cay of nature, or the increasing violence of your disease. I will suppose you to be furnished with an opportunity of preparing yourselves for the event which is to terminate your existence here below. Will you then, do you imagine, be in a condition to prepare yourselves? Consider attentively the situation of the sinner in these distressing moments, when no further hopes of life remain, when every symptom of death appears in his countenance, and his faultering tongue is scarcely able, in accents indistinct and broken, to utter the half-formed conceptions of his disordered brain. Image, I say, to yourselves, my friends, an unfortunate fellowcreature in this his last stage of his mortal pilgrimage-stretched out on his bed of sorrow-tortured with pain-destitute of strength-labouring under the most dejecting depression of spirits—and deprived by his infirmities of all mental as well as bodily vigor. Do you think such a situation compatible with the discharge of the momentous duty hitherto deferred? Do you think that a duty which consists in a particular and distinct recollection of accumulated transgressions unthought of perhaps till the present moment, and in a sincere repentance of sins which till the present crisis had never perhaps excited the most feeble emotion of disquietude, can be duly performed by a mind thus enervated and relaxed in all its powers, and a heart sinking under the languor of its infirmities?

But allowing you even to preserve to your dying breath, all the faculties of your souls clear and un

impaired as they may be this instant, do you make no account of the obstacles you will have to encounter from the dispositions of your own hearts? Do you imagine that passions licentiously indulged through a long series of years, and which, by habitual gratification are so blended with the very constitution of your nature as to have become, in a manner, inseparable from it, will be suddenly eradicated? Do you think that, like the walls of Jericho, all the strong outworks of sin which have been raised around the spiritual citadels of your souls, precluding admission to the grace of Heaven, will fall instantly to the ground at your command? Is a miracle, then, and the greatest of miracles, the sole foundation of your presumptuous hopes? Do you really expect that an instantaneous revolution, similar to that of the criminal hanging by the side of his dying Saviour, will be accomplished within you? As well might you expect the earth to tremble, the rocks to split, the graves to open, the dead to rise, the sun to withdraw its light—all which extraordinary and stupendous events occurred also on the same memorable occasion, Oh! my friends, be not you so presumptuous as to trust to miracles for securing your salvation. Listen rather to the voice of God speaking to you in the text by the mouth of his prophet: "Seek ye the Lord whilst he may be found; call upon him whilst he is near." Avail yourselves of those gracious and condescending overtures of peace and reconciliation, made to you repeatedly by the blessed

Jesus, under all that variety of engaging forms in which he presents himself to you in the Sacred Scriptures. Cast yourselves at the feet of that merciful Creditor who is willing to cancel the whole of your debt, however great the amount of it may be. Throw yourselves into the arms of that tender Father stretched out to receive you into the embraces of his love. Return to the fold of that dear good Shepherd from which, by your transgressions, you have unhappily gone astray. With consciences purified from the guilt of sin, partake frequently of that living bread which came down from heaven to nourish your souls unto everlasting life. Thus being restored to the favor of the Most High, and invigorated with his grace, you will have nothing to apprehend in your conflict with the last enemy with whom you will have to contend. You will walk in the valley of the shadow of death, and fear no evil. And, having closed your eyes in peace to the fleeting scenes of this sublunary world, you will open them to the joys of a blissful immortality.

SERMON XXII.

ON FALSE PRETENSIONS

TO LIBERALITY OF SENTIMENT.

FOR whereas I was free as to all, I made myself the servant of all that I might gain the more. And I became to the Jews a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To them that are under the law, as if I were under the law, (whereas myself was not under the law) that I might gain them that were under the law. To them that were without the law, as if I were without the law, (whereas I was not without the law of God, but was in the law of Christ) that I might gain them that were without the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might gain the weak. I became all things to all men, that I might save all. And I do all things for the Gospel's sake: that I may be made partaker thereof. I COR., c. ix. v. 19—23.

In these words of the Apostle, my friends, is depictured to us an admirable portrait of a truly liberal character. Free and independent, yet devoting voluntarily his labors to the service of his fellowcreatures; firm in his adherence to the sacred principles of religion and of virtue, yet careful not to suffer the blind fury of intemperate and misguided zeal to hurry him into an indiscriminate opposition to received prejudices and prevailing practices; studying, on the contrary, by a seasonable compliance in matters of indifference, to attain the most important ends; avoiding, with caution, whatever might give the least offence to the delicacy of ten

der consciences; accommodating, as far as possible, his words and actions to the weakness of those whose minds were not yet sufficiently prepared for the reception of all the most sublime truths and severe maxims of the Christian dispensation; in a word, adopting, in the regulation of his conduct towards mankind, such measures as the particular complexion of times and circumstances might seem to prescribe, provided the essential points of religion and morality remained uninjured; and all with a view of promoting the interests of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and the salvation of the souls of men. Such, my friends, is the picture which the great Apostle of the Gentiles has left us of himself, in the few lines which I have extracted for your edification from his first epistle to the Corinthians. And no one, I am sure, who has contemplated him in the various scenes of his holy and laborious life subsequent to his conversion, will be inclined to dispute the fidelity of this representation. But how different is this description of a truly liberal character from that designated under the same appellation, which is arrogated to themselves, with so much complacency by those false pretenders to liberality of sentiment, who affect to be invariably influenced by it in their intercourse with mankind. To expose, with a view of exploding these false pretensions to liberality of sentiment, is the object of the discourse to which I have now to solicit the favor of attention.

your

It is far from being my intention in any manner