and your sinful habits but newly formed, be assured that you will find it unspeakably more difficult to turn to Him later in life, when your affections will have grown cold, your consciences become callous, and your habits of sin and worldlymindedness confirmed by length of years.

It is, alas! but rarely, very rarely (comparatively speaking), that we witness conversions taking place in advanced life: for though, blessed be God, it is never too late for His grace to work in the sinner's heart, nor is any thing too difficult for it to overcome, when it has really commenced its operations therein; still, sad experience proves, that those professing Christians, who have grown old in vanity and worldly-mindedness, are generally left to die as they have lived, strangers to the love of Christ, and uninfluenced by the renewing operations of His Holy Spirit. Their religion (if they profess any) is a bare "form of godliness without the power thereof." It affords no real consolation or support to their declining years. They still cling to "creature comforts," as their only source of happiness, and when deprived of these, they are bereft of all that makes existence supportable.

May the consideration of this incline your hearts, my Dear Young Brethren, to turn to God your Saviour, now, without delay, and early in life to seek His grace and blessing, as above all things needful to you. Thus, whether you are permitted

to arrive at old age, or are cut off in the middle of your days, you are equally sure of finding acceptance with Him, who hath said, "I honour them that honour Me, and those that seek Me early shall find Me."

To you, my Aged Brethren, who have nearly arrived at the appointed limit of human life, and whose hearts are still uninfluenced by the saving grace of the Gospel of the Son of God, what shall I say! Alas! what can I say, that has not been already repeatedly said without effect? You are, indeed, my unhappy Brethren, in an awful situation, though not, perhaps, yourselves aware of it. You are tottering on the brink of a dreadful eternity! The pit of destruction is yawning to receive you! This world, with all its vanities, to which your hearts so fondly cling, is fast slipping from beneath your feet, and you are just on the point of being called into another, where there is nothing but

weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth!" Awake, awake, my unhappy Aged Brethren, ere yet it be too late. Rouse thyself, thou grey-headed sinner, from thy fatal slumber of carnal security, and call upon thy God and Saviour, if so be that He will hear thee, that thou perish not. He will yet hear thee, if thou callest upon Him with thine whole heart, in the name of His dear Son, Jesus Christ, who came to save all that believe in Him, no matter whether they be young or old. His

blood is yet able to wash out all your sins, how great and manifold soever they may be! His grace is yet sufficient to renew and sanctify your aged heart, filled as it is with vanity and worldlymindedness. Believe in Him and thou shalt yet be saved. Hearken to the affectionate warnings of His word and of His minister, now calling thee to repentance, and it may yet be said of thee, "There is hope in thine end." It is still the accepted time. It is still the day of salvation. Today, if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts. A day longer, and it may too late. "Seek then, thou aged worldling, oh, seek the Lord, while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near; let the wicked man forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him, even to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

Now to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, &c.

SERMON XIII.

YOUTHFUL SINS THE OCCASION OF DEEP REPENTANCE TO THE LORD'S PEOPLE.

PSALM XXV. 7.

Remember not the sins of my youth.

SUCH is the prayer which the penitent monarch of Israel offered up to Almighty God in the deep contrition of his soul; imploring Him not to keep in remembrance the offences of which he had been guilty in his youthful days, when his passions were strong and his grace so weak as not to be able always to resist the temptations with which he was surrounded, "Remember not (he exclaims) the sins of my youth!" That means, “Do not remember them against me for evil. Do not remember them in Thy wrathful indignation, to inflict that vengeance upon them which they so justly deserve; but rather blot them out of the book of Thy remembrance altogether, and let them not be imputed for iniquity against my soul!"

Such, I say, my Brethren, is the substance of the Psalmist's words in our text, which lead us to treat of two things; First, The fact, that the sins of a man's youth, unless repented of, are all had in remembrance with God, and, as it were, noted down by Him against the day of judgment and retribution to the workers of iniquity. Secondly, The effect which the conviction of this awful truth produces upon the minds of those young persons who sincerely believe the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. May He Himself be pleased, of His infinite mercy, to bless the subject to all our souls, but especially to the edification of the young, to whom this discourse shall be particularly directed.

In the first place, the words of our text lead us, my Dear Young Brethren, to consider the solemn fact, that the Almighty God, "unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid," marks all the sins and offences of our youth. He, as it were, registers in the book of His remembrance all the falsehoods we have uttered, all the evil words we have spoken, all the deceitful and dishonest actions which our hands have perpetrated or our hearts conceived, all the angry, revengeful, and uncharitable passions which we have harboured in our bosoms against any of our fellow-creatures, all the cruelty which we have manifested in our treatment of dumb