reluctance, and even aversion to practical Christianity is grafted. Every day's delay is augmenting the power, and consolidating the dreadful influences, of iniquity over you, entangling you deeper and deeper in the pollutions and snares of the world, in widening the breach between you and God, in piling up fresh materials of offence and condemnation, and in making your case proportionately hopeless and desperate. "Choose you this day whom you will serve," because if you do not now comply with the pacific overtures of redemption, embrace God as your only portion, and his service as your only delight, another offer of life

the world have hinged upon them. If it of lethargy and carnality on which this be true, what a writer has observed, "that it is possible to live a thousand years in a quarter of an hour," it holds still truer, that a few minutes lost or improved may decide the complexion of our whole destiny for eternity. A single hour devoted to the best purpose may suffice to reverse the entire existence of an immortal spirit, as was exemplified in the case of the dying malefactor who was suspended by the Redeemer's side, and in that of the three thousand souls converted by a few brief sentences spoken by the apostle Peter; while it is a position of equal verity, that ages, even illimitable duration itself, will be altogether ineffectual in neutralizing or remedying the deplorable consequences may never be made to you, another opof talents wasted, privileges abused, pre-portunity of exercising saving repentance cious opportunities frittered away, during may not again be afforded. Many cirthe flow of a few winged months of this cumstances may conspire to defeat or mortal existence. You may, therefore, frustrate so blessed a consummation-the be this very moment within an hour of exceeding deceitfulness of sin, the illuendless ruin or everlasting salvation. sions of a present evil world, the absorbAnd does not this serve to convince you, ing cares of business, the pomps and that the present time-this very day-this amusements of life, severe bodily weakvery night-may be the knot or conjunc-ness, mental imbecility or sudden dissoture to which the whole issues of your lution; and just as you are going on deintellectual, spiritual, and interminable bating the point, wishing to speculate a being are intrusted; when you may be little longer on the subject, continuing to building a superstructure of dignities and alternate between what you shall choose felicities on a scale the most magnificent, and what you shall reject, the door of or be entailing and perpetuating all the grace may abruptly close, your last hope unbearable and aggravated miseries of a may be wrested from you, and your doom violated law and a despised gospel. sealed for ever. In fine, "Choose you this day whom you will serve," because time is rushing to its conclusion with every man and woman of this generation, with ominous and precipitate speed; and when the curtain of death falls upon you

rally when least expected, and on those who are worst prepared for it—it will reveal the fallacy and the inefficiency of the whole stock of those subterfuges and

"Choose ye this day whom ye will serve," because if you do not now cast yourselves into the arms of divine compassion, repose unlimited faith in the merits and mediation of the Redeemer, and "repent as in dust and ashes," your-and it falls often suddenly, and genekeeping this vital question in a state of suspension and abeyance can only be the means of multiplying all the difficulties that lie in the way of your salvation, and probably defeating or preventing the ac-shifts, palliations and excuses, which complishment of it altogether. Procras-mark in all the unregenerate so strong a tination may stave off, but it can do no more than simply stave off, its own immediate crisis. This faltering and demurring can only tend awfully to increase the perils you brave, and the hazards you run, to charm reason and conscience to sleep, to nourish and confirm those habits

disposition to evade and parry off, from Sabbath to Sabbath, and from month to month, and from year to year, the united force of arguments amounting to moral demonstration in favour of immediate faith and moral reformation. On the day of solemn reckoning and retribution, will

it not be an aggravating feature in the restricted and circumscribed to this reguilt of many, that they were ever form- volving, fleeting hour. The gospel laning vague and undefined plans of amend-guage of invitation and promise to sinners ment, but never carried them into effect; is ever couched in the present tense; and that they were ever making magnanimous it does not hold out one distinct hope or resolves, but never executing them; ever pledge that its calls, if unanswered or dison the point of joining themselves to the regarded to-day, will be repeated to-morLord, and yet consuming their whole ex-row, or at any future time. Its voice is istence in worshipping and doing sacrifice to the idols of time; and will not the severest doom be reserved for "those slothful and undutiful servants," who knew their Master's will, but did it not; "who, when required to go and work in the vineyard, said, We go, but went not?"

never to be heard but in the accents of precipitation and despatch; its messages of love and forgiveness to perishing criminals are all sent by an express, while it exhausts the vocabulary of denouncement and condemnation of every form of parley and truce, of tampering and temporizing. It inculcates, in the most urgent and Seeing, then, that there is equal hazard peremptory tone, "Flee from the coming and criminality in every moment's delay, wrath. Hasten your escape from the in a business so critical and so moment- stormy wind and tempest. Escape for ous as the restoration of the soul to God's thy life, look not behind thee, neither favour and image, and the insurance of stay thou in all the plain: escape to the its eternal well-being, we would, with mountains, lest thou be consumed. Now all earnestness, press it upon you as your is the accepted time, now is the day of first, your predominant, and your ultimate salvation." Again, he limiteth a certain interest, to give yourselves to God now, day, saying, in David, "To-day, if ye to give yourselves to God wholly, and to will hear his voice. Exhort one another give yourselves to God for ever. This daily, while it is called to-day." And is your paramount obligation, your su- while we read of nothing relating to faith, preme interest, your distinguishing hon- repentance, and salvation, which is not our. It involves also the only infallible spoken of as critical and hazardous in the hope of your final salvation. The gospel, extreme, if deferred to some future and while it unfolds a remedial economy ad- indefinite period; and while every memirably adapted to all the diversities of nace is levelled, and every admonition is our most necessitous and destitute condi- pointed, against faltering and procrastination, and is replete with blessings of the tion, every gospel blessing is proffered, first magnitude, and of the richest variety, every distinction and pre-eminence of and which blessings are gratuitously salvation is pledged, and will infallibly tendered to all, as they were purchased be conferred upon those who yield comfor all, and are needed by all, has never-pliance with its pressing summons, and theless revealed and bequeathed them to who immediately accede to its treasures the human race upon the express under- of grace, which are on a scale of magnistanding that they meet with an instanta- tude and glory that transcend all cost and neous and cordial reception: while no all calculation. "Turn ye to the strong excuse will be sustained, and no apology hold, ye prisoners of hope; even to-day admitted, on any ground or pretence do I declare that I will render double whatsoever, for hesitation or delay, which, unto you. Ye stand this day all of you in every case, is held in Scripture equiva- before the Lord your God, that he may lent to a disparagement, or actual dis- establish you to-day for a people unto claiming, of the whole generous and gra- himself, and that he may be unto you a cious proposals. The entire word of God, as he hath said unto you." If you inspiration, from beginning to end, is will this day, then, "Choose the Lord to most definite and specific on the point of be your God," we proffer to you, in his the present, and that only, being "man's name and by his authority, that you shall day;" and all its overtures of mercy are be presently installed in the possession

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of all the benefits and immunities of the Redeemer's purchase without deduction and without qualification; that you shall instantaneously emerge from under the dark shadows of the fall, that mighty and mysterious eclipse of humanity, into the effulgence of the light, and the plenitude of the joy, of a renovated, heaven-born nature; and the silent tide of oblivion shall instantly close for ever over ali your past and greatest sins; and you shall be immediately admitted within the privileged circle of the redeemed of the Lord, shall have discerned to you the prince of honours, and the meridian of felicities; that your brow shall be encircled with a double diadem of life and righteousness; that a patent to all the titles and the illustrious dignities of the nobility of the heaven of heavens, shall be made out for you, which nothing in time or eternity can alienate or rescind; that paradise shall unlock for you its everlasting gates, and the soul of grace and godliness be poured into your expanded hearts; and you shall behold the interminable future through a vista of brightest hopes, and inherit a name immortal in the records of glory; and while you continue on earth your spirit shall be bathed in a flood of heavenly bliss, and from habitual communion and intercourse with the Godhead, prayer shall swell into praise, praise into adoration, and adoration into rapture!

ous and sustained application in contend-
ing for the last great stake of life; and
we beseech you, if any good feeling and
fan
you
conviction be now at work, that
the holy flame, and entirely resign your-
selves to the divine impulse; for oh! the
course of many of you is now almost run,
and your life hangs by a single hair, and
the term of grace and opportunity is wear-
"Wo unto us, for
ing rapidly away.
the day goeth away; for the shadows of
the evening are stretched out;" and God
only knows what the next hour may de-
velope, and on what new perils each suc-
cessive morn may break. The sunshine
is fast fading away; the storm is brewing,
and will quickly burst: every moment's
delay may cost a life, and a solitary spark
may ignite the train of an endless confla-
gration. All things have now come to a
point.

Half measures will no longer suffice; this is the very brunt and crisis of your eternal fate. Now is the ultimatum of gospel remonstrance and solicitation with you. This is the solemn and momentous juncture, when you must secure or lose your everlasting interest in the great redemption; when your answer to the grand question must be clear and categorical, affirmative or negative: for yet another hour and the high game of time is up with you, and the last stake will be played for good or evil, for life or death, for two worlds, of ecstacy or of agony, through the utmost range of an Awake, then, awake from this delirium | unbounded existence. You have gone and trance. Rouse from this extreme too far now to recede. The passes of and passive torpidity of soul, and shake flight are insuperably barred. You are too off the inexplicable stupor that has fallen deeply and personally implicated in this upon your spirits. Be alive to the affect-matter ever to retract. You are shut up, ing realities of your perilous situation; sit not a moment longer in silent and abstracted musing, but precipitate your escape from impending disaster and death, and hasten this mighty question, so long pending, to an immediate and final adjustment. We do entreat, that all other cares and avocations be for the time suspended, and your whole faculties bent to the furtherance of this one grand concern; we implore, that all other interests, being immeasurably inferior and subordinate, be silent before this overwhelming interest of the soul; we call upon your strenu

your

and all your destinies, spiritual and eter-
nal, are concentrated within this narrow
verge. Escape is impossible; you are
last
hemmed in on every side, and
retreat is cut off. Either, then, you must
immediately, and on the spot, surrender
at discretion to the proposals of amnesty
and tenderest clemency; consent to be
pardoned and redeemed, to reign in life,
to flourish in renown, and to be crowned
with endless felicity; or to be condemned
as renegades, taken with the weapons of
rebellion in their hands, and adjudged to
never-ending shame and punishment.

And let the truth be branded into your inmost heart, that at whatever conclusion you arrive in this case, and whether you make your option this day or not, the circumstance will assuredly not prevent the transit of this day into the womb of the past. However lightly you may hold, and however wantonly you may riot away, the successive winged hours of this poor mortal span, the loss of each hour is an important abstraction from the scanty remnant of a most fragile and fugitive life. Your hesitancy and delay will not retard for one moment the sun, which has mounted the heavens this morning, from going down at his appointed time; your dreaming and yawning away of this brief term of grace will not preclude its rushing to its conclusion with equal and portentous speed; even if the very existence and happiness of the whole universe were suspended on the phenomenon, the shadow upon the dialplate would not go backward this evening by one degree; and were it to be the means of averting the whole catastrophe of your immortal doom, time would not stop for you one wave of its unstaying and resistless tide.

yourselves into the everlasting and outstretched arms of the once suffering and slain, but now the ascended and lifegiving Redeemer, who is beseeching you by all the overflowing compassions he has manifested for you, and by the ten thousand claims which he has established upon your admiration, confidence, and obedience, that ye come to him, that ye may be justified, renovated, and glorified.

And let the trumpet of gos

pel mercy, as it vibrates with thrilling transport through your frame, be cordially and joyfully responded to; and let its tenders of love, and oblivion of all guilt, be more grateful to you, than the proclamation of life to the condemned malefactor on the scaffold; its purifying and refreshing fountains, more welcome than streams in the desert to the parched and prostrate caravan; and the discovery of its splendid heritage of rest and glory, more delightful to your eyes than the sight of harbour to the sea-sick and tempest-beaten mariner!

A HOLY LIFE IMPORTANT.

I WILL be sure to live well, because the virtuous life of a clergyman is the most powerful eloquence to persuade all that see it to reverence and love, and at least to desire to live like him. And this I will do, because I know we live in an

Oh! flee, then, to the sovereign and infallible refuge set before you in the gospel. Avail yourselves of the noble and all-efficient remedy instituted by God for your deliverance from wrath, and re-age that hath more need of good examples storation to his friendship and moral likeness; improve and apply for your perfect salvation, the admirable and inexhaustible provisions of infinite wisdom and everlasting grace. "And what thou doest do quickly." Put not the question of heaven or hell, bliss or misery, salvation or destruction, one hour longer in quarantine, but bring it to a summary and solemn bearing. Give in, this very instant, your submission to the overtures of reconciliation and peace; expedite your escape to the broad and imperishable Rock of ages, that rears its head aloft, far above the surrounding surges, for the protection and security of exposed, shipwrecked sinners. Return like the dove, after wandering over the face of the earth, seeking rest and finding none, to the ark of your salvation. Throw

than precepts. And I beseech that God, who hath honoured me so much as to call me to serve him at his altar, that as by his special grace he hath put into my heart these good desires and resolutions; so he will, by his assisting grace, give me ghostly (spiritual) strength to bring the same to good effect. And I beseech him, that my humble and charitable life may so win upon others, as to bring glory to my Jesus, whom I have this day taken to be my master and governor; and I am so proud of his service, that I will always observe, and obey, and do his will; and always call him, Jesus my master; and I will always contemn my birth, or any title or dignity that can be conferred upon me, when I shall compare them with my title of being a priest, and serving at the altar of Jesus my master.-Herbert.

SERMON XXIII.

THE DESTINY OF MAN.

BY THE REV. THEOPHILUS LESSEY.

“Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it."-Eccles. xii. 7.

and is careless about his deathless spirit.

"GOD speaketh once, yea, twice, but the future; he is allowing his imagination man regardeth it not," is the language of to expatiate amidst scenes that are distant Elihu. It was true then; it is true now:-and yet neglects his immortal future, the voice of God is not listened to by a careless, thoughtless world. He speaks through various means; not only by the instituted ordinances of the sanctuary, and the regular ministration of his holy word; he speaks by the dispensations of his providence. He speaks in the calm and serene dispensations of mercy and love; he speaks in the storm and in the tempest: but how are they disregarded by us! Thoughtless man!

And yet, my brethren, man is not essentially inattentive to future things; it is not characteristic of man to live for the present alone he is distinguished from the inferior orders of the creation by his attachment to futurity. He is a prospective creature, looking forward, taking a prospective view of what may be supposed to be his situation and circumstances at some remote period. And even with reference to the separation of his mysterious nature in this world, death becomes the subject of arithmetical calculation: almost every thing valuable is insured. Man strives to set up a security against the consequences of his own dissolution; he takes care that all his titledeeds are valid; he takes care to make his will and provide for his posterity, and especially for his posthumous reputation; he links his feelings with remote futurity; he anticipates what the coming generation will think concerning him. He is there going out into the profound of

Certainly this must proceed from a moral cause; it does not proceed from any physical defect. We are not surprised at the improvidence of the brute creation: they live by instinct; they are intended to ruminate on present scenes. Man is distinguished from the brute creation by his capacity for reflection and anticipation: we must, therefore, trace this unaccountable neglect of man to a moral cause. It proves that a calamity has happened to him, that he is a fallen creature; a perverted heart, a depraved mind, have turned him aside; he is not what God created him.

Nothing, my brethren, more certainly, more affectingly proves that man is sold to the captivity of this world than his regard for it, his unconquerable adherence to it. You cannot break him off: no power but the Omnipotence that called him into being can dissolve the chain that binds him to earth-no pestilence walking in darkness, no calamity befalling his species, no distress happening to himself: he is proof against them all. He loses a friend; he indulges in sorrow for a moment or two, and it passes away; he returns from the burial of his friend to his business, and plunges into it with a total indifference to futurity. The whole world is moving all around-he is careless; or, if he is at all alarmed by some fearful manifestation of Divine provi