God. Instead of once it was done times past number-done through life-coolly done as the settled habit and business of life. His whole earthly course, from the cradle to the coffin, was taken right under the meridian blaze of this sun-right under the intense, melting, action of this love; and what should have melted him, what did melt others by his side, only hardened him, reared up and fostered a giant depravity, gathered and piled over his head an immense woe, which if it comes upon him, will weigh him down to the very lowest hell.

But I cannot proceed. The view, the little glimpse we can get here of the gospel woe, is too dreadful to dwell upon. We shrink, shuddering from the prospect. We shudder to know, that so many about us are exposed to it; are even making it probable, by their prolonged impenitence, that the bitter wailings under this more than mountain pressure will be their eternal portion.

We say not these things because we love to say them; but because we are constrained to say them; we feel that it would be unkind not to warn you; and while our lips speak these things, our hearts are saying, oh! that you would be persuaded to escape from beneath, and by your prompt and deep repentings, turn this great gospel woe, into the precious gospel blessing.

There are a number of solemn considerations clustering about this subject, which I should like to dwell upon, but I can only name two or three.

1. One is, that the most wicked man outwardly is not of course the most guilty man. As our Saviour has settled this point, let us accept the truth from his lips. The Sodomites we know were wicked perhaps beyond all parallel in human history. Yet the Saviour said to a comparatively moral community, rejecting the gospel, and he says the same here-It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment than for you. Let it not be forgotten that under the fairest exterior, there often lurks a heart of the most rocky hardness and the intensest enmity.

2. Again. We see a reason for the fact that the very moral are frequently the farthest from the kingdom of heaven. It was so in Christ's day; and he said most plainly to a class of this sort, very moral, priding themselves in their morality, externally religious : Publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of God before you ; they repented at the preaching of John; you are unmoved, impenitent under the preaching, and in view of the works of the Son of God himself. Men now sit under the gospel; they conform externally; the truth lops off the excrescences of the character; but while it is doing this exterior work, through their resistance to its spirit-its claims upon their hearts ;they make obdurate their hearts then in order to silence conscience, and keep down fear as they

look at the gospel woe; they try to make a religion of their morality; they in a measure succeed; they do make a religion of their morality. They refuse to strive for a better religion. They consent to adventure their souls on this rotten bottom; they dare to go forward, and finally up with this wretched plea, to the judgment of their Maker.

Finally. We see the dependence of men who have resisted means and influences which would have brought others to repentance we see the peculiar, entire, dependence of such upon the sovereign grace of God. Wherever else we look, it is utter blackness-not a gleam of hope in their case. Here we behold a power adequate, if only put forth, to renovate and redeem those who have held out against all previous means.

Christians-Will you pray to God and beseech him, as you have not done before, to put forth that redeeming and subduing energy-to pour out the fulness of that wonder working Spirit. If there come not down from above a more decisive power, then those who have thus far gone against God's array of mercy, will go on still, and will go through life unreached, uninterested.

And can you, you my friends? I speak to those who have had a long time and many precious seasons for repentance, but who have not yet repented. Is it well thus to let the best part of life go by, without any vigorous effort upon the one great business of life? Is it generous to disregard such love as he has moved for you, and moved toward you in God's scheme of redemption. Is it prudent to run such tremendous risk, as according to the gospel of God, you are this day running, while you put off this great concern? Will it be tolerable to you in that eternity to which you are hastening, to go down in hell below the profligates of Sodom, and make your eternal bed amid the fiercest of those burnings? We may all lay this to heart. Can we bear it? Can our friends bear it? How much better to turn to Christ, and live in heaven.

THE LAST JUDGMENT.

We have seen Jesus at the bar of Pilate. We shall see Pilate at the bar of Jesus.

Every man has a case pending in the court of eternal judgment, in which property is concerned, even his right to the tree of life, and his title to the inheritance that fadeth not away; and liberty is involved, the freedom of the soul from the most cruel tyranny that ever oppressed and degraded man; and life is at stake, not this life only, which if it be not violently cut off, soon terminates of itself, but a life to which this is not as the minutest dew-drop to the shoreless and unfathomable ocean. If this case be decided against you, you forfeit that right and title to heaven, you lose the freedom of the soul, and you entail upon your immortality a curse, which causes it to have all the evils of death, and to be called death, while it has none of its immunities. And the day of trial is approaching. You have already been summoned to be in readiness, for you know not the hour when you will be called to trial. Are you prepared for trial? Have you secured the advocacy of him who alone can successfully manage your cause ?

How intensely interesting and awful a day will that of the judgment be! It would seem as if Christ was always thinking of it. How frequently he speaks of it, and never but with the deepest solemnity.

It is the judgment-seat of CHRIST before which we are to appear. The Father judgeth no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son.' Christian, what a subject thou hast here for thy heart's most fond meditation-thy Saviour thine arbiterthy advocate and thy judge the same. What client would not be willing that his own counsel should decide his case! Dost thou tremble at the thought of going to judgment? Why, it is but to go to Christ-to Him who has already taken thy burden and given thee rest. Once He has already accepted thee. Will He change his mind and reject thee? Will he not honor his own righteousness, which he put on thee? Shall not his pleadings for thee prevail, when he pleads, as it were, with himself and his intercessions on thy behalf are made to his own heart, that sorrowed for thee, and to his own bosom, that bled for thee? Who is he that condemneth? Is it Christ that died, yea, rather that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession

for us?' Impossible! And yet, if He does not condemn, who can, since He is the judge? This arrangement, by which the sinner's Saviour is his judge, constitutes one among the many surpassing beauties of Christianity. I wonder that the mere man of taste is not struck with it. Child of God, follower of the Lamb, press the thought to thy heart, cherish it among thy richest recollections. So shalt thou have boldness in the day of judgment.' How much more our actions mean, than we suppose they do. The wicked, until the judgment day, will not know, that in refusing acts of kindness to the pious poor, they were refusing to feed and clothe Christ. They thought it was but some poor, weak people, called Christians,who made much ado about religion, that they had thus neglected. They did not mean any direct affront to Christ, but so he takes it. I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest,' said the voice from heaven to the astonished Saul of Tarsus.

The doctrine of an adjusting judgment, if it have any place in the system of natural religion, is inferred from the Divine justice, and cannot, therefore, be adduced in proof of it. That were to reason in a circle.

At the last judgment, a day of insufferable splendor will dawn upon us; a scene of tremendous magnificence will be displayed before these eyes, and these ears will hear that trumpet's stunning thunder. And you and I, who are now before a mercy-seat, will encompass a judgment-seat.

There is one controversy which the last day shall forever determine the long and unhappy controversy about the Divinity of Jesus. How it shall be decided I leave you to judge, after I shall have asked a few questions. If the mover of all those sublime scenes,the agent in all those grand transactions be not God, where is God? and why takes he no part in the doings of this last tremendous day? If Omnipotence be not in this work of general desolation, where is Omnipotence slumbering? Where is the work that befits Omnipotence? If a mere creature is sitting on the throne of the Universe, where sits Jehovah? Tell me, Reason. and why and where has he retired, when now the destiny of men and angels is determining? If it be not Omniscience on that throne, if not Omniscience, which, from the lost archangel down to the least human sinner, scans every life, searches every spirit, and scrutinizes the inmost thoughts and the deepest purposes, what has Omniscience to do? I had thought it was Deity,at whose stepping forth the everlasting mountains are scattered, and the perpetual hills do bow-Deity, from whose face the heaven and the earth do flee away-Deity, that keeps the keys of death and of hell-Deity, who sits on the throne of the universe-Deity, at whose hands I am to receive the eternal recompensc.

NEVINS.

"I bowed down heavily, as one that mourneth for his mother."--Psalm xxxv. 14

THERE is a peculiarity in every kind of bereavement. There is enough to separate it from all other modes of trial, to produce a peculiar state of feeling, and to convey its own lessons to the soul distinct from those imparted by any other divine dispensation. The loss of a wife, a friend, a companion, a sympathiser in trials, a fellow-heir of the grace of life, a sharer of the joys and a divider of the sorrows of our pilgrimage; of a son who we hoped would be our stay and staff in old age, and perpetuate our name when we are dead; of a daughter whom we have tenderly nourished and tenderly loved; of a sister, the companion of the playful days of childhood, and a kind friend as she advanced with us to the maturity of life; of a father, the counsellor and guide of our youth-each one of these bereavements has its own sad lesson to convey to the soul; each one touches a cord in the heart which vibrates only then. It is a part of our duty and dicipline here carefully to gather up these lessons and apply them to our own souls.

In the text it is supposed that the death of a mother effects those who

NOTE.-Occasioned by the recent death of the author's mother.-Editor.