2 a ye breast-who has violated confcience till it has ceased to speak. If he has arrived to fin in peace, it is only because he is abandoned of God, his peace is the dreadful calm that precedes a ftorm-and God is preparing the thunders that fall avenge his infulted truth and juftice. How fearful are his decrees! "Because I have called and refused. I have flretched out my hand and no man regarded-but ye have set at naught all my counfel 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 defolation, and your deftruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then fhall they call upon me but I will not answer, they fhall feek me early, but they fhall not find me: for that they hated knowlege and did not chufe the fear of the Lord. They would none of my counselthey despised all my reproof: therefore they fhall eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices."* It would be in vain to addrefs a reproof or an admonition to those hardened offen Proverbs i. 24―31. ders who have arrived at the highest degrees of vice-who have grown infenfible to fhame-who have become apoftles of impiety, and leaders in profligacy. Seldom are they to be found in the house of God. They voluntarily place themselves beyond the reach of our remonftrances. I can only hold them up as beacons for your warning.-Ah! my young friends! let not the fatal progress of your own follies mark you out hereafter as beacons for the warning of others. Beware of the examples and the folicitations to evil that affail you on every hand. The time cometh faith the apostle, when the wicked men and feducers fhall wax worfe and worfe. Is not that time now? Hardly can youth walk abroad without meeting with criminal objects to invite, dangerous companions to folicit, fcenes of temptation to corrupt them. Ah! how induftrious are the champions of vice! Inceffant in their labours to corrupt and to deftroy-affiduous in mifchief, as if they were honeft men employed in a good cause, hardly can you escape the innumerable snares which they have laid for you. Truft not thofe falfe illuminations to which the vain pretenders to a monopo ly of reafon have boldly laid claim, while they have only poifoned the minds of youth, corrupted manners, and torn afunder all the moral bands of fociety. Impious fanatics! illuminated only to themselves, and in the vifions of their own fancy! another age will hold them in merited contempt—this age ought to pour upon them that indignation which is due to their multiplied crimes. Retire from the contagion both of their prefumptuous folly, and their prefumptuous fins. And may the Father of lights impart to you that wifdom that cometh from above, that is pure, and full of good fruits, for Chrift's fake! AMEN! DISCOURSE XIV. ON DEATH. THE UNCERTAINTY OF THAT INTERESTING EVENT AND THE PROPER IMPROVEMENT OF IT. MATTHEW XXIV. 42. Watch, therefore, for ye know not what hour your Lord will come. THE HE end of the world, and the period of life, to both which events our Saviour in this paffage feems to refer, are equally involved in profound uncertainty ; yet is it, perhaps of equal importance that we fhould always expect them, and always ftand prepared to meet them. The judgment only announces to the univerfe the fentence that paffes upon every foul at its feparation from the body. The uncertainty of this latter period on which only I wish, at prefent, to fix your attention, ought continually to occupy the mind with the most interesting reflections. While the Bridegroom delays his coming, those who are in waiting, expecting his appearance, fhould preserve their lamps trimmed and burning: and the exhortation which he addreffed to the virgins in the parable he addreffes to all-watch, for ye know not what hour your Lord will come. Yet is there no event which men are more prone to forgetwhich they ftudy more to exclude from their thoughts than that which is forever to break their ties with this world, and to fix beyond it their immutable deftiny. As it was in the days of Noah, in the age before the flood, fo fhall it be alfo in the days of the Son of Man, and fo is it commonly. in the cafe of each individual, with regard to that filent and conftant flood that is sweeping before it all the inhabitants of the earththey did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark: and the flood came and destroyed them all. Men are engaged in bufinefs, or in pleafure, in the plans of ambition, in the fchemes of avarice, in the cares of fortune, in the pursuits of amusement, in the whirl of folly, till approaching, by imperceptible degrees, the Y y |