your vitals first; the enemy has left the out-works free-why? He has gained the citadel. But you do not meditate, you abhor the thought of apostacy; you mourn even over this hidden declension-yes, you dare not do otherwise; you know what death and judgment will be to the forsakers and forgetters of God:-fear restrains you; you are like a child, quiet from the dread of punishment. But your heart-does that never stretch its chain? Your will-does that feel the yoke easy? Your lips-do they recommend Christ and his service to others, as gentle and delightful? as perfect freedom? It was so once-true; and not long sincesad as true; and it will be so again ;-ah! so have myriads thought; and, comforted by the inference, have proceeded smoothly in the path of their own choosing; they have said, "yet a little more sleep, yet another sweet or splendid dream, yet one last enjoyment of forbidden pleasures, and then we will return, awake, bid farewell." Did they so? Oh! yes; they returned from that

path; they awoke from that sleep; they bade adieu to those pleasures-in eternity, not on earth.

The originating cause of all Christian declension, is self-confidence; but you, more than any other human being I know, should unite vigilance and self-distrust. In your temperament there is such an intimate connexion between the inward spirit and the outward act, that your deportment is not the barometer of your heart, but your heart that of your life. Good habits have not in you a self-supporting, independent existence; they are literal results, mere symbols, arbitrary expressions, of paramount feeling; consequently, if that feeling intermit but a day, but an hour, such intermission manifests itself externally. Again, secondary motives, so powerful in most minds, are unavailing upon yours; every principle short of religious sentiment, and that, in active operation, is to your wild and wayward spirit, like arrows darted against the scales of the leviathan. Now this you have latterly overlooked. Finding yourself comparatively

tamed and tranquillized, your views of life sobered, your desires changed, your tastes new moulded, your imagination somewhat sanctified, you hastily imagined all danger past; that you were too completely an altered being ever again to realize the one you had been. The storm subsided, and you supposed the ocean would swell no more; fire ceased to issue from the crater, and you deemed the volcano exhausted; the whirlwind passed away, and you forgot its fury and its effects. Temptation has undeceived you. That ocean has yet, you find, its dark and troubled depths; that volcano, you see, is yet unspent; that whirlwind can be replaced by another. Oh, my friend! characters of softer, meeker mould, make more progress and do more good, with far less grace, than will suffice for a being whose " events are emotions;" whose principles are impulses; whose feelings are passions; whose changes are contradictions; to whose whole moral existence enthusiasm is a never setting sun. How can one thus constituted continue a gentle, lowly, loving Christian,

but by an influence, powerful in its nature and perpetual in its operation, even the influence of God's Spirit, daily recognised and daily received? The manna in the wilderness, an instructive emblem for all Christians, is affectingly appropriate to your case; on its fresh and frequent gathering depends, not merely your spiritual health, but your spiritual existence: nothing will atone for its loss, or nourish in its stead. Call it not "light food," for in the shape of prayer and meditation it is bread, the bread that must sustain your life. To some, the Christian pilgrimage may, with peculiar emphasis, be called a way of peace and pleasantness, a path comparatively level and unobstructed; but to you it must ever be an ascent, toilsome and full of hindrances, though all, I grant, arising from your own character. To some, the Christian warfare may afford but an occasional contest; to you it will be severe, continual, uninterrupted. Unless the loins of your mind are ever girded, your lamp ever trimmed, your eye ever vigilant, again and again will the enemy break through, to

steal, and to kill, and to destroy. That adversary who is styled the roaring lion, who goeth about seeking whom he may devourmust be to you an ever present fear; a being, whom it is dangerous to forget, and destruction to meet unarmed. Christians do not sufficiently recognize what may be termed the permitted omnipresence of Satan. He is with us-oh! where and in what form is he not? In our occupations he is with us, as a spirit of pride and presumption; in our enjoyments, of rashness, levity, and vain glory; in our affections he is with us, as a spirit of idolatry; in duty, of alternate indolence and self-righteousness. On our right hand and on our left, in company and in solitude, encompassing our path, and about our bed; in our thoughts, our feelings, our memories, our dreams, our words, our very silence, he is with us in strength and in subtlety, in devices and in assaults-never weary, never at a loss! Watch, therefore-watch and pray, that another and a mightier may watch over you also. Dream not of final conquest till you lay down your life and weapons in the