exhortation! Break the bonds of iniquity without delay! Atone for past misdeeds by subsequent good conduct! Effect an immediate and a thorough reformation!

In unison with this admonition, the times, in which we live, likewise emphatically cry "awake!" Indeed, if ever there was a period, when exhortations of this solemn nature were suited to a state of darkness, and depravity in morals, it is the alarming æra, at which many of the inhabitants of this country have now arrived. At no former crisis was the contagion of iniquity so widely spread in populous towns; nay almost every village is deeply tainted with the fell infection. Neither the late scourge of a war of twenty years continuance, nor the unparalleled distress experienced in this country at the present hour, has arrested its fatal progress! Numberless, abandoned characters have crowded our prisons till they have required enlargement, and still they overflow! Safety is banished, not from the highways alone, but from the peaceful mansion of the cottager! The allurements of vice assume a

thousand treacherous forms. Whilst gambling and unjustifiable speculations, duelling and infidelity to the marriage-bed, perjury and blasphemy fill up the black catalogue of national enormities. "The head is sick, and the whole heart is faint.”* It becomes, therefore, the bounden duty of the ministers of religion to cry aloud and spare not;"† more especially to exhort those, who are committed to their charge, "to walk not as fools, but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil!" If any thing can render this duty more imperious, it is the consideration that the present holy season § requires from all a strict examination of their ways, and an unsparing correction of every impurity of heart and life.

And let us seriously inquire "what must be the necessary result of neglect of such an urgent duty?" If repentance shall be delayed to a more convenient season, and the present opportunity of breaking the shackles of iniquity shall be unimproved — if the

* Isa. i. 5.

+ Isa. lviii. 1.

The Season of Lent.

Eph. v. 15, 16.

abundant means of grace, which you enjoy, shall be in vain afforded you: if the hopes of salvation shall be smothered by sensual gratifications, or be suffered to expire by cold neglect, you must not expect that God will always strive with man! If, when He calls upon you, you will not hear his warning voice; when He stretcheth forth his saving hand, you will impiously disregard him— in return for your obduracy, He "will laugh at your calamity, He will mock when your sorrow cometh"*-during many hours of succeeding trials,—and much more at the awful period of final dissolution! As to the former of these events, "Man," we know, "is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upwards;"† and, with respect to the second more important, circumstance, how near the approach of death may be no human being can determine. Man, in his best estate, is altogether vanity-his life is like the vapour, that passeth away and cometh not again! How precarious, then, must be the existence of the sensual and the dissipated-since ex

cess evidently tends to render the short space of life still more contracted!! What fatal presumption, therefore, is it for any human being deliberately, and repeatedly, to transgress against the law and authority of his God! To his long-suffering only does he owe the power of offending. God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, that he might render to Him an acceptable service! And, when he perverts the invaluable gift to the injury of his fellow-creatures and the dishonour of his Creator-how can he expect that it should be continued to him? Like the transient smile of delusive prosperity, it may be most suddenly withdrawn! Should he be thus called hence, how shall he appear before an omniscient, offended, Judge? And on what basis can he rationally found the hopes of any longer experiencing forbearance so much contemned, and indulgences so ill requited? How many does he daily see fall into an untimely grave? Some are cut off in the midst of an excess of health by the apoplectic stroke; -some by the contagion of the wasting pestilence. The ministers of destruction, in

a thousand forms, are making hourly ravages amongst the short-lived sons of men. Their dart, for ought he knows, may be already pointed at his own bosom; may strike him to the earth without allowing him time to call his God for mercy! upon

But, should the summons of the Almighty be less sudden and appalling;-should He graciously suffer a lingering disease gradually to undermine the strength of the guilty being, how can he be assured that his heart, from long indulgence of vicious propensities, may not have contracted a degree of incurable depravity; that as the dews of heavenly grace have long fallen on it with fruitless kindness, it may, at length, have become, like the flinty rock, utterly inaccessible to all good impressions?

But, it may be urged that the greatest portion of every religious assembly, (and of society at large,) are not such heinous sinners, but are guilty alone of casual transgressions. I reply that experience evinces that by yielding frequently to venial faults,

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