inducements on which your reason has pronounced a sentence of severest condemnation. Subsequent weeks, however, have witnessed a repetition of the sad neglect; so that some of you can be scarcely ever said to be free of those regrets which arise from the consciousness of having foolishly omitted what you might and ought to have done.

The same may be affirmed of a far higher subject—that of a non-compliance with the voice of God.

There is not one of you who does not know and will not acknowledge, that to obey that voice is the first duty and would prove the highest happiness of man. There is not one of you. who does not know and will not acknowledge that to refuse to listen to it, is the most portentous folly, as it offers the greatest possible affront to God. Yet, ready as you are with such admissions, and repeatedly as you may have determined, in moments of solitary musing, and when the thought of death and eternity has darkened on the spirit, that you would, in spite of every opposing plea, incline your ear to the solicitations of that voice, and live to all the high ends and objects to which it is imperatively calling you, in how many instances are you, as it respects an actual compliance with its call, precisely where you have been for days, and months, and years. O how is it that you do not see the delusion to which you are surrendering, and which, if not destroyed, will ensnare you into final and remediless perdition?

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Let us, with a view to expose in some measure this pernicious state of mind, attend a little to the words before us. To-day, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts."

Now there is something inexpressibly awful in the fact, that the voice of God can be addressed to us in vain; that it is possible for us to turn aside from it, and that we should have a besetting disposition to do so; and that such is its malignant influence that we become gradually hardened against the intelligence which that voice conveys, and the commands it lays upon us. What a thought that the majesty of that mighty and glorious Being who created and sustains us, and who reigns in high supremacy over all his intelligent creatures as their Governor

and Judge, should have so little of awe and attraction for the spirit of man, as to leave him altogether heedless of his messages! -that that voice which is never heard by the unsinning hosts which encircle the throne of God, but to be obeyed with the speed of intuition, should fall fruitlessly on the ears and hearts of the children of men, and that, rational and immortal though they be, no wish is felt by them for an assimilation to the prompt alacrity with which those angelic ministers of his do his commandments, hearkening to the voice of his word! O what a despicable and self-imposed littleness is involved in the ease with which men can submit to such a debasing alienation from their God. What a lapse from primitive integrity, and all the high and ennobling aspirations springing from it; and how fearfully does it reveal to us the depth of that moral degradation which has been inflicted by the fall!

Yes! the high and lofty One who inhabiteth eternity speaks to us, not only by his works, but in his word and by the ministrations of the gospel; speaks to us as certainly as he did to Moses on the mount, and as he gave forth in ancient times his oracles to his Church from between the cherubim; speaks to us on themes to which of all others the solicitude and energies of our immortal spirits ought to be directed:-but, marvellous infatuation! man refuses to hear. Should not the fact of there being such an unwillingness to attend to his addresses, conclusively evince, however painful the conviction, that there is something mournfully perverse in the dispositions of your mind; and that this unwillingness, whether in the form of careless indifference to the things that belong to your peace, or of a more active operation of that principle within you which is enmity against God, is perilous now, and the forerunner, if not removed, of ruin in the eternity that awaits you!

says,

"To

God speaks, but you are disinclined to hear. He day, if ye will hear my voice, harden not your heart;" but you reply, if not with the impious daring of the king of Egypt, "Who is the Lord that we should obey him?" in the spirit of that procrastination which you have so long indulged. “At a future time will we attend,"

I. IN THE FIRST PLACE, HOWEVER, WE WOULD ASK, WHAT REASON HAVE YOU TO SUPPOSE THAT TO-MORROW-OR AT ANY GIVEN PERIOD HEREAFTER-YOU WILL BE MORE WILLING TO LISTEN TO HIS VOICE THAN YOU ARE TO-DAY?

Did you ever find that to postpone a duty was the proper way to originate a disposition to perform it? Or have you ever known your desires for an object, of which you could but would not have immediate possession, energized by its voluntary resignation? The experience, we grant, would be wholly different, if, eager to possess an object at the present moment, you were prevented by some insuperable obstacle from laying hold of it, and were thus compelled to procrastinate its attainment. But on the supposition that it was within your grasp; was pressed on your acceptance; and no little force of entreaty employed to engage your reception of the offer, but that notwithstanding all the urgency which was thus expended, you had peremptorily declined it-did you ever under such circumstances find, that mere lapse of time inflamed your desire to acquire it? On the contrary, did it not soon melt away from recollection? Did it not speedily become as indifferent to you as though it had never been, because there was no rebuking consciousness on your part of having missed, by refusing it, an opportunity of enlarging your felicity and enjoyment?

Put the case now in relation to the point before us. You wish to delay to another and more convenient season; to a day which you cannot exactly assign, but which you promise yourself will ere long arrive, a compliance with the voice of God. When did this wish first arise in your heart? Is it the offspring of to-day? No. When then did it arise? At the commencement of the present year? No. At any particular period of the past? No. When then? It is probable in the experience of some of you, as far back as the period when you first heard it address you in the ministry of the gospel, and began to discern the import of its message. You could not but admit the high importance of giving heed to its communications, as you found they were designed to prepare you for glory, honour, and im

mortality; and consequently, that it would be rash and dangerous in the extreme for you to despise its intimations. But such,

say you, was never your intention:-no such enormity of disobedience ever entered into your consideration. All you have wished for was a slight delay; and when God has said from time to time, "To-day, if ye will hear my voice, harden not your heart," you have as repeatedly promised to obey to-morrow. Now this occurred with some of you, ten, twenty, or thirty years ago; and still the same delusion is besetting you. Do you now find that your reluctance to an immediate compliance with the call of God is in any degree abated by the length of delay already practised? Are you one tittle the more inclined than formerly to give a becoming heed to it? Are you now disposed, after so long a time, when God says, "To-day, if ye will hear my voice, harden not your hearts," to reply in the spirit of prompt obedience, "Speak, Lord, for thy servants hear?" No: fresh force has been added to your first reluctance by every subsequent repulse that has been given to the voice of God, and you are more disinclined to bow to it than ever. Sad condition! but one which may be easily proved to be your own.

When you first heard the solicitations of this voice, and began to comprehend the lessons it enforced, did you not quiver at their import? Like Felix, did you not tremble? Did not solemn intimations come upon the mind of the deep significance of meaning which informed its declarations? And when you said, "Go thy way for this time, and to-morrow we will listen," was it not with a faltering accent, and with something like a persuasion on your part that the very sense you had of its momentous import, would inevitably urge you to a speedy compliance with its call? Long since, however, these agitations have subsided. You know, and dare not deny the truth when asserted in your hearing, that it is just as important and authoritative now as ever; but you do not feel it so. You turn away from it with a far greater degree of carelessness than you formerly could command. Once you did feel something like an awakening concern to listen to your God. You had at least occasionally-pungent convictions of the folly of delaying to do

so for a single moment. A cold assent, however, to this truth, when it comes upon you in the statements of the pulpit, is all of which you are now conscious, and your indifference and unconcern is assailed by far fewer and far feebler visitations of the fear that at one time smote you with agitation and alarm. Now where, we ask, in the name of that eternity that lies before you, is all this to end? Or shall the infatuation be prolonged till it be dissipated by the torments of the deathless penalty which awaits the finally impenitent of the children of men? O how is it that you cannot and will not infer, from the tenor of the past, the probabilities of your future conduct, under the beguiling influence of that procrastinating spirit by which you are as yet enslaved.

morrow.

Suppose a person had made you the promise of something eminently good, and when asked for it, told you to apply toYou re-applied, but still the answer was to-morrow. On every succeeding application it was still the same. What would be the established conviction of your mind? Would it not be that he was only paltering with you; that he had no actual or sincere intention to yield you your request; and would you not feel as fully persuaded he never meant to put you in possession of the object to which his own offer had first directed you, as if, instead of promising, he had positively denied it you?

Now cannot you reverse the supposition, and so apply it to your condition, as to detect the fallacy of the pretensions you assert to a disposition to obey the voice of God? God has called on you to heed his voice. You have turned aside from it. Again and again has he called on you, by the ministry of the gospel, to attend to it to-day, but you have still put him off with the promise of to-morrow. And this process of delay has been lengthening out from month to month, and from year to year, and still the period of compliance is unarrived. Shall then the presumption of an utter destitution of all real intention to obey the voice of God, being the condition of your mind, be for one moment longer hidden from your eyes? and have you not the utmost reason to dread lest that induration of the heart, against

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