whole course had been a course of kind words, and good deeds, and holy prayers; if their brightening progress had gladdened the sorrowful, and inspired the languid in virtue, and led and helped on "the sacramental part of God's elect;" if every step of them had brought the pilgrim of virtue and faith, nearer to the company of the faithful and blessed in heaven! The toil, and business, and pleasure of life need not have paused; but that toil, and business, and pleasure might have been consecrated and blessed by a heavenly aim.

Can any being, claiming the attributes of reason, say, that, compared with this, the case of spiritual indifference and sloth is not gloomy? What should we think, if twenty years of our life, had been passed in blank and barren idiocy? And when we awaked from that stupor and sleep of the soul, how should we regard the time that had thus passed? But compared with twenty years of growing irreligion and vice, that lot would be a blessing. In that case, no blame could attach, and no reproach would follow, and no retribution would call the unhappy victim to its bar. Twenty years of sickness would be accounted a sad lot; and yet that might have saved the soul for ever. But twenty years of spiritual maladies, to which no healing nor help has come; twenty, thirty, forty years, in which a man has grown no better,-a common case, I most seriously fear-in which no holy principles of action have been gained, no passions subdued, no communion with God has been sought, no preparation for trouble and sickness and death has been made, no meetness for heaven has been acquired!—truly, well might the Apostle say to his converts, "let the time

past suffice, wherein ye have wrought the will of the Gentiles." Is it not-O negligent man! O sinful sleeper!—is it not enough? Canst thou ask more time, to be thus wasted and lost? If thou canst, when will thy wakening be? When,-and where? If thou wilt not arise now from this spiritual lethargy, thy wakening may be, when to all human view it is too late; and where the last failing voices of mercy may arouse you only to horror and despair!

When and where, I say not; but this I know, that every hour of this awful repose is an hour of added peril. It is high time to awake from this sleep, in the fourth place, because there is infinite danger in it. Sleep, if thou wilt, on the brink of a precipice; sleep on the mountain's brow, with a yawning chasm beneath you; sleep, on the sea-shore, when the roaring tide is coming in with a flood to overwhelm you; but let no man sleep amidst the mountain precipices and chasms of this world's temptations; let no man sleep amidst the whelming tides of passion. Those outward dangers are but symbols of a danger internal, spiritual, and great, beyond the power of any comparison to set forth. If you saw a fellow-being in those perilous situations, you would fly to his rescue; or you would be struck with horror at the danger which you could not avert. But, if you are a negligent transgressor of God's commands, a careless offender against your own conscience, an easy yielder to sinful indulgence, you have infinitely more reason to tremble for yourself. Ruin is not more certainly in the path of the devouring sea, than it is in the path and course of unholy passions and sinful indulgences.

And what a ruin is it?—not of the body but of the

soul; not of merchandise, but of virtue; not of gold and silver, but of those affections, which rightly regulated, are richer-sacred heaven! how poorly was I about to speak!-richer than gold and silver, was I ready to say?-nay, richer than all the suns and stars of the firmament. What a ruin is that which is found in the brand that sinful gratifications leave on the soul; in the blight and curse of an envious mind; in the seared and callous heart of avarice; in the meanness of selfish competitions; in the baseness of living on the world's favour; in the barrenness of an unsatisfied and desolated mind; in the darkness of a soul estranged and alienated from its Maker! We talk of ruin; but there is no ruin like that: no desolation like that which enters into the chambers of the soul; no ruin like that which lays waste the spiritual temple; no scourge like that which passes over the immortal nature. All misery, but that which sin causes, is in its nature, occasional, temporary, transient; it does not belong to the mind, but only to its condition. But that misery which sin creates becomes a part of the soul; it will cling to the mind, till the last trace of evil habit, is worn away by repentance..

It is high time to awake, then, because now is the only time we may have for it; because a matter of infinite weight presses; because, too much time has been lost; and because every added moment of spiritual sloth is a moment added to peril.

Once more, let us be admonished that it is high time, to awake by the tokens of the closing year. The season which we are approaching, is a time of congratulations and kind tokens of remembrance;

and be it so. But let the great admonition of the season sink deeper into our minds, than congratulations, and become an abiding memorial within us, more precious than all the offerings of friendship. Let the compliments of the season be paid, and let them pass, as they will pass; but so let not the solemn mementos of the coming season pass away from us. These years, Christian brethren, are hurrying us away. I say not this gloomily, nor to communicate gloom, but to awaken from indifference, and arouse to exertion. What shall startle us from our sloth and negligence, if these epochs of our hasting life shall not? Most of us, it may be, imagine that a time will come when we shall be more zealous, and earnest, and decided. But when shall it once be? and what shall awaken us to it, if not the remembrance of lost time, and the present and urgent tokens of its hasty flight? Well saith the poet, "It is the signal that demands despatch; How much is to be done! My hopes and fears Start up alarmed; and o'er life's narrow verge, Look down-on what? A fathomless abyss,

A dread eternity, how surely mine!"

"Seize, then, the present moments;

For be assured, they all are messengers;

And though their flight be silent, and their paths trackless

As the winged couriers of the air,

They post to heaven, and there record thy folly.
Because, though stationed on the important watch,

Thou like a sleeping, faithless sentinel,

Did'st let them pass, unnoticed, unimproved.

And know, for that thou slumberest on the guard,
Thou shalt be made to answer at the bar,
For every fugitive.

Then stay the present instant,

Imprint the mark of wisdom on its wings.

Oh let it not elude thy grasp, but like
The good old patriarch upon record,

Hold the fleet angel fast, until he bless thee.”

257

DISCOURSE XVI.

COMPASSION FOR THE SINFUL.

MARK 3.5. AND WHEN HE HAD LOOKED ROUND ABOUT HIM WITH ANGER, BEING GRIEVED FOR THE HARDNESS OF THEIR HEARTS, HE SAID UNTO THE MAN, STRETCH FORTH THY

HAND.

THAT part of this passage, only, which relates to the moral temper of our Saviour, is proposed for your present meditations. It is, in other words, and especially, the compassion of Jesus.

In reading the first clause of the sentence-he "looked round about him with anger"-I suppose that many may have felt an emotion, a thrill almost, of pain and doubt; they have felt that these words, by themselves, and in their simple meaning, were in painful contrast with all their ideas of our Saviour's meekness and patience; they have been ready to doubt whether the words could have been correctly translated. But how entirely and delightfully is the mind relieved by the words that follow-"being grieved for the hardness of their hearts!" He was indignant as he looked around him, and witnessed the bitter enmity and the base hypocrisy of the Jews; but his indignation instantly softened into pity; he was grieved at the hardness of their hearts.