could be effected-fome earlier and some later; and that he would afford thofe nations, fo converted, the fame marks of favour which he afforded the Jews. This is the meaning and end of the parable; which is fo far, you see, from giving encouragement to a late repentance, that it has not any immediate reference to repentance at all. It may indeed be applied to fingle perfons; but can then only mean that God will accept the penitent, on his embracing the first means of conviction. But this doth not affect thofe who, when called, never enter the vineyard; or, if they do enter it, instead of labouring as they ought till funfet, spend their time in idleness. Had the fervants ftood idle in the market-place after they had an opportunity of working, they had met with no reward—they had then been condemned as wicked and flothful fervants; but, by labouring as foon as they could, they fhewed they would have laboured fooner if they had had it in their power. God therefore accepted the little they did, because it was all they could do.

But it is your parts, my brethren, always to remember, that you, who are born in a christian country, are called at an early hour. You need

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not stand all the day idle, because no man hath hired you: you were hired by baptism in your infancy, and have been called over and over by your heavenly Mafter. You have the fcriptures in your hands, good books to read, well-difpofed christians to converfe with, and conftant opportunities of hearing God's word read and explained in churches. You are therefore without excufe. In that laft great day you would be thus answered: That fervant who knew his Lord's will, and did it not, fhall be beaten with many Stripes.

As this, then, is a falfe idea of repentance, let us now fee, as I propofed, fecondly, what kind of repentance alone is available in the fight of God.

The end of repentance, we are repeatedly told, is to amend and purify our hearts and lives: it is the means of attaining that end; and unless that end be attained, there can be no repentance. We may therefore bemoan our fins as much as we please-we may make the most ardent refolutions against them; but if our tears and refolutions have no effect on our hearts and lives, they have no value: there is yet no repentance. No point in the gofpel is more clearly fettled

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fettled than this: nor is there any point of human conduct in which miftakes are more dangerous.

A father, we read in fcripture, had two fons, whom he ordered to work in his vineyard. The elder refufed; but afterwards coming to himself, we are told, he repented. And what did he do when he repented? Did he express his repentance by an idle forrow? Had he done that only, he had done nothing. But, we find, he immediately changed his heart and life; became a new man, and fet earnestly about what his father required. This was repentance. We may relapse into fin, and still renew our repentance. God forbid that the door of falvation should ever be fhut against the real penitence of frail man! But if these relapfes are frequent, there can be no great fincerity in our repentance.The life of the best chriftian, it is true, is only a conftant struggle with the frailties of his nature, and of course a continued repentance; but ftill it fhould be a life of conftant reformation also we should be getting the better of fome of the corruptions of our nature; and, on the whole, drawing nearer the great pattern of our imitation.

As to a late repentance, if

you think it is at all prudent to make some provision for the next world before you take your leave of this, how is it poffible not to see the danger of delay?—I fpeak not of the danger which hereafter attends unrepented fin; that is a dreadful confequence indeed, of which, I hope, every one here is fufficiently aware: but I fpeak to those who wish to repent, but have not the refolution to fet feriously about it. Confider, then, the danger that attends a late repentance: in the decline of life you may neither be willing nor able to repent. Confider well the nature of habit: is there any thing you do which does not by practice become eafier, and as it were more natural to you?— Have you not observed, in a hundred inftances both in yourselves and others, how your bad habits have increased? Every indulgence is a new rivet; every day makes the task of to-morrow more difficult, as every ftroke of the mallet drives the wedge in more firmly than the first.

This increafing nature of bad habits is furely a very strong argument against a late repentance, When you have long lived a bad life-when your affections, and the whole turn of your mind is molded, as it were, in a worldly form, how

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is it poffible for you, at fo late an hour, to recover yourselves from fuch inveterate habits, and become religious? The religious man and the worldly man have learned, if I may fo fpeak, quite oppofite trades; and it requires as great an alteration to form one into the other, as it does to teach a man fome particular business when he had been brought up in a a very different one. It is not at once that a man can get habits of devotion-habits of reading the fcriptures with reverence and attention; and habits of confidering himself always in the prefence of Almighty God.-And, in fact, when we look into the world, how feldom is it that we fee old inveterates finners make any change in their accustomed way of life! The better road appears fo dark and obstructed, that they turn from it with difguft. Moft commonly, indeed, when people come to fuch an age, their habits are fixed for life. -Surely this is a point deeply to be confidered!

If it be dangerous to defer your repentance, because you will most probably be indisposed to repent in age; it is dangerous also, because probably you may not only be unwilling, but unable

alfo.