the Saviour may lead you to look to your heavenly intercourse with desire, and the sufferings, which you behold with such interest warrant you to eye it with the fullest expectation. You have felt, in the intimation in the text, a power which extinguishes carnal hope, and which invigorates that of the gospel; and under its influence it becomes you to say, I will look for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. Behold, from the spot where you now are, the land of Emmanuel, whose mountains drop down new wine, and whose hills flow with milk, and where the Lamb stands, and with him the redeemed from the earth, having his Father's name written on their foreheads; and can you survey such a scene without longing more eagerly to reach it, and crying, with greater earnestness than ever, O, when shall I come and appear before God?

CONCLUSION.

Let such as feel the sentence of death in themselves approach the table of the Lord in the spirit I have now been describing. Be humbled on account of the imperfect manner in which you have observed former religious solemnities. Let your self-examination be more strict, your prayer more importunate, your attention more fixed, your faith more lively, and your love more fervent than ever; and thus your last may be your best communion on earth, your best in respect of grace and of comfort, and you will have reason to say as the guests at the feast at which Jesus turned water unto wine,-" Thou hast kept the good wine until now." And, while he thus blesses you,

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may he grant to young communicants the joys of his salvation, and enable them to consecrate all the ardour of their youth to piety. "How great is his goodness! and how great is his beauty! corn shall make the young men cheerful, and the vintage the maids."*

Let those, who are promising to themselves a long continuance in the world learn not to be high-minded, but to fear: youth does not warrant such expectations. There have been some to whom the first communion has been the only one allotted to them on earth; we have led them to the Lord's table, and we have followed them to the grave. You will not pretend that you have any intimation from Heaven as to the prolongation of your life; but even though God had said to you, as he did to Hezekiah, I will add unto thy days fifteen years, it would be wise in you to consider your latter end, and, amidst the fellowship of the Lord's table, to think of the lonely and silent mansion before you. Life must be a scene of arduous duties and trials to every child of God, and I beseech you to improve the Lord's supper, for strengthening in you the charity which beareth all things, the patience which endureth to the end, and the zeal which is active in good works.

Let those who have, through a long life, observed the Lord's supper in hypocrisy, consider their state and ways ere they go to that table for the last time. God hath not punished your unworthy communicating by untimely death, but he hath done it by giving

Zech. ix. 17.

you up to security and presumption. And have you not eaten and drunken judgment sufficient already that you will do it again? Is there so little criminality in being guilty of the body and blood of the Lord that you will again incur it? This thought may well startle you when I add, that the feast above shall not be profaned by your presence, and that you shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation. O humble yourselves ere you advance in the sight of God! Repent now and believe the gospel. What a memorable sacrament will it be if it is the first that you keep in the spirit of piety!

Finally, Let those who have lived to old age in the neglect of the Lord's supper consider what sins of omission they have to answer for; and the state of mind and of heart which has permitted you to live thus must have led you to many acts of impiety and wickedness; and be assured that for all these things God will bring you into judgment. It is the grossest folly in you to expect to have fellowship in heaven. with that Saviour whom you have treated with such neglect here. There is so necessary a connexion betwixt grace and glory, betwixt the form and the power of godliness on earth and its rewards in heaven, that the latter cannot be had but after the former. You have not even the plea to knock with at the gate of heaven, that you have eaten and drunk in his sence. With the devil, whom you have served, you must dwell, and as with him you have sinned, so with him you must suffer. You have had fellowship with him in the enmity and impurity of your carnal minds;

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and you shall have a part in the everlasting fire which is prepared for him and for his angels. It is with you the eleventh hour, but the Redeemer has not yet abandoned you. To you he saith, Why stand ye here all the day idle? Go ye also into the vineyard, and whatsoever is right that ye shall receive. Ye ought to have given yourselves first to the Lord, and then to the church by the will of God; yet still he is ready to accept of your immediate dedication of yourselves to his service, and of your last hour. Life is closing, eternity opens, and all depends on this passing moment. The Spirit and the bride say, Come, and this is Christ's own language,-Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out. Let Christ's farewell at the feast of tabernacles be regarded as it ought by every heart." In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water."

DISCOURSE XVIII.

THE LIMITS OF LIFE.

PSALM XC. 10. The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

THIS Psalm is entitled a prayer of Moses, the man of God. It seems to have been written by him when his mind was peculiarly impressed with the frailty and mortality of man, and after some of those mournful scenes in the wilderness in which many of the Israelites perished. Standing in the place of graves, he lifts his eyes to the throne of the Eternal, and adores the Being who lives and reigns for ever. It is amidst the sad memorials of human vanity that the majesty of the King eternal is most strongly felt, and that the necessity of an interest in his favour is most apparent, with whom is unchanging blessedness and everlasting strength, who can destroy in a moment creatures dependent on his will, and grant life for evermore to the objects of his mercy.

He then, in a variety of beautiful figures, sets forth the shortness and uncertainty of human life. The course of man's days is rapid as the progress of the torrent; and as in sleep time passes away without our consciousness of its movements, so, amidst the delusion and the bustle of life, we do not mark how we