivable; if you wish to be the "greatest architect of ruin" that ever existed, the destroyers of the largest amount of righteousness and felicity which the world ever beheld, then declare yourselves at once to be the devotees of ungodliness, and the heirs of wrath. Plunge headlong into every excess of criminality and frenzy; cast away from you the last desire and hope of salvation; pronounce boldly and fearlessly the decision, that you have "judged yourselves unworthy of everlasting life;" and say in a spirit betraying an equal defiance of the thunders of divine judgment, and the

is the Lord that we should obey his voice? we know not the Lord, neither will we serve him; for we have loved strangers, and after them will we go."

pleadings of divine compassion, "Who the most solemn warnings and cautions that have been enforced upon you; and you may, with reckless despite, spurn at the most powerful safeguards which reason and revelation, which law and conscience have created, for averting the catastrophe of your endless destruction, and for shutting you up to the enjoyment of everlasting redemption. "Choose you this day," that you will not pause at the commission of any iniquity, however flagrant; that you will not quail for the consequences of any conduct, however irrational or revolting; that you will comply with every invitation to sinful indulgence; and that you will not avoid even the last extremes of delinquency. If the service of darkness and unrighteousness have for your taste the highest attractions, then embark your whole soul's affections in that cause-labour in it zealously, and labour in it incessantly. Let no scruples damp your ardour; let no fears or diffi

If you greatly prefer the pleasures and pursuits of a present world; if it have attracted and satisfied your fondest regards; if a predilection for its degrading slavery, its ever fluctuating frivolities, and its ruinous excesses, has become the darling and dominant passion of your soul, then see that you adore no other idol than the world—that its spirit and maxims be identified with all your sentiments, and tastes, and mental operations and that you permit no other object to interfere with its claims of affection, or to dispute with it the rights of supremacy. See, that you bow implicitly, and without control, to all its pernicious, demoralizing manners; that you permit its pageants and its pomps, its trappings, and its airy nothings, to intoxi-culties cause you to flinch or swerve one cate your imagination, to steal away your senses, and to cultivate a vulgar admiration. Let it be farther proved and proclaimed, by every principle of character, by every syllable of speech, and by every feature of external deportment, that you are the unceremonious and unscrupulous votaries of sin-assuming an unbounded license of folly and vice-making fashion your only law, the flesh your only god, and pleasure your only pursuit.

In "walking in the counsels and in the imagination of your heart," you may, if it so please you, violate with remorseless scorn all the established rules of piety and virtue; you may smile with contemptuous disdain at the maxims of ancient wisdom, at the sobrieties and the godliness of former days. You may applaud and imitate every thing, merely because it is of foreign importation, modish and current, however vicious in principle, and however contaminating in its tendencies. You may also overleap all the ordinary barriers which divine wisdom and grace have erected, to fence in the way of transgressors, to prevent them from precipitating themselves over the verge, into the bottomless abyss that yawns, beneath; and you may deride all VOL. I.-27

hair-breadth from the road that leads to hopeless and inevitable perdition. Let all the combined considerations of prudence and self-interest be awed into silence; all the ties of duty, and all the obligations of generosity, be disclaimed and dissolved; let no eloquence of love, no solicitations of friendship, no menaces of wrath, and no promises of richest mercy have efficacy to move or to melt your hearts. Let neither the terrors of hell alarm nor the hopes of paradise allure you. Let neither the eternal compassions of the Father, the expiring tears and agonies of the Son, nor the expostulations and beseechings of the Spirit of grace, be able to unnerve or soften, or to drive you from the career of folly, self-willedness, and contumacy, on which you have so boldly entered, and along which you may be advancing with fearful and portentous celerity. If you choose this day to give yourselves up to the thrall of your turbulent passions, and to become the slaves of all ungodliness, then drown every rising conviction, strangle in the birth all boding apprehensions, and all gloomy forecastings of the future. Let the reproofs and the reproaches of the divine word, the rebukes of an outraged law,

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the pleadings and the pathos of a still importunate gospel be utterly contemned; and let the tender expostulations of pious relatives, the frequent and urgent admonitions of the ambassadors of Jesus, the appointments and the discipline of a corrective Providence, with all the other appliances and expedients of exuberant grace in all their rich variety, and concentrated union of moral force, fall blank and bluntless on the soul, and be scornfully repelled, even as the surges of the chiding main are indignantly thrown back and churned into spray, on the impregnable ramparts of an iron bound strand.

of a moral transformation; that you may feel God's service to be at once your dignity and delight, apply with fervent assiduity and perseverance to the renovating and purifying fountains of the spirit of holiness. Let there be no oscillation in your will-no vagueness in your purposes, but be distinguished for the exclusiveness with which you attach yourselves to the cause of religion, on which so many mighty and great interests are depending.

If you desire to be Christians, be so in deed and in truth. God is not to be mocked. Let your intentions be une2. But if you choose, as we trust in quivocal, your declarations overt and God you will, an opposite course; if you avowed, your life unambiguous, and your prefer, as we pray heaven you may, the character above all suspicion. Let every service of Jehovah to the service of Satan feeling, and word, and action, be distinct-the pleasures of holiness to the plea-ly indicative of the cause you have essures of unrighteousness; if the dedica-poused, the side for which you have tion of yourselves to the worship and arrayed yourselves, the sanctified society enjoyment of the Almighty have more with which you consort, and the illustriattractions for you than devotedness to ous heritage which you have chosen. Let the vile slavery of the world; if you give no earthly objects divide and distract your a preference to felicities that are uncloy- attention from the prosecution of every ing and unperishable, to flashes of mo- holy aim, and from the attainment of mentary hilarity, and to bursts of carnal every moral perfection. Let no solicitaand obstreperous merriment, then stand tions of folly or pleasure allure you from not for a moment in fatal hesitation, but the cross of Jesus, no proffers of reward range yourselves at once under the stand-or recompense from any quarter seduce ard of the cross, and resign yourselves, you to a compromise of principle, breach without reserve and without condition, to of engagement, or violation of fidelity. the faith and obedience of the gospel-to If you have enlisted on the side of the the love and service of God, your Saviour great Mediator, and taken the oath of and Sanctifier. Be assured, that if vital fealty to his service, then see that you Christianity be to you any thing, it must live on terms of intimate and devoted be your all in all. If salvation be a pearl, fellowship with him; that there be an it is one of infinite price, and you must endearing interchange of all tender offices feel it to be your primary duty, and super- and sympathies between you; that you lative interest to sell all, to relinquish are powerfully attached to his person, to fortune, life itself, if required, and the his righteousness, to his laws, and to his inheritance of a whole material universe, people; that he habitually lives in your did you possess it, in exchange for a thoughts, in your confidence, in your treasure so inestimable-a prize so far affections, in your hopes, and through above and beyond all calculation. If you your entire and undivided being; that are sincerely desirous to have your guilt you are his true and trusty followers, and cancelled, your persons accepted, and that your hearts are fast and faithful to your title to the immense and inexhausti- every impression made upon them by his ble benefits of salvation secured beyond word and by his power, by his Spirit and the possibility of alienation, cling with by his providence. Let it be demonstraavidity to the divine and all-sufficient tive that the Saviour reigns paramount righteousness of the Redeemer; and if in your souls-that you yield implicit you are truly solicitous to be the subjects submission to every tittle of his will

that his character is the model of your | ing to another and eternal country, to the perpetual imitation-and that his com- enjoyment of a fortune, splendid and mandment is the standard of all your holy sublime as are the stars, and enduring as obedience. Let it be farther apparent, is immortality itself. Let it be therethat you bear a close resemblance to fore distinctly evident, from your whole Christ in all his moral imitable attributes, conversation, appearance, and accoutre-in piety and patience, in meekness and ments, that you are on a journey; let the humility, in heavenly-mindedness, and sandalled feet, and the girt loins, the in universal sanctity. If you profess lights burning, and the staff in hand, beyour faith and attachment to the gospel, speak your character, profession, and purif you avouch yourselves to be the ser- suit. Let every thing bear attestation to vants of the living God, then let all the the fact, that you consider you have a distinctive and discriminating evidences work to execute of great difficulty and of of that illustrious relationship beam forth infinite importance, on the issue of which bright and conspicuous from the inner the whole burden of the destinies of end temple of the mind; let all the character- less ages is staked, and therefore you ístics and divine excellences of the reno- cannot permit your attention to be for a vated man be brought out into warm and moment diverted away from this one vivid manifestation in your history. grand and all-absorbing business of your Shun the very appearance of evil; let sin existence, or your faculties to be enbe dethroned both in your heart and in grossed by an inferior object; that you your life. Abjure all communication are the citizens of another world, with with the world, in its spirit and in its high prerogatives, refined tastes, and expleasures, in its principles and in its quisite moral sensibilities, and cannot practices. "Taste not, touch not, handle therefore stoop to be detained by trifles, not," the charmed poisoned cup which it or amused with levities, or entertained mingles and proffers to intoxicate the with vulgar debasing indulgences; but senses, to bewitch the reason, and to must act up to the dignity of a celestial provoke criminal desire. Hold no dally-pedigree, and to the nobility of a divine ing with its follies, no flirtation with its vanities, make no concession to its demands, but keep a retired and separate walk; maintain towards it a distant and studied reserve. And farther, make no secret of the election you have made, and the interest to which you have sworn inviolable constancy. Hesitate not for an instant to avow your sentiments, to assert the character you are determined to sustain; the affections you are resolved, by the grace of God, to cherish; the exalted motives from which you profess to act; the noble ends you have in view, and the glorious destination on which your ambi-able junctions, and the improvement of tion is devotedly centred. Let your profession, your principles, and all your actions clearly and unequivocally testify, that you consider you have no intrinsic interest, no inherent or permanent portion, in the riches, honours, or possessions of this earth; that you estimate yourselves in no other capacity than that of short lived strangers, making a precipitate passage through its territories, and hasten

nature, and must walk, speak, and deport yourselves in every respect, as becomes the heirs of God, the kings of heaven, and the high priests of eternity!

II. We are in the second and last place, briefly to advert to the special time when this option is to be made, and this decision come to.

The text specifies and limits it to the present hour-to this fleeting moment of existence. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve." In every relation and condition of human life, we know how much depends on the cultivation of favour

propitious moments. The greatest revolutions that have taken place, the most splendid victories that have been won, and the most permanent conquests that have been achieved, have all depended upon a judicious estimate and critical application of time. In this point of view, even minutes are of incalculable value, seeing the most important transactions that have illustrated and signalized