are chosen to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth. "Sanctify them through thy truth." Now all who calculate to reach heaven, will need time to do all this. The oldest believer will tell you, that he shall hardly be ready when his Master comes. The youngest child, then, should not put off the work of repentance a moment.

Will God excuse you from beginning the work to-day? He will not. He is angry with the youngest sinner for having hated him so long. His uniform language is "to-day if you will hear his voice," "Now is the accepted time." His demand of your heart is, founded on his right to you, and the glories that are in himself to charm you. He will not excuse any creature from loving infinite beauty and glory. He will not excuse you an hour, for this would be to license sin for that hour, and giving up his rights for that hour. He views himself as deserving not merely the service you can render him after to-morrow, but the additional glory you can do him to-day.

And if any hope that God will not destroy them if they put off his service till to-morrow, that hope has not the truth of God for its foundation. There is no promise of God that secures life to the sinner for an hour. And if he lives, he cannot be sure then of an offer of mercy. This very day God may give you over to hardness of heart and blindness of mind, the man who is intending to be his servant to-morrow. Many a sinner has dropped into the grave in the very act of postponing the concerns of his soul. Oh! say not, there is yet time sufficient.

While there is the spirit of postponement there is no advance made even in conviction, or if there should be some conviction, this spirit would destroy it all in an hour.

To say the least, the mind is not deeply impressed while any future day can be set to turn to the Lord, or even a future hour. The heart in this case is still wedded to its idols. He that would follow Christ when he had bid farewell to those that were at home, and he that would first bury his father, were both in the gall of bitterness. We must be brought up to that tone of feeling that spurns postponement, else it is certain that there is no very deep impression of any sacred truth. We exhibit awful proof, if this is the state of our minds, that we are in the gall of bitterness, and under the bonds of iniquity.

Remarks.-1. The sinner who has long been accustomed to hear and repel these sacred truths of God; and who is still unmoved and unawakened, has reason to fear that God may be about to take the offer back. I cannot have a doubt but he does thus treat hardened sinners. And in all this he does just as men do when occasion requires. For example, one merchant makes an offer to another, which he leaves with him an hour, in that time the article that he proposed to sell or buy falls or rises in the market, and the offer is immediately withdrawn. At any moment till the proposal is accepted, it may be withdrawn. So God, at any moment till the instant of the sinner's acceptance of his mercy, may quit making the offer, and then the sinner's doom is sealed forever. Then is fulfilled that awful text, "He flattereth himself in his own eyes till his iniquities are found to be hateful." Oh! it would be a thousand times better for him now if he could die a heathen, and lay his bones in some dark, idolatrous land, than to go down to hell from a Christian territory, where he had the word of the Lord, line upon line, and precept upon precept.

2. How horrid will be those regrets with which the sinner will review all this on the bed of death, and onward through a tardy and thinking eternity. He cannot but remember how often he was invited to enter and labour in the vineyard of the Lord, and how tender, and how tearful, and pressing were many of these invitings. I have supposed that the sinner must be forever thinking all this over, and recounting every new moon and every Sabbath day, the years and the ages of misery that still remain till he has paid the debt.

And not merely will he regret that he lost so much time, but that he has lost the best time. He has lost the morning of life. How promptly might his great work have been done, and all done, and time to spare, if he had gone into the vineyard at the rising of the sun. He might have been now a tall and shining spirit in the fields of light, and might have vied with angels in every song they sing, and in every excursion of love with which they fill up the lustrums of their blissful eternity. Their youth will be renewed in heaven, but not so in the dark world, their age will grow older, and their very youth be haggard. Oh, could you see a spirit that has writhed one thousand years under the regrets of the pit, and sighed, and wept, and groaned, under the withering blasts that have been spending their fury upon his soul, you would see the most blighted and pitiable wretch in all the creation of God.

This sight may you never see,
This wretch may you never be.

Even should you hereafter see the kingdom of God you must be the subject of deep chagrin that you did not enter earlier. Then you might have had more time to labour, and your Master might have reaped through you a larger revenue of praise. One would re

gret, if regrets may be in heaven, that he should have been called home before he had time to shine bright, and rise high in the school of Christ below. If in such circumstances one might reach heaven he would wish an opportunity to weep before he begun his everlasting song.

3. The invitation is not one to pain, or danger, or misery. One would think that the invitation to labour in the vineyard must be an invitation to misery, in one shape or another, and not to blessedness, but the fact is, that the work is that which blesses the soul beyond any other. If you find one with nothing to do, just set him at the service of the Lord in his vineyard, and you make him happy. Let him do whatsoever his hands find to do with his might, and you remove whatever was the cause of his miseries. In the work of God the body is kept in health, and the mind is put into its healthiest and happiest condition. It is a work in which life would be prolonged beyond any other condition under the heavens. "Wisdom's ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." "Godliness is profitable to all things, having the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come."

But there are a thousand reasons, a thousand times told, why men should not permit the invitation of the text to fall but once upon their ear. Their dutiful reply should be forthwith, "I go, sir." May the Spirit of the living God set home all this upon the conscience and the heart of all my readers, and thus conduct us all safely on to the time when the Master shall come, and the reapers shall be reckoned with, and shall receive, through grace, their penny a day.

God does not call you to a painful and laborious work. Even in the work of repentance, that must begin

the service, there is nothing painful. God does not require you to unsay any thing that you have said that was right, any thing that you can think on with pleasure in the slow-moving ages of your eternity. Nor does he ask you to undo any thing but that which you never should have done. You had but one Master to serve, but one grand service to do, to bless your Maker, and honour your kind and generous Benefactor, and wait to know his will, and do whatsoever he requires. And when you had been a little time thus faithful he would have taken you to himself and made you happy in the enjoyment of himself forever in his high and holy kingdom. There was nothing that we can see in the long vista of your eternity that would have revolved around a painful hour, or brought over your bright and glorious prospect a cloud as large as a man's hand, as long as God shall live. Thus there would have opened before you a field of day, and a scene of pleasure broad as the whole period of your being. Then how sweet your immortal song would have been while you vied with angels in your ascriptions of honour and glory and power to him that loved you, and washed you from your sins in his blood.

5. And there had been no dangers lurking about your path. God would have given you one promise that would have spread over you a safe and broad pavilion that would have covered the whole field of the vineyard. "I will never leave thee, I will never forsake thee." Then you might have laboured on, and won as many souls to Christ as Brainerd did, and Schwartz did, and Paul did, and then might have gone in with them, and sat down with them at the banquet of your Master. There had not been a serpent in all the field to bite, nor a storm had gathered to beat you off