whose principles, example, and applause, are to us instead of God, are the companions of our carousals, of our revellings, of our debauches, and of our impurities, and who give the name of virtue and vice to whatever they please, without consulting Him who is the fountain of all virtue, and the burning enemy of all vice.

But this is not all, nor perhaps the worst. The opinions of the world, as to virtue and vice, are not only ruinously false, but they are as changeable as they are false. What, in one age of the world, would have branded a man with infamy as long as he breathed, becomes not only pardonable, but reputable in another.— The customs of the world, and the fashionable crimes of society, are shifting from age to age. For one instance out of a hundred :—some time ago there existed a nation where theft was honoured, as a proof of skill and dexterity; while, in that very same nation, drunkenness and immodesty-intemperance of any kindwould have ruined a man's reputation for ever. Now look at the change! In our days, the one is stigmatised with punishment and dishonour, while men often boast of their achievements in the other. How is a man to be guided by this childish and despicable world, that has not yet learnt, in six thousand years, to guide and regulate itself ?—that calls a thing virtue at one time, and vice at another; that calls evil good, and good evil; that puts bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter? Let him put it aside from him with contempt, and let him "remember his Creator." He will not shift and change with times and seasons. The fashions

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and opinions of the world may turn round and round with the world itself; but the law of God stands unchanged and unchangeable as the God that endureth for ever and ever they have perished, and shall perish; but he hath remained and shall still remain fashions and opinions of the world shall all "wax old as doth a garment, and he shall fold them up, and they shall be changed; but he is the same, and his years shall not fail." Why, one thought upon God, in the

midst of dissipation and profligacy, of oaths and drunkenness, of indecencies of language and of conduct, of revenge, animosity, and blood, (nay, in the midst of the less clamorous and more refined criminalities which are sanctioned by society,) I say, one thought upon God would produce little less than a kind of revelation; it would carry along with it such holiness, such purity, such love, that he must distinguish virtue from vice through the flimsy and miserable disguise in which they have been enveloped by mankind; the path of duty would be open before him, and guilt would come home to his breast, though the laugh and the scorn of society were echoing around.

But the law of God is not left to our own capricious recollections ;-it is entered upon record-it has been rained down upon us from heaven-it has been practised, fulfilled, and embodied in the Son of God, and sanctified by the blood of the Legislator. Here must the young man remember his Creator, while the world, the flesh, and the devil, are crowding around to devour him. With this law in his hand, and the Son of God by his side, let him go through the furnace, or he is lost.

But suppose that all this has been neglected, and that you, notwithstanding, have been permitted, by the mercies of the God you have forgotten, to arrive at the borders of an unholy old age ;-how will you then set about remembering your Creator-reserving for the dregs of sickness and infirmity, the work of youth in all its vigour offering rude and cruel violence to languid nature, as she is retiring to her repose-returning indeed to a second childhood, and beginning life anew, just as you are dropping into the grave-obliged to undo all that you have done-to turn out the whole tribe of loathsome ideas that have lain festering in your mind, and to purify a diseased and corrupted memory from all the sordid thoughts and recollections that have filled the place which should have been occupied by your Creator? And then, too, when you shall come to teach

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this precept to your children, instead of pronouncing it with all the dignity of a father of one who is to them in the place of God upon earth, you will hang your head and drop your grey hairs in shame before the son that should honour and respect you; you will blush to look your child in the face, when you read him a lesson that you never practised; and your lips will quiver, and your tongue will falter, when you say to him, Remember your Creator in the days of your youth." And yet, are we to say that there is no hope for such a man? God forbid. If there were no hope for those who have forgotten their Creator, which of us could lift his eyes to heaven? You, and all the world, and he who warns you of its consequences, every day and every hour, have forgotten their Creator. We have used the awful blessings that he has bestowed upon us, for our sport and amusement, and forgotten from whom they come; and we have rushed into the dangers and temptations of life, with nothing to guide us but the impulses of our own guilty nature, or the opinion of a world that has drawn its principles from its practice, instead of forming its practice upon its principles. Those who feel this in the depth of their hearts, and the awful state to which it has brought them, will know how to value the great and glorious atonement that has been made for them upon the cross. It will be music to their ears to be told, that to those who have forgotten their Creator, it is yet said, Remember your Redeemer, and live.Open wide your memory and your heart to this blessed Redeemer, and let the King of Glory come in. Just think,-whom will you remember instead of him?— Who is there that shall fill his place, and sit upon the throne of your memory, that will return you faithfully love for love-thought for thought? Will the object that is dearest to you upon earth? The heart of that being may be now cold and faithless; that heart will certainly be one day cold and mouldering in the grave, and all the profusion of memory that you lavish upon that barren spot, will never make one fresh thought, or

one genial recollection spring from the ashes that you loved, to reward your fond and hopeless prodigality.But there is not one pure thought, one holy recollection that struggles to rise to that gracious Being, that shall be allowed to fall to the ground, but shall be kindly received, and richly repaid; and he will return it from on high with a rain of blessings upon your head. Go, and remember Him who thought of you before you had the power of thinking either of him or of yourself, -making you young and lusty as an eagle, and only "a little lower than the angels,-crowning you with majesty and honour;"-who remembered you when you had forgotten him and yourself, and all that became a creature whom his Creator had marked out for immortality ;-who remembered you when he bowed his head upon the cross; and who is ready to recognise you before his Father and the holy angels-even before the Creator whom you had forgotten. Go, and think of him-for at this instant he is thinking of every one of you!

SERMON II.

HEBREWS, xi. 1.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

WE all profess a firm belief in the truths which God has been pleased to declare. Now the Scriptures contain certain threats and certain promises ;-threats of vengeance and punishment to every soul that sinneth; promises of mercy and immortality to all that fly to the refuge appointed in a Redeemer; and therefore, when we declare that we believe in God's word, we at the same time profess a firm faith in the reality of these threats and these promises, and in the certainty that, sooner or later, they will be carried into execution.

And perhaps nothing could shock or affront us more, than that any man should venture to hint a suspicion of the soundness of our faith, or insinuate that we doubted the truth of these things. However, there are so many men of all kinds, of all characters, of all descriptions, who declare that they have this faith; men who perhaps never spent one serious and solemn hour, in the course of their lives, in the consideration of these things, which they profess to believe; men who live just as they would if they never believed them,-that there is some reason to fear that some fatal mistake exists among mankind upon this point; and we shall do well to look to ourselves, and examine whether all is as safe as we could wish, and whether we do really and truly believe the things that the word of God contains.