even to the inmost soul? You wait for a more convenient season-but what assurance have you, that you shall ever live to such a season? Does not death advance with gigantic strides ?Does he not every day, every hour, snatch off multitudes without notice or warning; some in the actual perpetration of guilt, without even one moment's time for thought or repentance without one moment's pause to offer up a single prayer for pardon? But suppose your death less sudden—are you sure you will be in a state capable of thought and reflection, after your mortal disease shall have seized upon you-when you shall be assailed by those insupportable and piercing pains, which banish every other idea from the mind; by those stupors which cloud the brightest genius, and benumb the most active energies; by those profound lethargies which render unavailing motives the most powerful, and exhortations the most pathetic; by those frequent deliriums which present but phantoms and chimeras, and fill the soul with a thousand terrors? And is such a state a convenient season? Oh! how long will you deceive yourselves? Visit the bed of the dying man; see his feeble emaciated frame, his pale and livid countenance; observe his pangs, his wanderings--where is the mind which has fortitude to recollect itself in this deplorable state, even if it were not then too late to begin the work of conversion? But you hope to be visited by a milder disease, which shall conduct you slowly and serenely to your grave, and then you are sure you will be happily disposed for repentance; then you will have time to prepare for heaven. Alas! my friends, would to God that I could bear witness to the justice of such expectations. But every minister of God, habituated to attendance on the sick, will unite in attesting how unspeakably rare are conversions at such a juncture. Our self-love, our friends, our family, all unite to inspire the hope of a favourable close whenever the attack is not evidently desperate; and thus, not thinking the hour of danger yet arrived, men still defer the hour of repentance, and those who have refused to God their days of joy and health, are easily led to withhold from him the short intervals of affliction and disease. Such never wish to devote their soul to their Creator, until at the precise moment when it is quivering on their lips. They hope to recover, and hope inflames desire; the wish to

VOL. IV.

D

live gives a deeper root to our love of the world. And here, most literally, this friendship with the world is enmity with God. Meanwhile the disease pursues its course; it saps and undermines; the body becomes weak, the spirits droop, recollection grows faint, exertion impracticable, and death hurries away its victim, scarcely yet suspecting that he was mortal. Oh! my friends, who can describe the miseries of a slow, sudden death?

Say, then-is a death-bed the scene, our dying hour the time, to commence the work of our salvation? When the soul, habituated to frivolous pursuits, or to worldly cares, sees with unutterable grief and confusion its schemes frustrated, its hopes blasted, the world shrinking from under it; when it is assailed by a thousand anxieties, distracted by a thousand indispensably necessary occupations; when the despairing sufferer must distribute that wealth, from which, until now, he never thought of parting; when he is to weep over his family, and bid adieu to the afflicted partner of his cares and sorrows, to resist the fondest affections of the heart, and tear it from every object that it loves; is there time, is there time then, amidst so many agitating objects, amidst so many acute emotions; is there time to recollect the progress of a misspent life; to make restitution of property to the injured, of character to the defamed, of virtue to those whom our irreligion has infected, or our example seduced? Is there time to examine the proofs of a religion we have never firmly believed, to acquire and impress principles yet unacknowledged, or inoperative; to learn the language of prayer, until now a stranger to our tongue; to repent of sin, to reform the heart, to imbibe into the soul the yet unfelt affections of faith, and hope, and charity, of love to God, and love to man? Nay, my

friends, when we dedicate ourselves entirely to this great work, when we employ in it all our bodily powers, all our mental faculties; when we devote to it the whole of our lives, all this is barely sufficient, with the assisting grace of God, to effect this arduous task. How, then, can it be achieved by a busy, wandering, troubled, and departing spirit?

But, suppose that all this were to be in your case reversedthat, contrary to all experience, your future life should be exempt from care and trouble, and your death free from pain, distraction, and disease-still can you be sure of being granted

a more convenient season for repentance? Alas, who has told you that God, at any future period, will accompany his word with that all-powerful aid of grace essential to your conversion? You have hitherto obstinately rejected His proffered aid, you now continue to reject it. Are you sure he will not withdraw itas such obstinacy and insult surely merit? This is not a mere human menace-It is the word of God?" Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof; I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh. When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you; then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me; for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord; they would none of my council; they despised all my reproof: therefore they shall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the ease of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them."*

Oh, then, look not to a distant period; and, above all, look not to the approach of death as a "convenient season." "Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation."

I will put all to this short issue. If at this moment a burst of celestial glory were to fill this sacred temple-as of old the sanctuary of Jehovah-if an angel's voice, an angel's hand, singled out any individual amongst you, and proclaimed," the decree is even now gone forth, your hour is fixed, this night the minister of death will drag you before the tribunal of the supreme, all-righteous Judge"-what would you then think of your past delays of repentance, of the various opportunities of reformation which you have neglected, and the long-suffering mercy of your God which you have abused?

My brethren, be not ingenious to enfeeble conviction by accounting this great object remote. The reality of the last judgment, it is true, comprises so many amazing revolutions in the world, that we cannot regard the design as ready for exe

* Prov. i. 24, 32.

cution; we cannot conceive that the awful changes preceding the final advent of Christ can take place with such rapidity; we flatter ourselves that ages must elapse ere it arrive-ere we stand before his dread tribunal. But what then? can this guarantee our security? Can these numerous ages avail aught to us? If the hour of judgment is remote with regard to the world, is it remote with regard to you? No: so far as concerns you, nothing more is necessary than that you should inhale one breath of morbid air, or partake some unwholesome viand in your feasts-some little nerve deranged, some minute bloodvessel ruptured-any one of ten thousand casualties such as these, and behold your sentence is pronounced! Behold, with regard to you, the last day arrived-the sun darkened, the elements dissolved, the heavens folded up as a garment, the foundations of the earth shaken, and its fashion passed away! With regard to each of you the last trumpet is even now ready to sound, the books are about to be opened, the throne of your Judge is already set, the final hour at hand!

Now then, even now, while it is yet allowed you to reason "of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come;" while it is still permitted you to tremble, but not in vain―arise, arise for your life, and defer not your repentance till that " more convenient season," which for you may never come-defer it not one moment longer, but seek, by prayer and contrition, through the ever-abounding merits of Christ, for the reforming grace of the Holy Spirit, and the pardoning mercy of God.

37

SERMON IV.

ON FAITH.

HEBREWS xi. 6.

"But without faith it is impossible to please God: for he that cometh to him must believe that Le is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seck him."

No words can express more clearly the infinite importance of that principle which the apostle distinguishes by the appellation of Faith. It is, therefore, highly necessary to examine into the nature of this sacred principle, to inquire what are the dispositions and affections it includes, what the effects it produces, and the criterion by which it may be discovered. Thus we shall be enabled to perceive the reason of its being so highly valued, and so eminently rewarded, by our heavenly Father. The nature and criterions of religious faith have undoubtedly been frequently misunderstood and misrepresented; but as time does not permit, so neither does the cause of truth and piety require, that we should minutely trace, and directly confute, each separate error. It will be sufficient, if, by an accurate attention to St. Paul's explanation of Christian Faith in the text, compared with the corresponding declarations in other parts of holy writ, we can attain a direct and clear knowledge of its true nature, that of the only certain mode of ascertaining the existence of this holy and heavenly affection.

The apostle had declared, in the close of the preceding chapter, that the "just shall live by faith;"* and he now proceeds to illustrate his assertion, by explaining the nature of this faith. "Faith," says he, "is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen"t-or, as it may be paraphrased, it is such a confident expectation of things hoped for, on the security of the divine promise, as gives them, as it were, a sub

• Heb. x. 38.

† Ib. xi. 1.