of any suffering, if you were assured it would be fixed, unceasing, never-ending. No experience of this world gives us any conception of positive pleasure, fixed, prolonged, permanent. But we have often experienced pain sufficiently acute and yet protracted. Now suppose your head, your heart, or even a single limb or joint, or extremity of your frame, were at this instant seized by an acute pang, and that you were assured that this pang would continue fixed, undiminished, never to have an end how would such a conviction aggravate its sting-into what afflicting magnitude would the smallest suffering swell, if it were to be unceasing and eternal!—what would you give for its alleviation? what for its removal? I may venture to affirm, that its presence would embitter every enjoyment; that you would purchase its removal at any conceivable price. Yes, my fellow Christians, the very thought of eternal, ever-during suffering appals and overwhelms the mind. Oh! let us dwell upon it now, while the contemplation may be the means of preventing the reality. Let this thought teach us-though it can but imperfectly and faintly teach us-the deep import of the warning of our divine Lord: "What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?"

But on what does the preservation or the loss of our immortal souls depend? Are the sufferings or the enjoyments we shall feel millions of ages hence, within our present power to influence or control? Can any thing we can do, any precautions we can adopt, produce effects so unspeakably important and extensive?-effects which shall be felt not merely as long as our entire present life, but as long as sun and moon endureth, nay, for millions on millions of ages beyond even their existence, even through all eternity. Yes, my friends, the God of justice has placed our happiness or misery within our present power. Our Redeemer has descended from heaven to take our nature upon Him, to instruct us by His precepts, to guide us by His example, to atone for our offences by His sufferings, to give us the assistance of His Holy Spirit to turn our hearts to Him, to enlighten us by the knowledge of His will, to teach us how to pray, and to obtain for our prayers, if we be sincerely penitent, acceptance at the throne of God. However weak, therefore, in

ourselves, "We can do all things through Christ, who strengtheneth us." However unprofitable servants we be, yet His unmerited mercy and free grace will accept our unworthy services. Thus He has connected our future destiny with our present conduct. The manner in which we act this day, nay this hour, the very use I make of this opportunity of addressing you, the use you make of the instructions and admonitions I endeavour to convey-in a word, every action of our lives, every desire we indulge, every motive which we permit to direct our conduct, every object in which we place our happiness, every effort to cultivate a pious and heavenly, a pure and holy, a merciful and benignant temper; or, on the contrary, every instance in which we forget the presence and violate the laws of God; in which we permit pride and malignity, sensuality and selfishness, to corrupt and degrade us-each and every such instance has a tendency to form our permanent disposition and character, to influence our future destiny, to fix the doom of our immortal souls; for God, says the Apostle, "Will render to every man according to his deeds. To them who, by patient continuance in well doing, seek for glory, and honour, and immortality, eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile; but glory, honour, and peace, to every man who worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Gentile: for there is no respect of persons with God."*

Such, my friends, is the order of Providence; such the will, the unalterable will of God. He who pursues the goods of this life with such eagerness, as to confine to them all his desires, to sacrifice to their attainment piety and virtue, trampling on the dictates of conscience and the laws of heaven;-such a man may succeed in obtaining the objects, which he thus wickedly and impiously pursues; but they will lead him to destruction— "the wages of sin is death," he will lose his soul, his immortal soul: and what then shall it profit him though he have gained the whole world?-What can that supply, that will be an

Rom. ii. 6—11.

+ Rom. vi. 23.

adequate exchange for his soul?-Let us, my friends, nowwhile to choose is, by the long-suffering mercy of our God, still permitted us-let us weigh well, what it is, to gain the whole world as the price of guilt; and what to lose our immortal souls as the punishment of that guilt. Oh! may the assisting grace of God enable us to form a just estimate; and on this day, when death and life are still set before us, to choose life; and to the choice made, unalterably and effectually to adhere.

What is it then to gain the whole world? Perhaps, to a few individuals of the human race, the prize of what is termed the whole world, is proposed by the tempter in the same manner as it was to our Lord. "The kingdoms of the world," saith he, "are mine, and the glory of them, all these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' And thus still does he address the votary of ambition; and to the votary of ambition, the prize is too tempting to be rejected; titles, power, splendour, fame, charm that short-sighted grovelling soul, which never exalts its views beyond this world to that city not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens; the native residence of undegraded man. Sumptuous palaces, superb equipages, a crowd of courtiers devoted to his will; armies bearing destruction at his nod, fame sounding his victories, nations trembling beneath his feet for these no crimes are too great, no guilt too atrocious: for these every principle of virtue is trampled on, every law of nature despised; state necessity, political reasons, justify all.

Falsehood, treachery, usurpation, one hour: plunder, poisoning, assassination, the next; cruelty, devastation, havoc; the world as the garden of Eden before him, and behind him a desolate wilderness-all this a bold, bad man will dare to do, and find notwithstanding a world to tremble and to praise. But to the eye of virtue, to the judgment of reason and religion, how does such a man appear? Is he not even now most miserable? Else whence this incessant pursuit of new dominions, new power? Whence, but from a perpetual restlessness of soul, dissatisfied at its present attainment, never deeming itself secure from hostility, or sufficiently fenced round against the stroke of fate, and chance of change; and conscious, in a word, of present misery, and

Matt. iv. 8, 9.

seeking for refuge from its pangs amidst the agitations attending on toils, and dangers, and war? Thus at every step are accumulated new objects of remorse, new images of horror to shake his soul; new stings to sharpen the agonies of death: death, which neither kingdoms nor empires can avert. To place in a strong light the utter folly of such ambition, I quote an anecdote which history records of Saladin, the celebrated monarch of the east. After he had subdued Egypt, passed the Euphrates, and conquered cities without number; after he had re-taken Jerusalem, and performed exploits almost more than human in those wars which superstition had excited for the recovery of the holy land; he closed his life in the performance of an action, which well deserves to be noticed. A moment before he uttered his last sigh, he called the herald who had carried his banner before him in all his battles, he commanded him to fasten to the top of a lance the shroud in which he was soon to be buried. "Go," said the dying prince, "carry this lance, unfurl this banner, and while you lift up this shroud as my standard, proclaim, this is all that remains to Saladin the Great, the conqueror and the king, of all his glory!"

Christians, I this day would perform to you the office of this herald. I would unfurl and display in all their pomp, sensual and transitory pleasures, worldly riches, and human honours; all these I reduce to the shroud in which you will shortly be entombed; this standard of death I lift up in your sight, and I tell you, this is all that will remain to you of the possessions, for which the tempter seduces you to exchange your souls. Are such possessions too great to be given up in exchange for such a soul? Can their perishing value outweigh the soul's immortality? Do you not feel in your consciences and hearts, the deep import, the awful truth of our Lord's question, what shall a man, a rational man, capable of comparing eternity with time, what shall such a one consent to take in exchange for his soul?

But if the sovereignty of the whole world is so inadequate a compensation for our soul's loss, oh, how senseless are those who forfeit their eternal happiness for prizes so infinitely more mean and despicable! In our condition, placed as most of us are in a state of mediocrity, when by dissipation and licentiousness, by injustice and iniquity, by malice and obstinacy, we shall

have procured from vice all the rewards which vice can give to us, what shall we have gained-cities, provinces, kingdoms? No. God hath not left these to our choice; his love would not expose us to a temptation so violent. But, alas! we value our souls at a lower price. We barter them for nothing, nay, for worse than nothing; for that which necessarily and almost immediately brings with it disappointment and vexation; frequently misery, even present misery and ruin.

View the whole tribe of those who call themselves men of pleasure; for what recompense does one of these sacrifice his soul? One, that he may riot in the frenzy of intoxication, in a transient elevation of spirits, a momentary forgetfulness of care, exchanges reason for madness, strength for debility, fair fame for disgrace-in a word, sinks the man into the brute-and generally the pains of disease, and the horrors of a premature death, terminate his mad career; and exhibit a clear, but too often disregarded example of the folly and the misery as well as the guilt of intemperance.

Behold another encouraging and extending the foulness of prostitution; or, what is more atrocious still, seducing the unsuspecting credulity of virgin innocence, or corrupting the purity of conjugal fidelity; destroying the peace of families, abusing the confidence of friendship, practising the basest arts of falsehood and treachery; planting worse than a dagger in the heart of the unhappy husband; perhaps bringing the grey hairs of the aged parents in sorrow to the grave; first plunging the unhappy victim of his vice into guilt and shame, and next abandoning her to destitution and despair; thus going about, like the grand foe of God and man, to seek whom he may destroy; but especially delighting to deface the fairest works of the creation, to blast the bloom of beauty, and purity, and happiness, by introducing the contagion of vice and pollution, disgrace and wretchedness. And all this to satisfy a base appetite, which corrupts and degrades, and embrutes himself; of which the ways are the ways to hell, going down to the chambers of death."* Behold another who flies to the gambling table; risks property, character, and peace, that he may escape the misery of

Prov. vii. 27.