fulness, for we cannot be too well guarded against the danger of spiritual sloth and security.

Motive 1. Our natures at best in the present state are too much inclined to slumber.' We are too ready to fall asleep hourly: All the saints on earth, even the most lively and active of them, are not out of danger, while they carry this flesh and blood about them. Indeed the best of Christians here below dwell but as it were in twilight, and in some sense they may be described as persons between sleeping and waking, in comparison of the world of spirits. We behold divine things here but darkly, and exert our spiritual faculties but in a feeble manner: It is only in the other world, that we are broad awake, and in the perfect and unrestrained exercise of our vital powers; there only the complete life and vigour of a saint appears. In such a drowsy state then, and in this dusky hour, we cannot be too diligent in rousing ourselves, lest we sink down into dangerous slumbers. Besides, if we profess to be children of the light and of the day,' and growing up to a brighter immortality, 'let us not sleep as others do' who are the sons and daughters of night and darkness. 1 Thes. v. 4, 5.

Motive 2. Almost every thing around us in this world of sense and sin, tends to lull us asleep again as soon as we begin to be awake.' The busy or the pleasant scenes of this temporal life are ever calling away our thoughts from eternal things, they conceal from us the spiritual world, and close our eyes to God, and things divine and heavenly. If the eye of the soul were but open to invisible things, what live

ly Christians should we be? But either the winds of worldly cares rock us to sleep, or the charm of worldly pleasures soothe us into deceitful slumbers. We are too ready to indulge earthly delights, and while we dream of pleasure in the creatures, we lose, or at least, abate our delights in God. Even the lawful satisfactions of flesh and sense, and the enticing objects round about us, may attach our hearts so fast to them, as to draw us down into a bed of carnal ease, till we fall asleep in spiritual security, and forget that we are made for heaven, and that our hope and our home is on high.

Motive 3. Many thousands have been found sleeping at the call of Christ: Some perhaps in a profound and deadly sleep, and others in an hour of dangerous slumber: Many an acquaintance of ours has gone down to the grave, when neither they nor we thought of their dying at such a season. But as thoughtless as they were, they were never the further from the point of death; and we shudder with horror when we think what is become of their souls.

While we are young we are ready to please ourselves with the enjoyments of life, and flatter our hopes with a long succession of them. We suppose death to be at the distance of fifty or threescore miles;' threescore years and ten is the appointed period: But alas! How few are there whose hopes are fulfilled, or whose life is extended to those dimensions? Perhaps the messenger of death is within a furlong of our dwelling; a few more steps onward, and he smites us down to the dust.

There are some beautiful verses which I have read perhaps thirty years ago, wherein the ingenious author describes the different stages of human life, under the image of a fair prospect or landscape, and death is placed by mistaken mortals, afar off, beyond them all. Since the lines return now upon my remembrance, I will repeat them here with some small alteration. They are as follow:

Life and the scenes that round it rise,
Share in the same uncertainties,

Yet still we hugg ourselves with vain presage
Of future day's serene and long,
Of pleasures fresh and ever strong,
An active youth and slow declining age.

Like a fair prospect still we make
Things future pleasing forms to take :
First verdant meads arise and flowery fields;
Cool groves and shady copses here,

There brooks and winding streams appear,
While change of objects still new pleasures yields.

Farther fine castles court the eye,

There wealth and honours we espy;

Beyond, a huddled mixture fills the stage,

Till the remoter distance shrouds

The plains with hills, those hills with clouds,

There we place death behind old shivering age.

When death alas, perhaps too nigh,
In the next hedge doth skulking lie,

There plants his engines, thence lets fly his dart;
Which while we ramble without fear,

Will stop us in our full career,

And force us from our airy dreams to part.

How fond and vain are our imaginations, when we have seen others called away on a sudden from the

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early scenes of life, to promise ourselves a long continuance here! We have the same feeble bodies, the same tabernacles of clay that others have, and we are liable to many of the same accidents or casualties: The same killing diseases are at work in our natures, and why should we imagine, or presume, that others should go so much before us?

And if we enquire of ourselves as to character or merit, or moral circumstances of any kind, and compare ourselves with those that are gone before, what foundation have we to promise ourselves a longer continuance here? Have we not the same sins or greater to provoke God? Are we more useful in the world than they, and do more service for his name? May not God summon us off the stage of life on a sudden, as well as others? What are we better than they? Are we not as much under the sovereign disposal of the great God as any of our acquaintance who have been seized in the flower and prime of life, and called away in an unexpected hour? And what power have we to resist the seizure, or what promise to hope that God will delay longer? Let us then no more deceive ourselves with vain imaginations, but each of us awake and bestir ourselves as though we were the next persons to be called away from this assembly, and to appear next before the Lord.

Motive 4. When we are awake, we are not only fitter for the coming of our Lord to call us away by death, and fitter for his appearance to the great judgment, but we are better prepared also to attend him in every call to present duty, and more ready

to meet his appearance in every providence.' It is the Christian soldier who is ever awake and on his guard, that is only fit for every sudden appointment to new stations and services, he is more prepared for any post of danger or hazardous enterprize, and better furnished to sustain the roughest assaults. We shall be less shocked at sudden afflictions here on earth, if our souls keep heaven in view, and are rea dy winged for immortality. When we are fit to die we are fit to live also, and to do better service for God in whichsoever of his worlds he shall please to appoint our station. My business, O Father, and my joy, is to do thy will among the sons of mortality, or among the spirits of the blest on high.

Motive 5. Let us remember we have slept too lóng already in days past, and it is but a little while that we are called to watch.' We have worn away too much of our life in sloth and drowsiness. The 'night is far spent' with many of us, "the day is at hand; it is now high time to awake out of sleep, for now is our salvation nearer than when we first believed."

Rom. xiii. 11, 12. Another hour or two, and the night will be at an end with us,' Jesus the morning star is just appearing; what? Can we not watch one hour? O happy souls, that keep themselves awake to God in the midst of this dreaming world! Happy indeed, when our Lord shall call us out of these dusky regions, and we shall answer his call with holy joy, and spring upward to the inheritance of the saints in light! Then all the seasons of darkness, and slumbering, will be finished for ever;