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sideration, that after a few more years, and the season of improvement will be closed. The period of life at which we have arrived, will quickly be succeeded by one, unsusceptible, in ordinary cases, of considerable progress. Now, in the intellect as well as in the heart, we may be progressive, but then we must be stationary; now the course of nature may be in an onward direction, then it stops or recedes. Delay beyond the present period is full of peril. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation, may be emphatically said of the middle stage of life; now before the chains of habit are indissolubly rivetted, now before the susceptibilities of your frame are grown dull, now in the vigor of maturity, now in the prime of your life. Neglect this period, and much do I fear you will grow worse and worse, each year darkening the hues of your character, and confirming the perversities of your disposition, till bad feelings and vicious actions become a necessity of your nature, and your condemnation be sealed. Think not that I would shorten the Lord's arm, or restrict the limits of his mercy; I speak but of facts, of the ordinary effects of sin, without denying the possibility of reformation even at the eleventh hour. But who would risk his safety on a bare possibility? who would put off his happiness to the close of life, and that with the assurance that, even at the best, the reformed prodigal is only in the infancy of spiritual life, and spiritual blessedness?

But the unutterable folly of delay is yet perhaps more clearly seen when we reflect on the insecurity of the tenure by which we hold our being. The past, instead of being one half, may prove to you and to me nearly the whole, of existence. Ere another year elapse,

each one may have had the seal of death put upon his character, and that which death has sealed remains unchanged, unimproved, to await the awful decision of the Almighty Judge. The return of another natal day may find our place vacant around the hearth, and our friends using the language of grief instead of gratulation, and their faces suffused with tears, instead of brightened with smiles. The year that has fled has not been without warnings to us of the possibility of this mournful change; there has been more than one voice in society, and more than one in our own frame, bidding us to be prepared. Shall we then delay the one thing needful? Oh! let us not reckon on any time but the present, nor suffer any employment of the present, but such as will prepare us alike for life or death, for time or eternity. Then the lapse of years, if years be granted, will create no apprehension. Rapid indeed, in the days that are past, has that lapse been. Days have led on to weeks, and weeks to months, and months to years, and years have brought us where we stand, and we have hardly known whither we were being borne. The time has fled, and we scarcely knew it; so light has been its tread that we heard it not, so faint the traces of its steps that we saw them not, and now we are conscious of it only by its loss. And as it has been in the days that are gone, so will it be in those to come. We shall find ourselves at the brink of our graves, before we think thereof, and few at the best will, to our conceptions, be the risings and settings of the sun, the moon and the stars, ere to us the universe will be covered in unmingled darkness. But let us crowd the span of life with wise designs and virtuous deeds, and we may not only disre

gard the rapidity of the interchange of day and night, but welcome each returning morn, as hastening on the day when time to us shall be no longer, and greet each new yearly kindling of the sun as the lamps of God to light our pathway to the skies.

Arrived at the period of life at which we now stand, we have seen the past, we know something of what the world has been, and we naturally inquire what it will be, what new features in its character will the remainder of our existence unfold. To answer this question in detail is impossible. But this is certain, that, to a great extent, the world will be what we shall make it. The elements of the future are in our characters, the coming generation will be the child of the present, and will bear its features. Be, then, yourselves what you wish your offspring to be: the way to improve the world, is to improve your own characters, and he is amongst the best friends of the race who is truly the best friend to himself.

Imperfectly indeed, and unsatisfactorily to myself, should I discharge the task that I have undertaken in speaking chiefly to those of my own age, did I not record in your presence the fact, that increasing years, I may add, increasing days, serve each to increase my sense of the value of the gospel. An ancient father of the church has called it the only hope of the world, and his words are the words of truth and soberness.

PRAYER.

O THOU Eternal and changeless Spirit, we frail and transient beings, feeling our own insufficiency and noth

ingness, rejoice in the thought, that Thou art our Friend, our Protector, our Redeemer. On Thee do we desire firmly to fix our hopes. To Thee do we cleave. The eternal throne of thy mercy will we not quit till our life departs. And O do Thou, most gracious and loving Parent, uphold and cherish us by thy great power and boundless love, so that in every period of life, in death, and on the day of judgment, we may be indissolubly thine. Conscious of our sins, we implore thy pardoning mercy. Not daring to trust in ourselves, we implore thy aid, that we may pass the remainder of our being in the service of Thee and our fellow-creatures. Impress us indelibly with a sense of the shortness of the present season, yet of its unspeakable importance. Eternity, with its endless bliss or fearful wo, depends on it. Rouse us to active and persevering labors, that we may work out our salvation, that we may employ every hour that yet remains to us in improving our own characters and promoting our fellow-beings' good. How ardently do we thank Thee for the invaluable example of the Lord Jesus Christ. Let our obedience and beneficence resemble his, that, under thy mercy, we may hereafter be with and be like him, and enjoy a nearer approach to the uncreated glories of thy holy and benignant nature. Hear us through the Son of thy love and our Saviour, and accept through him our humble yet devout homage. Amen.

SERMON XVI.

THE FORMATION AND PROGRESS OF THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER.

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1 Kings vi. 7.

THE HOUSE, WHEN IT WAS IN BUILDING, WAS BUILT OF STONE, MADE READY BEFORE IT WAS BROught thiтHER; SO THAT THERE WAS NEITHER HAMMER, NOR AXE, NOR ANY TOOL OF IRON, HEARD IN THE HOUSE, WHILE IT WAS IN BUILDING."

THERE is nothing in which true greatness is more conspicuous, than in the tranquillity and silence with which it accomplishes grand designs. It will generally be found, that the most magnificent objects in nature, and the noblest efforts in the intellectual, civil, and religious world are without ostentation or bustle; and that you are left to admire the effect, without being able to trace, or at least without being compelled to mark, the operations of the cause. "So is the kingdom of God," saith Jesus Christ, whose calm and quiet dignity, even at the moment he was subjecting to his word the elements, and raising to life the dead, is a beautiful illustration of the sentiment I would express," So is the kingdom of God," as if a man should cast seed into

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