As to a late repentance, if you think it is at all prudent to make fome provifion for the next world before you take your leave of this, how is it poffible not to fee the danger of delay?—I speak 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 with to repent, but have not the refolution to fet ferioufly 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 éafier, and as it were more natural to you? Have you not obferved, in a hundred inftances both in yourselves and others, how your bad ha bits have increased? Every indulgence is a new rivet; every day makes the tafk of to-morrow more difficult, as every stroke of the mallet drives the wedge in more firmly than the first. This increasing 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 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 so speak, 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 bufinefs when he had been brought up in a very different one. It is not at once that a man can get habits of devotion-habits of reading the scriptures with reverence and attention; and habits of confider ing 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 inveterate finners make any change in their accustomed way of life! The better road appears fo dark and obftructed, that they turn from it with difguft. Most 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 indifpofed to repent in age; it is dangerous alfo, because probably you may not only be unwilling, but unable alfo. alfo. Disease may opprefs you-your faculties may be gone-you may be fuddenly called out of the world: all these are cases which daily happen. LET these things, then, have their proper weight. Confider yourselves as labourers hired into your master's vineyard. Labour honestly through the day, and look in the evening for your reward. The evening will foon close in: whether you are rich, or whether you are poor, all will foon be reduced to one level. This world is not your home: it is a place only of fhort abode. Whatever your poffeffions are-your enjoyments, your amusements, your friends, your houses, and every thing your hearts have moft been fet on, will all foon vanish.-What is to come in their room, it is your bufinefs to confider -it is an awful thought. It behoves you furely to make some provision for this great change; and to fit yourselves for the enjoyment of other things, fince you are fo foon to be difpoffeffed of thefe; that when God calls you from your station here, you may not be wholly unqualified for a better ftation hereafter. That That we may all confider what is our real bufinefs, and true interest, in this world, and not put it off till too late an hour, may God Almighty of his infinite goodness grant, through Jesus Christ our Lord! SERMON XII. GAL. vi. 7. WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP FOR HE THAT SOWETH TO HIS FLESH, SHALL OF THE FLESH REAP CORRUPTION; BUT HE THAT SOWETH TO THE SPIRIT, SHALL OF THE SPIRIT REAP LIFE EVERLASTING. THE text may be thus in general explained ; -In whatever way a man lives, he shall be treated in the fame way by God Almighty. If he lead a wicked life, he fhall feel the mischief of it; and if he lead a pious one, he shall experience its advantages. And all this follows as naturally, as the grain you reap from the grain you fow. Wheat or barley will not more furely produce its kindred feed, than goodness will produce happiness, and wickedness mifery. The apostle |
