"The night cometh when no man can work! "In the place where the tree falleth, there it shall be!"-"Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation!"

Ah! it is as I feared-the word has no more power on your frozen hearts, than has the winter's sun upon a polar iceberg-you are yet in your sins and you intend to remain in them.-This sacred and blessed season you have resolved to signalize, by all the flippant gaiety and carnal revelry of your youthful years. Can nothing then arrest you? Look! Look at those letters of flame— written with the finger of God himself, on the very walls within which you are carousing! Must I read the characters and the interpretation thereof? "Mene-God hath numbered thy life and finished it." O then where will your soul be?

Yet, must it be so? Is there no alternative? Must you of necessity perish? God forbid! The prayer of faith may yet prevail. Nay, offered in the name of Jesus, it must prevail. To your knees, then! to your knees! And O that, this very night, the God of all grace might hear the petition breathed forth from every lip amongst you: "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom!"

SERMON XXI.

HOSEA VII. 9.

GRAY HAIRS ARE HERE AND THERE UPON HIM, YET HE KNOWETII NOT."

It is the last sabbath of the year! As such it will, I doubt not, be regarded, as a season of peculiar and solemn interest, and is calculated, with God's assistance, to suggest matter for serious and profitable meditation. It is a time when we seem more especially called to stand upon our watch-tower, and to review the past in reference to the future. The tide of days on which we have been borne through another year, is fast retiring. Let us carefully look back upon it, and see if there is no lesson of instruction, or of correction, to be snatched from its ebbing waves.

How different the retrospect to many different classes! Some, (who have not yet learnt to "commit their ways unto the Lord," and to be

lieve that "he hath done all things well") will look back on the past, as strewed with the wreck of their dearest hopes, and brightest joys. In the calm repose of domestic love-in the confidence of increasing substance-in the buoyancy of youth and vigour in the conscious possession of talents-they fondly thought they had prepared an ark, in which they might ride peacefully and safely over the waves of this troublesome world. But by and by, "the rain descended, and the "floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon" the frail fabric, and, more treacherous than an ark of bulrushes, it scattered to the winds and waves the hopes embarked in it. O it is a sad, (and could we not see "the end of the Lord," it would be a heart-breaking) thing, to dwell on such cases as these. Not a few who began this year, sanguine in their hopes, secure in their enjoyments, feeling that they were rich in their families, and increased in goods, and had need of nothing, are now stripped bare as the blighted tree-their quiver empty -their lamp quenched.

We look at such and say, "Is this Naomi?"— the pleasant in heart and in countenance? How touchingly applicable the answer-" Call me not

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Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath "dealt very bitterly with me. I went out full, and "the Lord hath brought me home again empty : why then call ye me Naomi, seeing the Lord hath testified against me, and the Almighty hath "afflicted me?" These are cases to which it seems

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almost vain for man to attempt to minister. All that we can do is to commend you most affectionately to that wise and gracious physician, who "bindeth up the broken in heart, and wounds only that he may heal." He says, and they are words not to be surpassed for their tenderness and condescension-" As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort thee." Try him-flee to him— cast yourselves upon his love.

Not to dwell upon other cases-those for instance, of the young and thoughtless, or of the anxious worldling, or of such as look back on time mispent, on fair occasions of gaining good, or doing good, for ever lost, on talents wasted or perverted, or abused-I could wish to direct your attention for a while, to one suggested by the terms of the text, and by the analogy of the season. The close of the year has always been an emblem for the close of life; and surely, the hoary mantle of winter seems fitly to betoken the hoary head of age. There are many of this class before me now. Yet these are not all alike. Some, feeling their growing frailty, may have sought grace, so to number their days, as to apply their hearts unto wisdom." The grace they sought has been granted -and with them "the hoary head is a crown of glory, because it is found in the way of righteousness." Brethren, this is indeed a lovely sightone of the greatest triumphs of religion! Instead of the fretful, querulous, joyless thing which old age too generally is, the love of God and Christ in

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the soul can render it peaceful, kindly, and cheerful. The "old disciple" does not live on to "cumber the ground" like a barren tree, whose branches are bare, but still brings forth fruit in old age. "His sun does not go down in darkness," but "shineth more and more, unto the perfect day" of heaven. Would to God, dear brethren, "that not only some, but all who hear me this day, were not only almost, but altogether such as" this. Alas! it is not so. I fear there are some amongst you, entering the vale of years, and who, perhaps, will soon be called to "walk through the dark valley of the shadow of death," who yet take no note of the change that is passing upon them. I fear it is not merely an individual of this congregation, of whom it might be said in the language of the text, Gray hairs are here and there upon him, yet he knoweth not."

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I am much disposed, my brethren, to believe that there are climacterics in religion, (by which I mean turning points, critical periods,) as well as in life-and that the two may often be nearly coincident. How frequently do we see a man, who has reached that period of life, when pleasure palls upon the appetite-when the just wants of the body have been provided for-and all seems to favour his retreat from the toil and vanity of the world-how often do we see such an one take a new impulse, and begin to "pull down his barns and build greater;" or, if in business, to widen his connexions, multiply his speculations, and stake