their old idolatry without gaining any thing better in its room; many who are of no religion at all; and many with whom the religion of Christ is no more than a cloak of licentiousness; but where, where are the Christians?" And thus they returned to their cave; and there God had compassion on them, releasing them, once for all, from that world for whose reproof their days had been lengthened, and removing their souls to the society of their ancient friends and pastors, the martyrs and saints of an earlier and a better generation.

The admiration of former times is a feeling at first, perhaps, engrafted on our minds by the regrets of those who vainly seek in the evening of life, for the sunny tints which adorned their morning landscape; and who are led to fancy a deterioration in surrounding objects, when the change is in themselves, and the twilight in their own powers of perception. It is probable that, as each age of the individual or the species is subject to its peculiar dangers, so each has its peculiar and compensating advantages; and that the difficulties which, at different periods of the world's duration, have impeded the believer's progress to Heaven, though in appearance infinitely various, are, in amount, very nearly equal. It is probable that no age is without its sufficient share of offences, of judgements, of graces, and of mercies, and that the corrupted nature of mankind was never otherwise than hostile or indifferent to the means which God has employed to remedy its misery. Had we lived

in the times of the infant Church, even amid the blaze of miracle on the one hand, and the chastening fires of persecution on the other, we should have heard, perhaps, no fewer complaints of the cowardice and apostacy, the dissimulation and murmuring inseparable from a continuance of public distress and danger, than we now hear regrets for those days of wholesome affliction, when the mutual love of believers was strengthened by their common danger; when their want of worldly advantages disposed them to regard a release from the world with hope far more than with apprehension, and compelled the Church to cling to her Master's cross alone for comfort and for succour.

Still, however, it is most wonderful, yea rather by this very consideration is our wonder increased at the circumstance, that in any or every age of Christianity such inducements and such menaces as the religion of Christ displays, should be regarded with so much indifference, and postponed for objects so trifling and comparatively worthless. If there were no other difference but that of duration between the happiness of the present life and of the life which is to follow, or though it were allowed us to believe that the enjoyments of earth were, in every other respect, the greater and more desirable of the two, this single consideration of its eternity would prove the wisdom of making Heaven the object of our more earnest care and concern; of retaining its image constantly in our minds; of applying ourselves with a more excellent zeal to every thing

which can help us in its attainment, and of esteeming all things as less than worthless which are set in comparison with its claims, or which stand in the way of its purchase.

Accordingly, this is the motive which St. Paul assigns for a contempt of the sufferings and pleasures, the hopes and fears; of the life which now is, in comparison with the pleasures and sufferings, the fears and hopes which are, in another life, held out to each of us. And it is a reason which must carry great weight to the mind of every reasonable being, inasmuch as any thing which may end soon, and must end some time or other, is, supposing all other circumstances equal, or even allowing to the temporal good a very large preponderance of pleasure, of exceedingly less value than that which, once attained, is alike safe from accident and decay, the enjoyment of which is neither to be checked by insecurity, nor palled by long possession, but which must continue thenceforth in everlasting and incorruptible blessedness, as surely as God Himself is incorruptible and everlasting. But when, besides this great and preponderating consideration, we recollect the hollow and unsatisfactory nature of all the enjoyments and advantages which the present life can supply; when we recollect how small a share of those enjoyments the generality of mankind can hope for, and that those men who have seemed to fare most plentifully at the feast of worldly happiness, have yet, by their own acknowledgments, arisen from that feast unsatisfied and

disappointed; when we recollect and feel, as we may most of us have felt but too keenly, that these pleasures, short and imperfect as they are, are dashed and mingled with many inevitable sorrows, and when we recollect, above all, that there is nothing in our care of the everlasting world which necessarily or usually interferes with the moderate enjoyment of those short-lived comforts which the present world can supply, it must needs excite no common degree of wonder and pity for the madness of mankind, to behold them so over-anxious and over-busy in their pursuit of the less and less enduring advantages, and so strangely careless and inactive in their endeavours after those glories which abide eternally.

It is plain, when so many reasonable beings in this one instance act unreasonably, that some powerful and prevalent causes must be at work to prevent or pervert the fair exercise of their understandings; and it is evidently most desirable and necessary to discover and remove the delusions which hide from our eyes the things belonging to our peace, which disqualify our spirits from the discernment of spiritual interests, and render our hearts unmoved to any good or effectual purpose by the most gracious promises or the most aweful threatenings of the Almighty. To point out then the causes and, under Divine Grace, the most probable cure of this remarkable confusion of intellect, will be the object of the observations which I shall now suggest to you.

Of these causes, a want of faith is the most obvious, as it is one, I apprehend, of the most frequent, and, of all others, where it prevails, the most fatal. It is impossible that we should please God; it is impossible that we should even desire to please Him, unless we are first assured that He is, and that He is a rewarder of all such as diligently seek Him. It is impossible that we should come to Christ, as Christ requires, with an entire and exclusive confidence in His merits, with a hearty and lively thankfulness for His mercies, with an earnest and effectual desire to offer up ourselves, our souls, and bodies, to His reasonable and holy service, unless we are first really persuaded that the Gospel contains the words of God, and that the things are true, and that the objects are answered, which the Lord Jesus is there recorded to have done, and suffered, and undertaken, and purchased for us. It is impossible, lastly, that we should resist the many and mighty temptations with which our spiritual adversary assails us, unless we are convinced of the truth and reasonableness of those passages in the Gospels, the epistles, and the prophecies, which declare a compliance with his enticements to be a state of enmity with the Most High, and which compare, as in the words of my text St. Paul has done, the short continuance and minor importance of such sufferings or pleasures as this life can inflict or bestow, with the wrath of Him who, when He hath killed, hath power to cast into hell.