therefore, everlastingly punish where his love is not propitiated by repentance and righteousness of life; for it must be remembered that the divine love and hatred are not mutable passions, but immutable principles. Finite natures, moreover, are only capable of finite suffering. They cannot endure beyond a certain measure of infliction; shall we then suppose that the little sufferings of this short life can be an adequate punishment for what has incurred God's eternal displeasure? And this must ever be the case with guilt which has never been expiated by contrition, which has never been resisted; while they who die in such guilt can do nothing after death to remove or mitigate that displeasure, since there is no atonement to be made beyond the grave.

As immortal beings will be capable of enduring infinite: suffering, so must they certainly become obnoxious to it, so long as they exclude themselves from all chance of infinite fruition; and this they do, by pursuing, under the trials of their mortality, a course of transgression, by neglecting to serve God and to keep his commandments. As we shall be susceptible in the next life of happiness, infinitely transcending any that we could possibly participate in in this, so, by parity of reasoning, shall we be also susceptible of a proportionate measure of woe; and to sin will naturally be the doom of suffering, to righteousness, that of enjoyment; for "the eyes of the Lord are ever over the righteous, and his ears

are open to their prayers." For them the everlasting doors of the celestial Zion will be lifted up, through which their Saviour Christ has gone before,

to prepare for them an habitation “ at God's right hand for evermore.'

The present is, in every respect, a limited state of being. Our good and evil here are alike circumscribed. In the next life, however, both will be unlimited; the latter "the wages of sin," the former "the gift of God." The certainty that there will be then no change of condition, as it will establish the bliss of the happy, so will it also confirm the misery of the condemned. When hope is utterly extinguished, how horrible must be the succeeding despair! But "the wages of sin is death,”—temporal, spiritual, eternal death!-a dissolution of the body and depravation of the spirit here—an endless and immitigable state of wailing and lamentation hereafter.

Let us then strive for that "gift of God” which is "eternal in the heavens." It is beyond the attainment of none of us. It will infallibly follow our striving after its possession, for "who ever perished, being innocent, or, when where the righteous cut off?" We have only a choice betwixt life and death eternal. We can secure to ourselves either. The gospel fully points out to us how we may obtain the one and avoid the other. Who would hesitate at the alternative? Come then to "the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls," that you may

have life. Come to him, in the midst of your

f

your sins

and of your sorrows, for "He will have mercy upon you, and to your God, for He will abundantly pardon."

SERMON III.

ON FORGIVING ENEMIES.

ROMANS XII. 20.

"If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head."

THIS text is very apt to be interpreted as if it conveyed a precept at once repugnant to the whole scope of Christianity, which expressly teaches that we are "to love our enemies, to bless them that persecute us, not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, but, contrarywise, blessing."

A question, it must be confessed, naturally arises here, how we can possibly perform this injunction in its true spirit, if we really do an enemy a service only for the purpose of bringing a punishment upon him; since this would be running directly counter to the second great commandment of the law" Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;" and who would do himself a good, merely that he might be visited with evil? The latter words of