you thus pursue? You are but laying up a store of sorrow for yourselves; provoking a God justly and exceeding offended, to withdraw himself from you. You are not postponing merely, the hour of your return to God; you are thrusting it from you forever. Do not deceive yourselves with any vain calculations upon a future repentance. You will never repent with any repentance which shall be unto salvation, and not to be repented of. Satan rejoices over every procrastinating soul, under the assurance, that he has accomplished his full design. Let him persuade you to abide in the plan of becoming the servants of God when old age shall admonish you that death is near, and your souls are lost forever. The door of hope will be closed. The Gospel, long neglected, will be neglected forever. You will go out in darkness. Evil days in which you find no pleasure, will be your eternal portion. Your name will be covered with darkness, as one of those whom God has rejected and dismissed into everlasting banishment, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. May he give you now the wisdom to lay these things truly and profitably to heart.

SERMON XVIII.

DISAPPOINTED PROCRASTINATION.

GENESIS xi. 32.-The days of Terah were two hundred and five years, and Terah died in Haran.

SOME may be ready to ask, of what practical use, is this fact to us? An attention to the circumstances of history which are connected with it, will show the purpose of illustration for which I design to employ it, and the interest which my hearers have in the admonition which it gives.

He dwelt in

Terah was the father of Abraham. Ur of the Chaldees, east of the river Euphrates. There, he was with his whole family in a state of idolatry, "serving other gods," and ignorant and careless of the great Being whom they were bound to worship. While in this condition of spiritual darkness, "on the other side of the flood," as the great river Euphrates was called, God commanded him to arise, and to go with his family to the land of Canaan, which from that time, became the land of promise, the appointed possession of the children of Abraham. "God said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and

from thy father's house, to a land that I will shew thee." "And Terah took Abram his son, and Lot, the son of Haran, his son's son, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram's wife; and they went forth with them from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan; and they came unto Haran, and dwelt there." Haran was on the midway of their commanded journey. How long Terah lived here, we cannot tell. But either he could not, or he would not, go farther on towards the land which God had promised to his posterity. Abram, after waiting for his father, it would appear for some years, took Sarai and Lot, and went on to the land of his promised inheritance in obedience to the divine command, and left Terah the old man his father, in Haran, and there he died. Terah did not however, die immediately. He lived at least sixty years after he had seen his son thus go forward in obedience to God, being but one hundred and fortyfive years old, when Abram left him. He had therefore abundant time to follow his son in the path of appointed duty. Yet after all, "Terah died in Haran."

At the late period of life in which he was induced to obey the divine command, and to leave his native land, to go in search of the land which the Lord had promised to him and to his children, he found himself unable to finish the journey which he had undertaken. He stopped in the middle of his appointed course. And here, though the command to arise and go, was again repeated to him from God, here, he remained for the residue of his days. While still in the land of idolators and darkness, he gave up his spirit, to be judged for his disobedient procrastination; and left

his children to take possession without him, of the good land which God had promised them.

The simple fact, "Terah died in Haran," when viewed in this connexion, stands in the Scriptures as a monument, like the pillar of salt which uttered its warning to every passer by, "remember Lot's wife." It exhibits an old man, after his many years spent in idolatry and ignorance, attempting in a late obedience to divine commands, to remove from his native condition and home, to the land of promise; but wasting in procrastination, the time for his journey, and indolently staying, upon the road, over which he was required to pass, to gain the end placed before his view; and finding all his efforts and plans to accomplish his purpose, to prove unavailing for his good. He never attained the inheritance for which he set out so late, and which he pursued so carelessly. He saw his child and his grandchild, both go on before him, to the place of their desire and hope; while he was left, and alas, found himself willing to be left, to die alone, upon the road to that home, which they were to enjoy without him. And it remains on record, as a fact to warn procrastinating men in every age, of the disappointments which they are preparing for themselves, that Terah, amidst all the invitations and privileges which he received, died at last an idolator in Haran.

Has this fact then no practical connexion with ourselves? Does it not exhibit a striking illustration, of the folly and danger, of postponing until old age, our own commanded journey to the land of promise? May I not with much propriety, use it for an occasion, and as an instrument, of admonition, warning, and solemn appeal, to all who hear me, that they be wise in

time, and harden not their hearts against the voice of the living God? This is my present design. May God, in great mercy, by his own Spirit, make it effect

ual and useful!

man.

I. Let us consider the work which God requires sinful man to undertake. The call of Abraham from his country and home, is frequently employed, to illustrate the great duty which is required of every sinful Like him, every one is commanded in the Gospel, to attain and exercise a simple controlling faith in the divine promises; to follow in this spirit of faith, the peculiar commands of God the Saviour; to go out in its reliance upon him, from a state of selfishness and idolatry, man's natural condition, to seek the better and heavenly country which is revealed in the Gospel, and offered in Christ Jesus, to every believing soul. The obedience of Abraham, in going out, not knowing whither he went, simply counting him faithful who had promised, and counting every thing else, as loss for his sake, exhibits just the duty, which the Saviour requires of all, to whom he gives the invitations of his word; and just the duty which multitudes like Terah, postpone, until it is too late to finish the work which is involved in it. Abraham's journey and the whole of his history, display the spiritual journey of the believing man, through the difficulties and obstacles of life, to a kingdom and home of everlasting glory. They show faith, triumphing in contests, hoping against hope, not staggering in weakness, but strong in giving glory to God, ultimately crowned with the full attainment of all that it had looked for, and finding its possession an unspeakable reward.

Such an exercise of faith developing itself in full and