tend to abridge the term of animal life, though indirectly they do most frequently, and most powerfully, contribute to inflict this inevitable punishment of a broken law. I may, nevertheless, truly affirm, that when they are allowed to effervesce without measure or restraint, they will infallibly lead to death, under one or other of the characters, in which we are about to consider it. They thrust us perpetually into new hazards. They plunge us headlong into guilt. They hurry us forward, without allowing us to look to the right or to the left, and often hurl us over the precipice, before we are conscious of our approach. Their tendency is everywhere to procure for us "the wages of sin." Look at anger; look at revenge, hate, envy, malice! How do these operate? What do they frequently produce? Look around the world and say:death! This result is perpetually before us. They do not, it is true, always exhibit issues so fatal,-nay, perhaps most generally they do not. What then? How frequently do they! Scarcely a day passes without an instance. Besides, though they should not kill the body, how often do they destroy the soul! How often are they the causes, if not of temporal, at least of spiritual, and, consequently, of eternal death! But I maintain, that they are as much the cause of the former as of the latter two. To what are we to attribute all the horrors of Mount Calvary, when the Son of God was mocked, reviled, and crucified? To the passions

t

of men! To what are we to ascribe the deaths of "the noble army of martyrs"? To the passions of men! To what are we to impute public massacre and private murder? To the passions of men! Whence are derived wars, with all their frightful accompaniments of bloodshed, desolation, and death? From the "unruly wills and affections of men."

Again-How frequently do the sensual passions especially acquire for us "the wages of sin"! We may everywhere perceive how uniformly they do the work of death. They are smiling but fatal deceivers; the insidious harbingers of misery and ruin. They sap the constitution, enervate the mind, frequently overthrow the reason, and finally end in destruction. To what are half the deaths among mankind in their adult years to be ascribed? To the sensual passions! To what are we to impute those moral disorders, which so constantly convulse society, destroy the harmony of domestic life, and diffuse around its circle the withering blight of infamy? To the sensual passions!-I pass by the most obvious. Look only at drunkenness. How many millions have been swept from the face of nature by this one vice alone, and how many are hourly becoming its victims. Look at the diseases which it engenders, the infirmities which it induces, the wretchedness which it provokes! All the sensual passions operate alike; from this one, therefore, we may take the character and tendency of all.

Look also at gambling. I call this a sensual passion; in the highest degree sensual, as a majority of the senses are pressed into the enjoyment of it. It produces too, even higher excitements than the grossest sensuality. It is resorted to, moreover, in order to procure the means of sensual gratification in a wider measure. It is, therefore, every way "earthly, sensual, devilish." Consider its effects. What are its most fatal issues? Death! The miseries in which it almost invariably terminates, are continually before us. The daily records of passing events but too awfully confirm to our experience, how frequently their "end is destruction" who repair to the gaming table to stake their all, upon the desperate chance of a favourable turn of fortune! What is the end of a failure? Remorse that gangrene of the soul, which so often corrodes the heart until the deadly wages of sin are finally paid.

Further-What deplorable results are to be traced to a neglect of religion! All the worst evils of life misery in all its varieties; death in a thousand shapes. In proportion as we place ourselves beyond the influence of its consolations, we weaken our hopes; and, once bankrupt in hope, there can remain nothing but "a fearful looking for of judgment"-a torturing despair, which but too often urges those who are goaded by it uncalled into the presence of an offended God, with all their imperfections on their heads, unatoned

for and unrepented of. Among whom shall we find the drunkard, the sensualist, the gambler, the prodigal, the rebel, the traitor, the murderer, the felon and the pursuits of all these are destruction

where shall we find these, but among the neglecters of religion? In vain will they be sought for among those who love the Lord their God, and seek to do His will. To neglect religion, is to hurl down that barrier of restraint which stands between our security and ruin, to leave the natural corruptions of the heart to "increase and multiply" to facilitate the inroads of temptation-in short, to incite to all that is likely to terminate in that death, which is not an extinction of being, but an extension of consciousness in unimaginable misery throughout illimitable duration.

How many, alas! are cut off in the midst of their neglect! "They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without any regarding." To neglect religion, is to open a vast arena for the operation of the passions; and where these are allowed so unlimited an influence, they must finally hurry us into the very jaws of peril. To neglect religion, is to give full latitude to all the basest propensities of our degraded nature, as religion offers the only certain check to them, by the hopes which it encourages to obedience, and the terrors which it threatens to rebellion: and, where our propensities are allowed to operate without control or limitation, the same result

must be everywhere expected to accrue; "having sown the wind, we shall reap the whirlwind." "Destruction and misery will be in our paths; the way of peace shall we not know:" we shall receive the wages of sin-and "the wages of sin is death."

The truth of these words will, indeed, be more or less confirmed by everything around us. The seal of destruction is upon the book of nature. All the accidents of life, "plague, pestilence, and famine," suicide, murder, disease induced by the indulgence of things forbidden, disgrace from improvidence, dishonour from delinquency, poverty from extravagance, destitution from idleness, violations of the law in every shape these, and a thousand other consequences of sin, execute, either directly or indirectly, the work of destruction, and sadly realize the truth of our text, that "the wages of sin is death."

We e are now to see how it is the cause also of spiritual death. And, for this, we have only to look around us and observe how it operates upon the mind and heart. "It is as a two-edged sword, slaying the souls of men." Not only does it make the animal body its victim, but the immortal soul also is the too submissive subject of its tyranny. "It binds even kings in chains, and nobles with links of iron." Its influence is comparatively little in time, but mighty in eternity. Its punishment is not here only for a season, but hereafter for ever; not a transitory pang, but everlasting agony.