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THE CHILD PREPARED TO MEET HIS GOD.

Preached Oct. 29, 1843.

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Prepare to meet thy God."-Amos iv. 12.

THIS was the warning addressed by God through His prophet Amos to the people of Israel, when they had forsaken Him, and given themselves up to the dominion of their own lusts. It is the warning which God has addressed to all through their conscience, through His Word, through His ministers, from the time that man first sinned, from the time that guilt first made him to tremble, and, because he was not prepared to meet Him, he endeavoured to "hide himself from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.” The same warning voice is still continually heard by all the sons of men, until the Spirit of God has ceased to strive with them, and they are given over to a reprobate mind. The taint and the curse of sin are still upon every soul brought into the world. And from the moment that the mind becomes capable of discerning between good and evil, the warning is addressed to the child; and until then, and until everything necessary to his salvation shall have been done for him, and he shall have been fully instructed in the things

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belonging to his everlasting peace, the warning is addressed to parents and others on his account, "Prepare to meet thy God." On this latter point I shall speak more at large presently; only premising here, that when I say the warning is addressed in behalf of the child to parents and others, I do not mean merely sponsors, or relatives, or friends; I mean neighbours, and I use the term in its most extended sense, our Saviour's sense of it, namely, every person to whom God has granted the power and the privilege of being in any way instrumental in His hands to the saving a soul alive.

When our first parents had brought on themselves, and their posterity, the sad inheritance of eternal death, God gave them in His mercy the covenant of grace, through which they might be delivered from it, and be re-established in His favour. In due time the Son of God was to be manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil. Faith in this promised Saviour was the condition of the covenant. Every believer before the coming of Christ was saved from everlasting death, through faith in Him who was to come. "By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain." 66 'By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death." "By faith Noah, being warned of God, of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." "By faith Abraham obeyed." "Through faith Moses kept the Passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyed