But these are not all your particular advantages.

2. THE EVENTS OF LIFE HAVE BEEN SO ORDERED BY THE GRACIOUS PROVIDENCE OF

GOD, as, on various occasions, to aid the tendency of these external circumstances of birth.

Yes, there is not one before me, but has been led, at one time or other, by the course of events, to additional means of salvation. Changes in your pursuits have brought you within the reach of the good and pious. Journeys and retirements have afforded you peculiar seasons of recollection. The consequences of folly and sin have been demonstrated to you in your own case, or in that of others. Disappointments in your most ardent expectations have made you feel the uncertainty of this world's happiness, and the necessity of seeking after that which Christianity presents. Unexpected blessings and deliverances have been vouchsafed you in seasons of peculiar emergency; your life has been spared; disease has been stopped when at its height; death has been arrested as he was entering your abode. Retrace the history of your life, and the mercies of a providential care will be most apparent. Nor have the least important moments been those of peculiar affliction, deep domestic calamities and personal sorrows. In these events God has spoken to

you in the interior of the heart; religion has appeared in its just excellence; and interposing passions and pursuits have suspended their fascinations. What use have you made of these occurrences? Have you looked up to the hand which guided you unseen? Have you considered the obligations of obedience to his Revelation, as augmented by these appointments of the Almighty?

3. And what have you done in consequence of THOSE MOTIONS OF THE BLESSED SPIRIT, which have not failed to suggest to you the necessity of submission to your God? You know not, possibly, what is meant by the influences of the Holy Spirit. I will tell you, that the Christianity which you are so little acquainted with, consists much, as to its practical blessings upon the heart, in the influences of divine grace; in the agency of the Holy Spirit. We have largely referred to this topic in former Lectures. I recur to it now, to show you the obligations you are under to the great God and Father of all. Yes, those disturbances of mind, that uneasiness of conscience, those regrets after the commission of sin, those convictions of the importance of religion, that fear of death, those intervals of religious impression, those thoughts of God and duty which have visited your souls, have not been unattended with the

additional force and pungency which the influences of grace bestow. It is the Holy Spirit of God which has been remonstrating, calling, inviting you, by these operations of your intellectual and moral powers. And for all this aid you will have to give an account. These movements of grace have conspired with the events of your life, and have been most persuasive when your outward circumstances called you most loudly to consideration. There have been times, perhaps, when you were, like the king Agrippa, almost persuaded to be a Christian.' There have been times, when, like the wretched Herod, you have observed the minister of religion, and done many things and heard him gladly. All these inward motions of the Spirit bring a deep responsibility with them; they cannot be neglected nor quenched with impunity. But this is not all.

4. THE ADVICE, EXAMPLE, AND PRAYERS OF MINISTERS AND FRIENDS have, in most of those before me, swelled the catalogue of advantages, for which an account must be rendered to God. You have had the best counsel offered you in the most affectionate manner; you have had that advice sustained by the holy example, and consistent lives, and happy deaths of those who gave it; you have

1

1 Acts xxvi. 28.

2 Mark vi. 20.

seen, in your circle, perhaps in your immediate family, examples of rare virtue, instances of conversion, the calm tenor of a Christian life and conduct; you have had religion embodied before your eyes; you have witnessed the last hours of departing piety. A mother's prayers, which followed you through life, have been poured out for you on the bed of death. A father's wise counsel has been solemnly repeated amidst the expiring accents of struggling nature; and the anxiety and entreaties of health have been confirmed by the faint prayers of his last sickness. The minister of religion has followed you with his affectionate and persuasive entreaties. He has visited your sick chamber. He has witnessed the vows of amendment and conversion, which you forgot, alas! almost as soon as the occasion passed. He has addressed to you his gentle remonstrances. He waits for your reformation. His prayers, his labours, his public and private instructions, are directed to one object, your salvation.

And will you not yield? Shall not all these tender considerations persuade you to your duty, which you ought to discharge if not one of them existed? Remember, if you forget them, your Maker does not; if you fail to regard them, there is a book in which every one is noted; if you retrace not the series of particular advan

tages, God will republish them before an assembled world. Yes, moral obligations cannot be burst asunder with impunity. The Almighty has a book of reckoning, to which the volume of your past history will respond, and which the records of conscience will confirm.

It is not yet too late. All your advantages may yet be turned to the end for which they were granted. Salvation is yet proposed. The gospel calls you to obedience. Believe the divine Revelation. Hesitate no longer. Renounce your unbelief and disobedience of heart, and submit to the yoke of faith.

But, weighty as these considerations aré which spring from your original obligations to God, the nature of Christianity, the force of its evidences, and the advantages you have especially enjoyed, they may and will fail of their effect, unless we take into account, what I proposed to notice in the last place,

V. THE MOMENTOUS DISCOVERIES WHICH CHRISTIANITY MAKES, AND THE DEEP INTERESTS WHICH ARE CONSEQUENTLY DEPENDENT ON THE RECEPTION OF IT.

This carries the obligations to a height which no words can express nor imagination conceive aright. Dependent on the determination of this question, is every other that deserves the