ed merely on arguments, on a chain of consequena ces, and remote principles? But they are demonstrated by sound and incontestable experience. Hence we ask you once more to admit the force of our arguments, and to do justice to the evidence we have adduced.

Thirdly, we also require you to acknowledge the inefficacy of sermons with regard to you, the little effect they commonly have, and consequently the little influence which ours (and especially those last delivered) have produced on your conduct. There is not a week, but some vice is attacked;....not a week, but some one ought to be converted ;....not a week, but some evident change ought to be produc ed in civil and religious society. And what do we see? I appeal to your consciences; you regard us as declaimers, called to entertain you for an hour, to di versify your pleasure, or to pass away the first day of the week; diverting your attention from secular concerns. It seems that we ascend our pulpits to afford you amusement, to delineate characters, implicitly submitting to your judgment academic compositions; to say "Come, come and see whether we have a fertile imagination, a fine voice, a graceful gesture, an action agreeable to your taste." With these detestable notions most of you establish your tribunal, judging of the object of our sermons; which you sometimes find too long, sometimes too short, sometimes too cold, and sometimes too pathetic. Scarcely one among you turns them to their true design, purity of heart, and amendment of life. This is the success of the sermons you have heard. Are our discourses more happy? We should be too credulous did we expect it. It must be acknowledged, my brethren, that all we have said on the delay of conversion has been unavailing with regard to most of you. Philosophy, religion, experience.... all leave you much the same as you were before This is the third thing you ought to confess.

: When you have made these reflections, we will ask, what are your thoughts? What part will you take? What will you do? What will become of all the persons who compose this congregation? You know, on the one hand, that you are among the neglecters of salvation; you see, on the other, by evidence deduced from reason, Scripture, and experience, that those who thus delay, run the risk of never being converted. You are obliged to allow, that the most pethetic exhortations are addressed, in general without effect; and meanwhile, time is urgent, life vanishes away; and the moment in which you yourselves must furnish a test of these sad truths, is just at hand. Do these things make any impression on your mind? Do they attach any odium on the unhappy security in which you live? Do they trouble the false repose in which you rest? Have they any influence on your lives?

I know the part you are going to take, and we cannot think of it without horror; you are going to banish them from your mind, and efface them from your memory. You are going, on leaving this place, to fortify yourselves against this holy alarm, which has now, perhaps, been excited; you are going to talk of any subject but those important truths which have been preached, and to repose in indolence; to cause fear and trembling to subside, by banishing every idea which have excited them; like a man in a fatal sleep, while his house is on fire; we alarm him, we cry, "Rouse from your stupor, your house is on fire." He opens his eyes, he wishes to fly for safety; but falling again into his former sleep, he becomes fuel to the flames.

My brethren, my very dear brethren, think, O think that the situation of your minds does not alter these grand truths. You may forget them, but you cannot change them. Whether you may think or not, they still subsist in all their force. You may shut your eyes against hell, which is under your feet;

but you cannot remove it, you cannot avoid it, so long as you disregard our warnings, and resist our entreaties.

If your salvation is dear to you, if you have yet the least sensibility, the smallest spark of love to God....if you have not resolved on your own ruin, and sworn to your own destruction, enter into your hearts from this moment. Let each, from this moment, take salutary measures to subdue his predominant propensity. Do not withdraw from this temple, without being firmly resolved on a change of life.

Consider that you were not sent into the world to aggrandize and enrich yourselves; to form attachments, which serve as unhappy ties to hold you on the earth; much less to scandalize the church, to be highspirited, proud, imperious, unjust, voluptuous, avaricious. God has placed you here in a state of probation, that you might become prepared for a better world. Consider, that, though the distractions of life may frequently call a wise man to be engaged in the world, in defiance of his wishes; yet there is nothing so unworthy as to be, like most of you, always dissipated, always devoted to pleasure. Consider, that though this vacuity of life might be excused in a youth following the impulse of nature, before he has had time to reflect, yet games, diversions, and theatres, do but ill accord with grey hairs; and that he, at least, should devote the rest of his life to the service of God, and the advancement of his own salvation.

Examine yourselves on these heads; let each make them the touchstone of his conduct; let him derive from them motives of reformation; let the time past suffice to have gratified his concupiscence; let him tremble on considering the wounds he has given his soul, and the dangers he has run, in delaying to the present hour,

Is it forty, fifty or sixty years since I came into the world? What have I been doing? What account

can I give of a period so precious? What virtues have I acquired? What wicked propensities have I subdued? What progress have I made in charity, in humility, and in all the virtues for which God has given me birth? Have not a thousand various passions divided the empire of my heart? Have they not all tended to enslave me? O miserable man! per haps my day of grace is past: perhaps in future I may knock in vain at the door of mercy: perhaps I may be numbered with those of whom Christ says, Many shall seek to enter in and shall not be able: perhaps the insensibility I feel, and the resistance which my unhappy heart still makes, are the effects of divine vengeance: perhaps my time of visitation is past: perhaps God spares me only in life to make me a fearful example of the misery of those, who delay conversion: perhaps it is to me he addresses that sentence, Let him that is unjust be unjust still, and let him that is unholy be unholy still. But, perhaps I have yet a little time: perhaps God has spared me in life to afford me occasion to repair my past faults: perhaps he has brought me to-day into this church to touch and save me from my sins: perhaps these emotions of my heart, these tears which run down' mine eyes, are the effects of grace: perhaps these softenings, this compunction, and these fears are the voice which says from God, Seek ye my face: perhaps this is the year of good-will; the accepted time; the day of salvation: perhaps if I delay no longer, if I promote my salvation without delay, I may succeed in the work, and see my endeavour gloriously crowned.

O love of my Saviour, bowels of mercy, abyss of divine compassion! O length, breadth, height, depth of the love of God, which passeth knowledge! resolve this weighty inquiry; calm the agitation of my mind; assure my wavering soul. Yes, O my God, seeing thou hast spared me in life, I trust it is for salvation. Seeing thou seekest me still, I flatter myself it is for

my conversion. Hence I take new courage, I ratify anew the covenant I have so often violated; I pledge to thee anew the vows I have so often broken.

If you do so, you shall not labour in vain. For what is it that God requires of you? Why has he created you out of nothing? Why has he given you his Son? Why has he communicated to you his Holy Spirit? Is it to destroy you? Is it to damn you? Are you so little acquainted with the Father of mercies, with the God of love? Does he take pleasure in the death of a Sinner, and would he not rather that he should repent and live?

These are the consolations which follow the exhortations of the prophet, and the words of my text. For, after having said, Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near; he draws this conclusion, to which I would lead you, as it has been the design of these three discourses, and by which I would close the subject. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God for he will abundantly pardon. And, lest the penitent sinner should be overburdened with the weight of his sins....lest, estimating the extent of divine mercy by his own contracted views, he should despair of salvation, I will add this declaration from God himself, a declaration which admirably expresses the grandeur of his compassion: My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways; for, as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my thoughts above your thoughts. Now to God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be honour and glory for ever. Amen.