endless happiness! Do they still hesitate to give full assent to the truth of this awful doctrine? Let them mark the terrors and forebodings of the wicked in the hour of visitation! On the bed of sickness, from which the companions of gayer hours have basely fled, they are uttered and reiterated,―mixed with the groans of deep compunction, which express more forcibly than words can utter the conviction of the wounded conscience that 66 sin, unrepented of, merits punishment," and that the hour of retribution must succeed the pang of death. But to you, my brethren, it is unnecessary, I trust, for the confirmation of your faith to withdraw the veil from the death-bed of the pitied sinner. You have a foundation for your conviction more strongly and deeply laid than in the experience of the longest life. "The Word of God" prohibits the possibility of doubt, or hesitation! It claims immediate assent to this most awful doctrine in words, whose importance cannot be exceeded in the whole volume of holy writ. "When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon

the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: And he shall separate them one from another as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left."* To you I do not need to add the succeeding sentences of " encouragement," and of “ reprehension." Doubtless they are impressed upon your memories! Let them be deeply engraven on your hearts!

One sole question more have I to propose to you, and to myself. It is, "what we must do to be saved?" The answer to each individual is simply this, "fear God, keep his commandments," obey the precepts, follow the example exhibited by Jesus Christ whilst he was on earth, and thou shalt be saved!

And thou, O blessed Jesus! who in the time of thy mortal life didst visit us in great humility, teach us so to employ the few days allotted to us in this life's pilgrimage that,

*Mat. xxv. 31, 32, 33.

D

when thy spiritual kingdom shall have ceased, and the day of judgment shall actually commence, we, with the converted Gentiles, and thy pardoned, and accepted, people of Israel, may receive a favourable sentence, not for our merits, but from thy mercy! To Thee, with the Father and the Holy Ghost be ascribed (as are most justly due) all praise, majesty and dominion, now, henceforth and for evermore.

SERMON II.

AN EARNEST EXHORTATION TO REFORMATION OF LIFE.

ST. PAUL'S EPISTLE TO THE EPHESIANS, chap. v. verse 14.

Awake! thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light!

THESE words have reference to that sublime effusion of Isaiah, in which he describes-spiritual light-breaking forth upon the benighted world. "Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee."* This passage becomes still more striking from the contrast, by which the Prophet exhibits the Jews in their state of exclusion from these bright, and healing, beams of this sun of

righteousness.

"The Lord hath poured

*

Isa. lx. i.

out upon you the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes. "Darkness hath

covered the earth, and gross darkness the people," overwhelming the world with as dense a shade as that, which is spread over the heart of man when it departs from its director, and is estranged from the light of life.

To a person thus immersed in vice, and thus walking in darkness and the shadow of death, the Apostle addresses himself with earnestness and with energy. He considers him as entranced in lethargic apathy. He exhorts him to awake as from the sleep of death, which will benumb his bodily powers, and deprive his mental faculties of all those spiritual benefits, which the beams of christianity have brought to light-Knowledge of the truth—life and immortality!

From that state of degradation, and of peril, (from which St. Paul was anxious to withdraw the thoughtless slumberer,) let me arouse each careless sinner by similar

* Isia. xxix. 10.

+ Isia. lx. 2.