ness and weakness,-every thing which exhibits either the mercies or the judgments of God, concur in teaching us the same great lesson, that religion is to each of us that one thing needful, without which we can never be truly happy in this world, and must be undoubtedly miserable in the next. Shall we then dare to tempt God by suffering Him to send all these admonitions and warnings in vain? shall we cast them all behind us, one after the other, disregarded and despised, and yet, groundless and impiously, expect that still more will be granted us? If the Jews would not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither would they be persuaded though one rose from the dead; and if we will harden our hearts, and pay no heed to what God is doing every day to lead us to repentance, we can reasonably look for no future call than that most fearful one, which will summon us to death and to judgment.

There is, lastly, another cause more efficacious probably than all others put together, in lulling the soul into a state of fatal supineness; it is a notion, against which we cannot be too much on our guard, for our own sakes, or too frequent and strenuous in testifying to others of its danger, lest they also come into that place of torment, to which it has doubtless conducted thousands and tens of thousands before: I mean the habit of trusting to a future repentance at the close of

life. How lost and dead to their immortal welfare must be they who can build on this sandy foundation, who can lean on this bruised reed for support, who can risk their very souls, those pearls of inestimable price, on a chance which has every thing against it. For who can presume to promise himself the opportunity of a deliberate old age and gradual death, in which he may calmly and quietly set about repenting? are not multitudes cut down every where and every day, not merely in their old age but at every age, without any previous warning, and sent, just as they are, to stand before the face of their Maker and Judge? And again, is old age, with all its infirmities, and still more the hour of death, with all its anxieties, a fit time for commencing that great work upon the soul, which is to turn it from sin and Satan unto God? Will all its deep rooted corruptions leave it in a moment at our bidding, and will the fruits of the Spirit, of which the seeds are not yet sown, all at once flourish and abound, where just before there was utter barrenness and desolation? Farther; how do we know that God will give us grace unto repentance at our last hour, and without His grace we can do nothing. Can it be reasonably supposed that, when we have despised all the means of grace which God has plentifully showered upon us all our lives, in His providential acts and holy ordinances, and when our only

reason for desiring to repent is, not because we love, but because we fear Him now we see His judgments close at hand,-is it likely, I say, that He will reward our impiety and gross ingratitude by working a miracle in our favour, and giving us in a moment a heart of flesh, filled with the love of holiness and of Him, instead of that heart of stone, which we ourselves have made so, by wilfully hardening it against all His merciful invitations and suggestions? But lastly, granting, contrary to all reasonable calculation, that these numerous difficulties were surmounted, and that we were enabled at the end of our days to enter into a state of repentance, or what we may suppose so, what security have we, or can we have that such a repentance will be accepted? Certainly, Scripture holds out no encouragement of the kind, and, indeed in one way it bears a strong evidence against cherishing any such expectations; for that repentance, to which, as the word of God declares, acceptance and pardon are granted for the sake of Christ, is a repentance which changes the heart and the conduct, and which shows itself in the works of holiness and piety, which it produces, through the whole of the person's subsequent life. Now, by the nature of the case, no such effects can attend a death-bed repentance, which is, therefore, not that kind of

repentance to which the previous promises of the Gospel are annexed.

These, then, are some of the numerous deceptions which men practise upon themselves for their own ruin, and by which they may certainly succeed in hiding their true condition from their own view, and be brought to live quite contentedly in a daily breach of God's commandments, and with all His awful denunciations revealed against them in the book of life. But, they cannot so impose upon their Maker "be not deceived," my brethren, "God is not mocked, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption, but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting."

SERMON XVIII.

THE TRANSFIGURATION.

LUKE ix. 35.

This is My beloved Son, hear Him.

A FEW days before that wonderful transaction took place, to which the text refers, our blessed Saviour, in conversing with His disciples, had predicted the sufferings which He was shortly to undergo; and, to prevent the ill effects which such a declaration might at that time have produced on them, He told them in conclusion, that, notwithstanding the melancholy picture which He had presented to their notice, there were some of their own number who should not taste of death till they had seen the Son of man coming in His kingdom, and till they had beheld a visible manifestation of the glory which essentially belonged to Him, the power with which He was invested to be the Sovereign Judge of all.