infatuation is this!

By what species of reasoning

will you attempt to justify so preposterous a conduct? Will you tell me that such is the disordered state of your souls, that you have so long been in the habit of indulging yourselves in criminal excesses that you cannot think of entering so suddenly on the business of reforming your lives, but that time must be allowed you to form a resolution adequate to the difficulty of so arduous an undertaking? This, my friends, you may be assured is all a delusion of the enemy of your salvation. And if you suffer yourselves to be imposed upon by it, I do not hesitate to assert, that it is more than probable you will remain eternally in the same state. For, as the same considerations which may induce you at present to defer your conversion, will perpetually recur, you will continue to deceive yourselves with mere speculations of amendment, till you find yourselves stretched out on the bed of sickness, and scarcely able to execute them, or till death, perhaps, seize suddenly upon you in the midst of your procrastinations and unrepented sins; and, consigning your bodies to the grave, dismiss your poor unhappy souls to take their trial at the awful bar of divine justice.

It will be said perhaps by some, that their minds are distracted by such a multiplicity of cares, that they are involved to such a degree in earthly occupations and pursuits as to be destitute of leisure to attend directly to the regulation of their consciences. I will suppose, for a moment, the plea to be founded upon truth. Still, I maintain, that to neglect an af

fair of such vast importance, for objects so comparatively trivial and insignificant, is the height of folly. Disregarded, rather, be every earthly care, abandoned every earthly pursuit and occupation which can occasion the least delay in so momentous a concern. "For what will it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?" But let it not be thought that you cannot, consistently with your temporal interests, begin immediately the work of reform. What, then, my friends, is it true that such is the pressure of worldly business as to afford you no leisure for religious consideration? Are there no moments in the course of the day which devote to relaxation? None to the pleasures of society? None to diversions and entertainments? What do I say! None, perhaps, to the gratification of your disorderly appetites? Oh! my friends, only manifest the same earnestness in promoting the interest of your immortal souls which you are wont to discover in your schemes of indulgence, and your conversion will experience no opposition from your earthly engagements.

you can

Great, however, as may be the folly of those, who, in the higher or middle classes of society, permit their attention to the business of eternity to be superseded by their worldly cares, anxieties and pursuits, yet it may be accounted for, in some measure, from the strong influence which prospects of emolument, and of other terrestrial advantages are known to possess over the depraved inclinations of the human heart. But that they on whom the world is apt to

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look down with a lowering and disdainful aspect, that they who have little else to expect from it but severity and hardship, that they who have no other consolation to hope for than that which it is not in the power of the world either to give or to take away; that they, I say, should derive, from those very circumstances of their poverty and distress, which should strengthen their attachment to the divine favor, pretexts for remaining objects of the divine displeasure, is truly matter of astonishment. Indeed, my poor friends, when I hear from your lips an apology of this description for the postponement of your conversion, the first emotions excited within me are such as my unfeigned sympathy with you in your sorrows forbids me to describe. But when, on the other hand, I behold, on those occasions, that lowly attitude of supplication, when I survey that dejected countenance, those famished looks, those eyes suffused with tears,-when I listen to the sad tale of your indigence and distress, to the plaintive tone in which it is rehearsed, to the sighs by which it is occasionally interrupted, then every harsher feeling is, I confess, subdued, and the stern reproaches of severe remonstrance are compelled to yield to the milder strain of tender expostulation. If ever, then, my poor friends, I have laboured to interest the hearts of the humane and charitable in your behalf,—if ever I have endeavoured, by a faithful exposition of your woes, to call forth the compassionate tear from the eye of sensibility,—if ever I have been, in the hands of your Heavenly Father,

an instrument of his paternal tenderness in procuring some slender alleviation to the greatness of your distress, let not the feeble accents of my voice be heard this day in vain, whilst they plead the cause of your immortal souls. Tell me then, my poor friends, do, pray, tell me, what can possibly be your reason for allowing the distress and poverty of your condition to be obstacles to your conversion? Are you apprehensive of increasing, by the discharge of that important duty, the evils of life? Are you

afraid, that, if you make your peace with heaven, the inclement blast will shake more rudely your shivering limbs, that you will feel more acutely the corrosions of hunger, or add fresh weight to the burthens which press already so heavily upon you? Have you then forgotten, my beloved friends, that consoling invitation of your Divine Master, "come to me all you who labor, and are heavily laden, and I will refresh you"? Have you forgotten that "his yoke is sweet and his burthen light"? Are you ignorant of those inexpressible comforts which are the inseparable attendants on "that peace of God which surpasseth all understanding"? Be persuaded, "my little flock," by one who wishes most ardently to contribute to the promotion of your highest interests, be persuaded, I entreat you, to make the experiment. Be persuaded, at least, by the Spirit of God thus addressing you, in the words of the Psalmist, "O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet blessed is the man that hopeth in him." (PSALM XXXiii. v. 9.) Yes, blessed, truly, is that

man, blessed in the abundance of spiritual consolations infused into his soul; more blessed still in the present foretaste of that heavenly bliss which it is given to him to enjoy. Will you, then, my poor friends, by neglecting your conversion, refuse to avail yourselves of profferred blessings like these? Will you, in particular, allow that false delicacy, that ignoble shame, arising from the consideration of the meanness of your apparel,* to be a bar to your discharge of so interesting a duty, by deterring you from complying with the obligation of public worship which would be inseparable from it? What! my friends, are you more ashamed to encounter the eyes of men, clad in the patched garb of innocent poverty, than to stand in the presence of the Sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, defiled with the loathsome leprosy of sin ? Do not suffer your minds to be warped by so pernicious a notion as to imagine that there is any thing in the meanness of your apparel which can bring disgrace upon you. God only is the just estimator of real worth; and with him vice alone is ignominy, and virtue honor. From the keen inspection of his all-searching eye, no external appendages of earthly grandeur can hide the baseness of the corrupt heart; nor can the coarsest coverings of the most destitute indigence conceal from him the virtues of the upright and good.

* This sermon was originally preached in London, where the Author frequently had occasion to hear the excuse here referred to assigned by the poor, for their absence from public worship on the Lord's Day.