consciences easy, in the gay hours of health and prosperity, when death and eternity stare them in the face, find this sleeping lion rousing, roaring, and tearing them to pieces. They had a secret consciousness before, that they had no ground for a comfortable hope; but they suppressed the conviction, and would not regard it. But now it revives, and they tremble with a fearful expectation of wrath and fiery indignation. This is especially the usual doom of such as lived under a faithful ministry, and have had a clear light of the gospel, and just notions of divine things forced upon their unwilling minds. It is not so easy for them, as for others, to flatter themselves with false hopes, in the honest, impartial hour of death. Their knowledge is a magazine of arms for their consciences to use to torment them. Oh! in what horrors do some of them die! and how much of hell do they feel upon earth! Nay, this is sometimes the doom of some infidel profligates, who flattered themselves they could contemn the bugbear of a future state, even in death. They thought they had conquered truth and conscience, but they find themselves mistaken-they find these are unsuppressible, victorious, immortal: and that, though with mountains overwhelmed, they will, one day, burst out like the smothered fires of Etna; visibly bright and tormenting. Of this the celebrated Dr. Young, whose inimitable pen embellishes whatever it touches, gives us a most melancholy instance, related in the true spirit of tragedy-an instance of a youth of noble birth, fine accomplishments, and large estate, who imbibed the infidel principles of deism, so fashionable in high life, and debauched himself with sensual indulgences; who, by this unkind treatment, broke the heart of an amiable wife, and by his prodi gality, squandered away his estate, and thus disinherited his only son-Hear the tragical story from the author's own words: "The death-bed of a profligate is next in horror to that abyss, to which it leads. It has the most of hell, that is visible on earth; and he that has seen it, has more than faith, he has the evidence of sense to confirm him in his creed. I see it now! for who can forget it? Are there in it no flames or furies? You know not, then, what a seared imagination can figure--what a guilty heart can feel. How dismal is it! The two great enemies of soul and body, sickness and sin, sink and confound his friends, silence and darken the shocking scene. Sickness excludes the light of heaven, and sin excludes the blessed hope. Oh! double darkness! more than Egyptian! acutely to be felt! See! how he lies, a sad, deserted outcast, on a narrow isthmus, between time and eternity, for he is scarcely alive! Lashed and over. whelmed on one side, by the sense of sin! on the other, by the dread of punishment! Beyond the reach of human help, and in despair of divine! "His dissipated fortune, impoverished babe, and murdered wife, lie heavy on him: The ghost of his murdered time, (for now no more is left) all stained with folly, and gashed with vice, haunts his distracted thought. Conscience, which long had slept, awakes, like a giant refreshed with wine; lays waste all his former thoughts and desires and like a long-deposed, now victorious prince, takes the severest revenges upon his bleeding heart. Its late soft whispers are thunder in his ears: and all means of grace rejected, exploded, ridiculed, are now the bolt that strikes him dead-dead even to the thoughts of death. In deeper distress, despair of life is forgot. He lies a wretched wreck of man on the shore of eternity! and the next breath he draws, blows him off into ruin. "The sad evening before the death of that noble youth, I was there. No one was with him, but his phy. sician, and an intimate whom he loved, and whom he had ruined by his infidel principles, and debauched practices At my coming in, he said; "You and the physician are come too late. I have neither life nor hope. You would aim at miracles—you would raise the dead." "Heaven, I said, was merciful "Or I should not have been so deeply guilty. What has it not done to bless and to save me :-I have been too strong for Omnipotence! I have plucked down ruin." "I said, the blessed Redeemer "Hold hold! You wound me!-That is the rock on which I split-I denied his name, and his religion 66 Refusing to hear anything from me, or take any thing from the physician, he lay silent, as far as sudden darts of pain would permit, till the clock struck. Then, with vehemence : "Oh, Time! Time! It is fit thou shouldst thus strike thy murderer to the heart-How, art thou fled for ever? -A month! oh, for a single week! I ask not for years; though an age were too little for the much I have to do!" "On my saying, we could not do too much-that heaven was a blessed place "So much the worse. It is lost! it is lost! Heaven is to me the severest part of hell, as the loss of it is my greatest pain." "Soon after, I proposed prayer. Pray, you that can. I never prayed-I cannot praynor need I. Is not heaven on my side already? It closes with my conscience. It but executes the sentence I pass upon myself. Its severest strokes but second my own.' "His friend being much touched, even to tears at this, (who could forbear? I could not,) with a most affec tionate look he said, (6 Keep those tears for thyself. I have undone theeDost weep for me? that is cruel. What can pain me more ?" "Here his friend, too much affected, would have left him. "No, stay. Thou still mayst hope:-therefore, hear me. How madly have I talked? How madly hast thou listened, and believed? But look on my present state, as a full answer to thee and to myself. This body is all weakness and pain: but my soul, as if stung up by torment to greater strength and spirit, is full powerful to reason-full mighty to suffer. And that which thus triumphs within the jaws of mortality, is, doubtless, im mortal-And, as for a Deity, nothing less than an Almighty could inflict what I feel." "I was about to congratulate this passive, involuntary. confessor, on asserting the two prime articles of his creed, the existence of a God, and the Immortality of the Soul, extorted by the rack of nature; when he thus very passionately exclaimed No, no! let me speak on. I have not long to speak-My much-injured friend! My soul, as my body, lies in ruins; in scattered fragments of broken thought. Remorse for the past throws my thoughts on the future. Worse dread of the future strikes it back on the past. I turn, and turn, and find no ray-Didst thou feel half the mountain that is on me, thou wouldst struggle with the martyr for his stake, and bless heaven for the flames: That is not an everlasting flame: that is not an unquenchable fire." "How were we struck? Yet, soon after, still more. With an eye of distraction, with a face of despair, he cried out: "My principles have poisoned my friend; my extravagance has beggared my boy: my unkindness has murdered my wife!—And is there another hell ?-Oh! thou blasphemed, yet most indulgent Lord God! hell is a refuge, if it hides me from thy frown." "Soon after, his understanding failed. His terrified imagination uttered horrors not to be repeated, or ever forgot. And, ere the sun (which I hope has seen few like him,) arose, the gay, young, noble, ingenuous, accomplished, and most wretched Altamont expired.' Is not this tragical instance, my brethren, a loud warning to us all, and especially to such of us as may be walking in the steps of this unhappy youth? "Men may live fools, but fools they cannot die." Death will make them wise, and show them their true interest, when it is too late to secure it. Ignorance and thoughtlessness, or the principles of infidelity, may make men live like beasts: but these will not enable them to die like beasts-May we live as candidates for immortality! May we now seek a well established hope, that will stand the severest trial! And may we labor to secure the protection of the Lord of life and death, who can be our sure support in the wreck of dissolving nature! May we live the life, that we may die the death of the righteous; and find that dark valley a short passage into the world of bliss and glory! Amen. LINES BY THE AUTHOR OF THE FOREGOING SERMON. YES! I must bow my head and die !— Who can afford one ray of hope? ** See the Centaur not Fabulous. + Night Thoughts. Then all created comforts fail, And earth speaks nothing but despair; Yet, Savior, thy almighty hand, Searcher of hearts! O try me now, SERMON LXXVII. THE LOVE OF SOULS, A NECESSARY QUALIFICATION FOR THE MINISTERIAL OFFICE. * 1 THESS. II. 8.-So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were willing to have imparted unto you, not the gospel of God only, but also our own souls, because ye were dear unto us. A COMPLETE ministerial character is a constellation of all those graces and virtues which can adorn human nature and the want of any one of them leaves a hideous defect in it, that breaks its symmetry and uniformity, and renders it less amiable and less useful. The love of God, and the love of man, and all the various modifications of this sacred passion-ardent devotion and active zeal, charity, compassion, meekness, patience, and humility; the accomplishments of the man of sense, the scholar, and the Christian, are necessary to finish this character, and make us able ministers of the New Testament. Each of these deserves to be illustrated and recommended; but should I attempt to crowd them into one discourse, I should be bewildered and lost in the vast variety of materials. I must therefore single out *Preached in Cumberland County, Virginia, July 13, 1758, at the ordination of the Rev. Messrs. Henry Patillo and William Richardson. |