duct, and have you not felt these remonstrances painful? Uncharitable as some think me in the pulpit, I cannot think you such a monster as to be void of conscience; or to have one so stupified, so seared, as it were, with a hot iron, that it never cried out against the violences you have done it, never warned you of the fatal consequences of one of your sins. These warnings, which you did not regard, were in effect the voice of God, the admonitions which he gave you by his agent in your breast. And if his sentence be executed upon you in everlasting death for your evil works, you will hear that voice speaking to you again, in a louder tone and a severer accent than before, and you will be tormented with its upbraidings through eternity, because you would not in time hearken to its admonitions.

Let me add, farther, that if it be any aggravation of guilt to have sinned against the motions of God's Spirit on the mind, surely your sin has been attended with that aggravation also. St. Stephen charged it upon the Jews, that through all their generations they had always resisted the Holy Ghost. If the Spirit of God strove with the Jews, how much more with professing Christians! And have you never experienced any thing of this kind? Have you been so hardened from your infancy as never to have been wrought upon by an alarming or convincing discourse? Or when there was no pious teacher near you, have you never perceived a secret impulse upon your mind, leading you to think of religion, urging you to an immediate consideration of it, sweetly inviting you to make trial of it, and warning you that you would lament this stupid neglect? O sinner, why were not these happy motions attended to? Why did not you, as it were, spread out all the sails of your soul to catch that heavenly breath? But you have carelessly neglected it-you have suppressed these kind influences. How reasonably then might the sentence have gone forth in righteous displeasure : My Spirit shall no more strive!" And, indeed, who can say that it has not already gone forth? Alas! if you feel no emotion of mind, no remorse, no awakening, while you listen to such a remonstrance as this, there will be room, great room, to fear it.

There is one aggravation more which probably attends your sins; I mean that of being committed against solemn engagements to the contrary. You promised in baptism to renounce all the pomps and vanities of this world, and all the sinful desires of the flesh; you vowed to keep God's holy commandments all the days of your life: you have, perhaps, strengthened the obligation, already laid upon you by being confirmed, or coming to the Lord's table with a public profession of having a stead. fast purpose to lead a new life: but, alas! you are still the same, still a lover of pleasure, or of money, more than a lover of God! And, if you say you never come to the Lord's table to vow him obedience, and so you never aggravate your guilt by sinning against solemn engagements; I answer, it is the more shameful that you should so publicly forsake the God of your fathers, as never to attempt to enter into any engagement with him. The pleading that you are a heathen, makes Christ and his Church little amends for your not being a good Christian. But suppose you never took your baptismal vow upon yourself, hath your heart been, even from your youth, hardened to so uncommon a degree, that you never cried to God in any season of danger and difficulty? And did

you never mingle vows with those cries? Did you never promise, that if God would hear and help you in that hour of extremity, you would forsake your sins, and serve him as long as you lived? He heard and helped you, otherwise you would not have been in his courts at this time; and by such deliverance did, as it were, bind down your vows upon you, and therefore your guilt in the violation of them remains before him, though you are stupid enough to forget them. Nothing is forgotten, nothing is overlooked by him; and the day will come when the record shall be laid before you too.

And now, sinner, think seriously with yourself, what defence you will make to all this. Will you fly in the face of God and that of your conscience, so openly as to deny one of the charges of rebellion, yea, of aggravated rebellion, I have advanced against you? Have you not lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven? Have not you stiffened your neck and hardened your heart from his love and fear? Have you not sided with his sworn enemies, the world and the flesh? What part of your body, what faculty of your soul have you not employed as an instrument of unrighteousness? When did you live one day before God with the dependence of a creature, the gratitude of a redeemed creature, the heavenly frame of a sanctified creature? Nay, when did you live one hour without violating God's known law either in word, or thought, or action? Have not you done it almost continually by the vanity of your mind and the hardness of your heart, if not by the open immorality of your life? And, what infinitely aggravates your guilt, have you not despised and abused God's numberless mercies? Have not you affronted conscience, his deputy in your breast? Have not you resisted and grieved his Spirit? Yea, have not you trifled with him in all your pretended submissions or solemn engagements? In one word, and that in the language of Jeremiah, chap. iii, "Thou hast done evil things as thou couldest," or as thou durst. Thousands are, no doubt, already in hell, whose guilt never equalled yours; and yet God has spared you to see the end almost of another year, and to hear now this plain representation of your case. And will you not yet consider? Shall nothing move you to shake off that amazing carelessness and stupid disregard of your salvation? Will you never begin to "work it out with fear and trembling?" Will you slumber in impenitency till eternal woes crush you into destruc. tion? Is death, is judgment, is the bottomless pit so far off that you dare put off, from week to week, the day of your conversion? You have read

God's word that there is mercy with him that he may be feared; but where did you read that there is mercy with him for those that fear him not; for those that are as unconcerned about his displeasure, as easy under his threatenings, as insensible of his mercies, as unmoved under his word as you are? Show me such a place, I shall not say any where in the Bible, but in any book written by a moral heathen! And yet you hope, you persist to hope, you are right, and can be saved in this way. When we expostulate with you, when we entreat you, after David, to "kiss the Son, lest he be angry," and so you perish in this way of carnal security, " if his wrath be kindled, yea, but a little;" you blame us secretly, or openly, and are ready to quarrel with us for bringing you the unwelcome message: you will not blame yourselves for giving us cause to bring it, and obstinately refuse to fall out with the sins we

exclaim against; but under the most cogent arguments, taken from reason and the nature of things, the most glaring proofs out of the word of God, the most earnest entreaties not to harden you heart, you remain as unshaken as an anvil under the workman's stroke: or, if you relent a little, and conscience receives the dart of conviction, instead of driving it deeper and deeper, you instantly shake it off, and quench the Spirit of God; you run into the company of careless worldlings, and are afraid or ashamed to converse with those whose consciences are alarmed, and with whom you might learn the first principles of repentance never to be repented of; and thus you grow more insensible every day, more averse to pure and undefiled religion, more alienated from the life of God in your heart. And what do you think will be the end of these things? Has any one hardened himself against the Lord, says the prophet, and prospered? And do you suppose you shall first prosper in that way? "He that being often reproved," says he again, "hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy;" and will the God of truth break his word, and commence a liar, by not spuing your lukewarm soul out of his mouth, by not cutting asunder such an unprofitable servant, such a rebellious subject as you are to him, if speedy conversion does not make him sheath the sword of his vengeance? If you say, that passion makes me represent your case worse than it really is, I put you to the proof: show wherein I speak not the words of soberness and truth. You cannot; and yet you condemn and slight them. If, therefore, I speak to any more particularly than to the rest of my careless hearers, it is to thee, whose heart is thus ready to say, "I am not a rebellious soul, but you are a false or enthusiastic teacher." Alas! thou art the man-thou art the woman I chiefly address, and it appears clear that thou despisest reproof: and he that despises reproof, says the wise man, is brutish. "Yea, because I called," (says God himself,) "and ye refused, and would none of my reproof, I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh." And wilt not thou yet take warning, wilt thou to the end reject the very first exhortation of our Church, wilt thou go on cloaking and dissembling thy sins before the face of almighty God? O, if, notwithstanding my repeated endeavours to awaken thee, thou persistest and diest at last in this impenitency, remember me, sinner, when I stand at the bar of God, when the Lord maketh inquisition for blood, and the burning fiery furnace of his eternal wrath is heated seven times more for false teachers, who, by healing slightly the wound of the daughter of God's people, betray souls into endless ruin, appear as a witness in my behalf, and from the midst of everlasting burnings, let thy parched tongue send forth some such words as these: "Let not my teacher come into this place of torment, condemn him not on my account, I clear him, Lord, I clear him; he brought me thy messages, whether I would hear or whether I would forbear; he warned me of my rebellion against thee, and told me that these endless horrors would be my portion if I stiffened my neck and hardened my heart; but I set at naught all his counsels, and would none of his reproofs." Yes, sinner, despise me here if thou wilt, and wonder why I urge thee so much to consider the things that belong to thy peace, before they be hid from thine eyes; call me here an enthu siast, and laugh at the concern I feel for thy perishing soul: but here.

after thou wilt do me justice, clear me before the Lord Jesus, and acknowledge that thy blood is upon thine own head, that thou art undone because thou wouldst be undone, because thou wouldst take neither warning nor reproof.

Yet if now thou art not quite given up to a reprobate mind; if thy stupid conscience is not entirely past feeling; if thy worldly soul is yet accessible to some touches of Divine grace, some motions of God's Spirit; if thou yet desirest to arise and return to thy long-despised Father, to that God from whom thou hast so deeply revolted; if this very day that thou hearest his warning voice, and hardenest not thy heart, though thou hast been hitherto most rebellious, he will yet show thee mercy. Rend, O rend your careless hearts, and not your garments, for why will ye die, O house of Israel? Hath the Lord any pleasure in the death of him that dieth? Does not such a one die because he will die? because he will not turn to the Lord with weeping, fasting, and praying; because he will not be delivered from the world, the flesh, and the devil; because he will not be presented to God as a chaste virgin in Christ? "Ye will not come unto me," said once that dear Saviour, "ye will not come unto me that ye may have life;" and shall we still give him room to complain in heaven as he did when on earth, or shall we know the time of our visitation, and hasten to him with all our aggravated guilt? If we choose this better part, as the Lord liveth we shall find him most willing and able to pardon our sins, and sanctify our nature, to create in us clean hearts, and renew right spirits within us; which may God grant unto us all for his mercy's sake.

SERMON VIII.-Value of wisdom in spiritual things.

"O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end," Deut. xxxii, 29.

If the dying words of a good man ought to make the deepest impression upon us, (and precepts given by one just launching into eternity, should be valued so much the more, as we cannot suspect him to be influenced by any motives but those of love and concern for our welfare,) what regard ought we to pay to the words of the text, since they were some of the last which were spoken by one of the best and greatest of men that ever lived, namely, Moses!

The day approached in which he was to be gathered to his fathers. For notwithstanding the repeated prayers he had made to enter into the good land of Canaan, God, whose inflexible justice often punishes the least faults in his saints, (how much more the greatest sins in his enemies,) God, I say, having resolved to make him an example of his invincible hatred to sin, (and of the necessity he stands under to require satisfaction where it is committed,) had told him that he must submit to die before his time, for having spoken unadvisedly with his lips at the waters of Meribah. Moses worshipped and humbly submitted to the Lord; well persuaded that his Redeemer lived; and that though worms should soon prey on his body, the God whom he served would deliver his soul from the pangs of the second death.

To spend the short time he had to live wholly in the work of faith and labour of love, he called together the people of Israel, read to them all the words of God's law, brought to their remembrance the many miracles which the Lord had done for them, to bring them out of Egypt with a stretched-out arm, opening a way through the Red Sea; destroying all their enemies; causing the clouds to rain delicious food, and the rocks to yield water springs to preserve their lives in the wilderness. In short, he laid before them life and death in the most affecting manner, and besought them, sometimes by glorious promises, and sometimes by dreadful threatenings, not to provoke the Lord their God, but to cleave to him with full purpose of heart, telling them that the God of their fathers would bless them for ever, if they would but love him with all their souls; and adding, that if they departed from him, he would pur. sue them with his severest judgments, and scatter them over the face of the whole earth, as we see them in our days.

What an awful sight must this have been! A whole nation,―men, women, and children, standing before the Lord! And Moses, the greatest of prophets, and the friend of God, expostulating with them for the last time! Methinks I see the effect of his pathetic discourse spreading through that numerous congregation. Thousands lift up weeping eyes to heaven in an ecstasy of praise and thanksgiving for God's mercies to them; while thousands more fix themselves on the ground with shame and confusion, ready to say, "We are not worthy of the least of the Lord's mercies, for we are a rebellious people; it is because his compassions fail not that we are not consumed." On every side the trembling hands of aged people, with the feeble ones of children, are lifted up to heaven to witness, that henceforth they will love the Lord, and serve him only; and with one consent they cry as in the days of Eli. jah, "The Lord he is the God; the Lord he is the God:" he is the God to whom we will cleave for ever.

This moving scene had a due effect on Moses: he mixed, no doubt, his tears of joy with the tears of repentance, which he saw in the people's eyes. But, alas! the knowledge he had of the human heart made him at the same time foresee that this goodness would not last longer than the early dew, and that prosperity, with fulness of bread, would soon cause them to forget the Lord, and trample under foot the promises and threatenings he had laid before them. He foresaw that their hearts would be drawn aside by the cares and pleasures of the world, so as to remember no more the heavenly Canaan, of which the earthly one was but a figure. He saw that the little concerns of this life would swallow up the important ones of that which is to come. Therefore, overwhelmed with holy grief, he looked up to heaven, and expressed, in the words of the text, the thoughts of his bleeding heart, "O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!" Having breathed that solemn wish, he blessed them once more, and the same day went up to Mount Nebo, from which, having taken a view of the earthly Canaan, he committed his spirit into the hands of the Lord, to carry it to the heavenly one, while the dust of his body returned to dust.

Having thus related on what occasion the words of the text were spoken, I come, in the second place, to dwell upon their general mean.