that you permit its pageants and its pomps, | and self-interest be awed into silence; all its trappings, and its airy nothings, to intoxicate your imagination, to steal away your senses, and to cultivate a vulgar admiration. Let it be farther proved and proclaimed, by every principle of character, by every syllable of speech, and by every feature of external deportment, that you are the unceremonious and unscrupulous votaries of sin-assuming an unbounded license of folly and vice-making fashion your only law, the flesh your only god, and pleasure your only pursuit. In "walking in the counsels and in the imagination of your heart," you may, if it so please you, violate with remorseless scorn all the established rules of piety and virtue; you may smile with contemptuous disdain at the maxims of ancient wisdom, at the sobrieties and the godliness of former days. You may applaud and imitate every thing, merely because it is of foreign importation, modish and current, however vicious in principle, and however contaminating in its tendencies. You may also overleap all the ordinary barriers which divine wisdom and grace have erected, to fence in the way of transgressors, to prevent them from precipitating themselves over the verge, into the bottomless abyss that yawns, beneath; and you may deride all the most solemn warnings and cautions that have been enforced upon you; and you may, with reckless despite, spurn at the most powerful safeguards which reason and revelation, which law and conscience have created, for averting the catastrophe of your endless destruction, and for shutting you up to the enjoyment of everlasting redemption. "Choose you this day," that you will not pause at the commission of any iniquity, however flagrant; that you will not quail for the consequences of any conduct, however irrational or revolting; that you will comply with every invitation to sinful indulgence; and that you will not avoid even the last extremes of delinquency. If the service of darkness and unrighteousness have for your taste the highest attractions, then embark your whole soul's affections in that cause-labour in it zealously, and labour in it incessantly. Let no scruples damp your ardour; let no fears or difficulties cause you to flinch or swerve one hair-breadth from the road that leads to hopeless and inevitable perdition. Let all the combined considerations of prudence the ties of duty, and all the obligations of generosity, be disclaimed and dissolved; let no eloquence of love, no solicitations of friendship, no menaces of wrath, and no promises of richest mercy have efficacy to move or to melt your hearts. Let neither the terrors of hell alarm nor the hopes of paradise allure you. Let neither the eternal compassions of the Father, the expiring tears and agonies of the Son, nor the expostulations and beseechings of the Spirit of grace, be able to unnerve or soften, or to drive you from the career of folly, self-willedness, and contumacy, on which you have so boldly entered, and along which you may be advancing with fearful and portentous celerity. If you choose this day to give yourselves up to the thrall of your turbulent passions, and to become the slaves of all ungodliness, then drown every rising conviction, strangle in the birth all boding apprehensions, and all gloomy forecastings of the future. Let the reproofs and the reproaches of the divine Word, the rebukes of an outraged law, the pleadings and the pathos of a still importunate Gospel be utterly contemned; and let the tender expostulations of pious relatives, the frequent and urgent admonitions of the ambassadors of Jesus, the appointments and the discipline of a corrective Providence, with all the other appliances and expedients of exuberant grace in all their rich variety, and concentrated union of moral force, fall blank and bluntless on the soul, and be scornfully repelled, even as the surges of the chiding main are indignantly thrown back and churned into spray, on the impregnable ramparts of an iron-bound strand. 2. But if you choose, as we trust in God you will, an opposite course; if you prefer, as we pray Heaven you may, the service of Jehovah to the service of Satan-the pleasures of holiness to the pleasures of unrighteousness; if the dedication of yourselves to the worship and enjoyment of the Almighty have more attractions for you than devotedness to the vile slavery of the world; if you give a preference to felicities that are uncloying and unperishable, to flashes of momentary hilarity, and to bursts of carnal and obstreperous merriment, then stand not for a moment in fatal hesitation, but range yourselves at once under the standard of the Cross, and resign yourselves, without reserve and without condition, to the faith and obedience of the Gospel-to the love and service of God, your Saviour and Sanctifier. Be assured, that if vital Christianity be to you any thing, it must be your all in all. If salvation be a pearl, it is one of infinite price, and you must feel it to be your primary duty and superlative interest to sell all, to relinquish fortune, life itself, if required, and the inheritance of a whole material universe, did you possess it, in exchange for a treasure so inestimable-a prize so far above and beyond all calculation. If you are sincerely desirous to have your guilt cancelled, your persons accepted, and your title to the immense and inexhaustible benefits of salvation secured beyond the possibility of alienation, cling with avidity to the divine and all-sufficient righteousness of the Redeemer; and if you are truly solicitous to be the subjects of a moral transformation; that you may feel God's service to be at once your dignity and delight, apply with fervent assiduity and perseverance to the renovating and purifying fountains of the spirit of holiness. Let there be no oscillation in your willno vagueness in your purposes, but be distinguished for the exclusiveness with which you attach yourselves to the cause of religion, on which so many mighty and great interests are depending. If you desire to be Christians, be so in deed and in truth. God is not to be mocked. Let your intentions be unequivocal, your declarations overt and avowed, your life unambiguous, and your character above all suspicion. Let every feeling, and word, and action, be distinctly indicative of the cause you have espoused, the side for which you have arrayed yourselves, the sanctified society with which you consort, and the illustrious heritage which you have chosen. Let no earthly objects divide and distract your attention from the prosecution of every holy aim, and from the attainment of every moral perfection. Let no solicitations of folly or pleasure allure you from the cross of Jesus, no proffers of reward or recompense from any quarter seduce you to a compromise of principle, breach of engagement, or violation of fidelity. If you have inlisted on the side of the great Mediator, and taken the oath of fealty to his service, then see that you live on terms of intimate and devoted fellowship with him; that there be an endearing interchange of all tender offices and sympathies between you; that you are powerfully attached to his person, to his righteousness, to his laws, and to his people; that he habitually lives in your thoughts, in your confidence, in your affections, in your hopes, and through your entire and undivided being; that you are his true and trusty followers, and that your hearts are fast and faithful to every impression made upon them by his word and by his power, by his spirit and by his providence. Let it be demonstrative that the Saviour reigns paramount in your souls that you yield implicit submission to every tittle of his will-that his character is the model of your perpetual imitation-and that his commandment is the standard of all your holy obedience. Let it be farther apparent, that you bear a close resemblance to Christ in all his moral imitable attributes, in piety and patience, in meekness and humility, in heavenly mindedness and in universal sanctity. If you profess your faith and attachment to the Gospel, if you avouch yourselves to be the servants of the living God, then let all the distinctive and discriminating evidences of that illustrious relationship beam forth bright and conspicuous from the inner temple of the mind; let all the characteristics and divine excellences of the renovated man brought out into warm and vivid manifestation in your history. Shun the very appearance of evil; let sin be dethroned both in your heart and in your life. Abjure all communication with the world, in its spirit and in its pleasures, in its principles and in its practices. "Taste not, touch not, handle not," the charmed poisoned cup which it mingles and proffers to intoxicate the senses, to bewitch the reason, and to provoke criminal desire. Hold no dallying with its follies, no flirtation with its vanities, make no concession to its demands, but keep a retired and separate walk; maintain towards it a distant and studied reserve. And farther, make no secret of the election you have made, and the interest to which you have sworn inviolable constancy. Hesitate not for an instant to avow your sentiments, to assert the character you are determined to sustain; the affections you are resolved, by the grace of God, to cherish; the exalted motives from which you profess to act; the noble ends you have in view, and the be glorious destination on which your ambi-been achieved, have all depended upon a tion is devotedly centred. Let your pro- judicious estimate and critical application fession, your principles, and all your of time. In this point of view, even actions clearly and unequivocally testify, minutes are of incalculable value, seeing that you consider you have no intrinsic interest, no inherent or permanent portion, in the riches, honours, or possessions of this earth; that you estimate yourselves in no other capacity than that of short lived strangers, making a precipitate passage through its territories, and hastening to another and eternal country, to the enjoyment of a fortune, splendid and sublime as are the stars, and enduring as is immortality itself. Let it be therefore distinctly evident, from your whole conversation, appearance, and accoutrements, that you are on a journey; let the sandalled feet, and the girt loins, the lights burning, and the staff in hand, bespeak your character, profession, and pursuit. Let every thing bear attestation to the fact, that you consider you have a work to execute of great difficulty and of infinite importance, on the issue of which the whole burden of the destinies of endless ages is staked, and, therefore, you cannot permit your attention to be for a moment diverted away from this one grand and all-absorbing business of your existence, or your faculties to be engrossed by an inferior object; that you are the citizens of another world, with high prerogatives, refined tastes, and exquisite moral sensibilities, and cannot therefore stoop to be detained by trifles, or amused with levities, or entertained with vulgar debasing indulgences; but must act up to the dignity of a celestial pedigree, and to the nobility of a divine nature, and must walk, speak, and deport yourselves, in every respect, as becomes the heirs of God, the kings of heaven, and the high priests of eternity! II. We are, in the second and last place, briefly to advert to the special time when this option is to be made, and this decision come to. the most important transactions that have illustrated and signalized the world have hinged upon them. If it be true, what a writer has observed, "that it is possible to live a thousand years in a quarter of an hour," it holds still truer, that a few minutes lost or improved, may decide the complexion of our whole destiny for eternity. A single hour devoted to the best purpose, may suffice to reverse the entire existence of an immortal spirit, as was exemplified in the case of the dying malefactor who was suspended by the Redeemer's side, and in that of the three thousand souls converted by a few brief sentences spoken by the Apostle Peter; while it is a position of equal verity, that ages, even illimitable duration itself, will be altogether ineffectual in neutralizing or remedying the deplorable consequences of talents wasted, privileges abused, precious opportunities frittered away, during the flow of a few winged months of this mortal existence. You may, therefore, be this very moment within an hour of endless ruin or everlasting salvation. And does not this serve to convince you, that the present time-this very day-this very night-may be the knot or conjuncture to which the whole issues of your intellectual, spiritual, and interminable being are intrusted; when you may be building a superstructure of dignities and felicities on a scale the most magnificent, or be entailing and perpetuating all the unbearable and aggravated miseries of a violated law and a despised Gospel. "Choose ye this day whom ye will serve,” because if you do not now cast yourselves into the arms of Divine compassion, repose unlimited faith in the merits and mediation of the Redeemer, and “repent as in dust and ashes" your keeping this vital ques The text specifies and limits it to the tion in a state of suspension and abeyance present hour to this fleeting moment of can only be the means of multiplying all existence. "Choose ye this day whom the difficulties that lie in the way of your ye will serve." In every relation and salvation, and probably defeating or precondition of human life, we know how venting the accomplishment of it altomuch depends on the cultivation of favour-gether. Procrastination may stave off, able junctions, and the improvement of but it can do no more than simply stave propitious moments. The greatest revo- off, its own immediate crisis. This falterlutions that have taken place, the most splendid victories that have been won, and the most permanent conquests that have ing and demurring can only tend awfully to increase the perils you brave, and the hazards you run, to charm reason and conscience to sleep, to nourish and confirm those habits of lethargy and carnality on which this reluctance, and even aversion to practical Christianity is grafted. Every day's delay is augmenting the power, and consolidating the dreadful influences, of iniquity over you, entangling you deeper and deeper in the pollutions and snares of the world, in widening the breach between you and God, in piling up fresh materials of offence and condemnation, and in making your case proportionately hopeless and desperate. "Choose you this day whom you will serve," because if you do not now comply with the pacific overtures of redemption, embrace God as your only portion, and his service as your only delight, another offer of life may never be made to you, another opportunity of exercising saving repentance, may not again be afforded. Many circumstances may conspire to defeat or frustrate so blessed a consummation-the exceeding deceitfulness of sin, the illusions of a present evil world, the absorbing cares of business, the pomps and amusements of life, severe bodily weakness, mental imbecility or sudden dissolution; and just as you are going on debating the point, wishing to speculate a little longer on the subject, continuing to alternate between what you shall choose and what you shall reject, the door of grace may abruptly close, your last hope may be wrested from you, and your doom sealed for ever. In fine, "Choose you this day whom you will serve," because time is rushing to its conclusion with every man and woman of this generation, with ominous and precipitate speed; and when the curtain of death falls upon you—and it falls often suddenly, and generally when least expected, and on those who are worst prepared for it-it will reveal the fallacy and the inefficiency of the whole stock of those subterfuges and shifts, palliations and excuses, which mark in all the unregenerate so strong a disposition to evade and parry off, from Sabbath to Sabbath, and from month to month, and from year to year, the united force of arguments amounting to moral demonstration in favour of immediate faith and moral reformation. On the day of solemn reckoning and retribution, will it not be an aggravating feature in the guilt of many, that they were ever forming vague and undefined plans of amendment they were ever making magnanimous resolves but never executing them; ever on the point of joining themselves to the Lord, and yet consuming their whole existence in worshipping and doing sacrifice to the idols of time; and will not the severest doom be reserved for "those slothful and undutiful servants," who knew their Master's will, but did it not; "who, when required to go and work in the vineyard, said, We go, but went not?" Seeing, then, that there is equal hazard and criminality in every moment's delay, in a business so critical and so momentous as the restoration of the soul to God's favour and image, and the insurance of its eternal well-being, we would, with all earnestness, press it upon you as your first, your predominant, and your ultimate interest, to give yourselves to God now, to give yourselves to God wholly, and to give yourselves to God for ever. This is your paramount obligation, your supreme interest, your distinguishing honour. It involves also the only infallible hope of your final salvation. The Gospel, while it unfolds a remedial economy admirably adapted to all the diversities of our most necessitous and destitute condition, and is replete with blessings of the first magnitude, and of the richest variety, and which blessings are gratuitously tendered to all, as they were purchased for all, and are needed by all, has nevertheless revealed and bequeathed them to the human race upon the express understanding that they meet with an instantaneous cordial reception: while no excuse will be sustained, and no apology admitted, on any ground or pretence whatsoever, for hesitation or delay, which, in every case, is held in Scripture equivalent to a disparagement, or actual disclaiming, of the whole generous and gracious proposals. The entire word of inspiration, from beginning to end, is most definite and specific on the point of the present, and that only, being "man's day;" and all its overtures of mercy are restricted and circumscribed to this revolving, fleeting hour. The Gospel language of invitation and promise to sinners is ever couched in the present tense; and it does not hold out one distinct hope or pledge that its calls, if unanswered or disregarded to-day, will be repeated to-morrow, or at any future time. Its voice is never to be heard but in the accents of precipitation and 66 forgiveness to perishing criminals are all sent by an express, while it exhausts the vocabulary of denouncement and condemnation of every form of parley and truce, of tampering and temporizing. It inculcates, in the most urgent and peremptory tone, "Flee from the coming wrath. Hasten your escape from the stormy wind and tempest. Escape for thy life, look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain escape to the mountains, lest thou be consumed. Now is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation." Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying, in David, To-day, if ye will hear his voice. Exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day." And while we read of nothing relating to faith, repentance, and salvation, which is not spoken of as critical and hazardous in the extreme, if deferred to some future and indefinite period; and while every menace is levelled, and every admonition is pointed, against faltering and procrastination, every Gospel blessing is proffered, every distinction and pre-eminence of salvation is pledged, and will infallibly be conferred upon those who yield compliance with its pressing summons, and who immediately accede to its treasures of grace, which are on a scale of magnitude and glory that transcend all cost and all calculation. "Turn ye to the strong hold, ye prisoners of hope; even to-day do I declare that I will render double unto you. Ye stand this day all of you before the Lord your God, that he may establish you to-day for a people unto himself, and that he may be unto you a God, as he hath said unto you." If you will this day, then, "Choose the Lord to be your God," we proffer to you, in his name and by his authority, that you shall be presently installed in the possession of all the bencfits and immunities of the Redeemer's purchase without deduction and without qualification; that you shall instantaneously emerge from under the dark shadows of the Fall, that mighty and mysterious eclipse of humanity, into the effulgence of the light, and the plenitude of the joy, of a renovated, heaven-born nature; and the silent tide of oblivion shall instantly close for ever over all your past and greatest sins; and you shall be immediately admitted within the privileged circle of the redeemed of the Lord, shall have discerned to you the prince of honours, and the meridian of felicities; that your brow shall be encircled with a double diadem of life and righteousness; that a patent to all the titles and the illustrious dignities of the nobility of the heaven of heavens, shall be made out for you, which nothing in time or eternity can alienate or rescind; that paradise shall unlock for you its everlasting gates, and the soul of grace and godliness be poured into your expanded hearts; and you shall behold the interminable future through a vista of brightest hopes, and inherit a name immortal in the records of glory; and while you continue on earth your spirit shall be bathed in a flood of heavenly bliss, and from habitual communion and intercourse with the Godhead, prayer shall swell into praise, praise into adoration, and adoration into rapture! We Awake, then, awake from this delirium and trance. Rouse from this extreme and passive torpidity of soul, and shake off the inexplicable stupor that has fallen upon your spirits. Be alive to the affecting realities of your perilous situation; sit not a moment longer in silent and abstracted musing, but precipitate your escape from impending disaster and death, and hasten this mighty question, so long pending, to an immediate and final adjustment. do entreat, that all other cares and avocations be for the time suspended, and your whole faculties bent to the furtherance of this one grand concern; we implore, that all other interests, being immeasurably inferior and subordinate, be silent before this overwhelming interest of the soul; we call upon your strenuous and sustained application in contending for the last great stake of life; and we beseech you, if any good feeling and conviction be now at work, that you fan the holy flame, and entirely resign yourselves to the Divine impulse; for oh! the course of many of you is now almost run, and your life hangs by a single hair, and the term of grace and opportunity is wearing rapidly away. "Wo unto us, for the day goeth away; for the shadows of the evening are stretched out;" and God only knows what the next hour may develop, and on what new perils each successive morn may break. The sunshine is fast fading away; the storm is brewing, and will quickly burst: every moment's delay may cost a life, and a solitary spark may ignite the train of an endless conflagration. All things have now come to a point. Half measures will no longer suffice; this is the very brunt |