Their whole work of salvation is to be accomplished, and their hearts are now found so hardened and proud, that they are unable to set out upon the great work, which the whole of life is little enough to finish.

In concluding this discourse, I would earnestly impress upon your minds, the thoughts which have been presented. Many of you, my friends, have lived past the middle point of life, and yet are without God in the world. How improvident would you consider yourselves to be, if you had waited until this time, without selecting for yourselves, a business for the present life, or without beginning to lay up any thing in this world, for yourselves, or your families! What would you think of the man or woman, forty years of age, who was just agitating the question, what course of life shall I pursue to obtain my bread? If this subject had never gained attention until then, you would deem it almost an hopeless attempt, to consider it at all. But how many have passed this age, and have never entered upon the work of their soul's salvation! Perhaps some of them have hardly thought of the question whether they have souls to save. How sad is this condition! How many difficulties surround their way! The path of religion seems so much blocked up, that salvation appears almost beyond their reach.

You will say, that this view is most discouraging. Nothing, my brethren, is so discouraging, as this carelessness of habit, from which I desire to arouse you. You had far better feel despair, than feel nothing. When you do despond, we may hope, that you will embrace the arm extended for your rescue. The thoughts which have been now pressed upon your attention ought to excite you, to an earnest, deter

mined exertion for your eternal safety. Your time is short. Your difficulties are many. Your work is arduous. Still eternal safety is within your reach, and your escape is not impossible. If you would set yourselves immediately and earnestly about it, God would remove the difficulties, and give you success. Nothing is wanting in God. You are not straitened in him. If you will be reconciled to him, in his appointed Saviour, you will find peace. If you will still reject him, your difficulties will still increase. And as the day sinks in darkness, and the shadows of the evening are stretched out, to be soon lost in unchanging night, a deeper, and a deeper wo, will be sounded from your souls, and echoed back upon you, from the regions of despair. O fly from impending ruin to the arms of Jesus. However painful and humbling the outset may be, the humbling step is but one. Be willing to be abased before God, that he may exalt you in due time. Accept the righteousness of Jesus, and be found in him, converted and sanctified, and you shall be happy and secure. But if you still delay, every day will make the matter worse; and what the end shall be, your own consciences are fully able to declare.

SERMON XVII.

THE SORROWS OF OLD AGE.

ECCLESIASTES Vi. 3.—If a man live many years, so that the days of his years are many, and his soul be not filled with good, I say that an untimely birth is better than he.

LONG life has ever been esteemed by man as a great and desirable blessing. In the early periods of the world, the number of years which were comprised in such a life, was so great, that in our present experience, we can hardly imagine the appearance or the feelings of a man, whose locks were the growth of centuries, and who had lived, to behold the descent of many hundreds of immortal beings from himself. When the fallen nature of man had transformed this lengthened period of trial, into a more extended progress of iniquity, a more unfathomable depth of sin, the divine Creator cut down in successive generations, man's opportunity of rebellion against himself, to less than onetenth the period first granted to the human race. No longer like the oak witnessing the passage of centuries, now, we all do fade as a leaf. At the utmost ordinary limit, the days of man are but threescore years and ten. The wish for long life can hardly extend itself, beyond this narrow compass of man's numbered days.

Few in fact attain this utmost limit. And men are accustomed to arrange their plans for business and exertion, within a far narrower compass, than the hope of this would allow them. In our worldly occupations, we are governed by the principle, that what is to be done, must be done quickly. No man in the possession of his reason, thinks of laying out a plan for the acquisition of wealth, or for the attainment of any object of mere worldly desire, which is to be commenced, when he has attained the age of threescore years and ten. To say, that he would then set out, upon a business which his whole life should have been employed in finishing, and the care for which should at that time be dismissed, from a mind which needs to be at rest from labour, would justly stamp a man with the reputation of insanity. He who should announce his intention to bind himself when he had attained the age of seventy, as an apprentice to a trade, or to enter as a pupil in a school, or even to plant an orchard in his ground, with the hope of eating of the fruit which it should bear him, would be an object of pity or ridicule. And yet how many are hoping to prepare for an eternal occupation, and to attain an inexhaustible knowledge, in this last flickering of human existence! In the business of this world, men are wise. It is only when we bring them to the concerns of a world to come, that they seem to have laid the dominion of reason aside.

But what is the real object, for which the present life of man has been bestowed, and is prolonged? Is it to acquire a trade? to obtain an education in science? or to lay up treasures which may be moth-eaten and destroyed? If we should derive our answer from the

habits of mankind, it would seem to be this. But if we go to the wisdom of God, for our reply, there is presented before us a far different end. In our text, the wise preacher supposes a man to have seen the utmost possible limit of human existence. And then he estimates the worth of the whole of this proud and protracted life, if it has passed without the acquisition of that object which the word of God proposes for the attainment of man. "If a man live many years, so that the days of his years be many, and his soul be not filled with good, I say that an untimely birth is better than he; for he cometh in with vanity, and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with darkness." One far wiser than Solomon, has given us the same estimate, in that striking demand which he has built upon man's universal love for gain, "what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" When he has examined his account in the light of eternity, how much will it appear that he has gained in exchange for his soul? Perhaps the experience of some who hear me, may soon furnish them, the exact, and the only adequate reply to these demands, and constrain them to adopt our Lord's assertion in reference to Judas, in its application to themselves, "it had been good for us if we had not been born." "For who can dwell with the devouring fire? who can dwell with everlasting burnings?"

In speaking upon this all-important subject, we will consider first,

I. WHAT IS THE GREAT OBJECT OF HUMAN LIFE. And,

II. THE SORROWS OF THE MAN WHO HAS LIVED LONG WITHOUT ATTAINING IT.