state, and examine whether many of us are not in the state of spiritual sleeping and dreaming already described. How passes our life? We eat, we drink, we sleep. To-morrow and to-morrow the same dull repetition: we eat, we drink, we sleep. So also do the poor animals around us, whom we look down upon as our inferiors. How are we employed in the intervals of this vegetative life? We buy, we sell, we dress, we trifle, we visit, we tell or hear the tale of the day, often a trifling, often a false, sometimes a malevolent one; but in all this, have little other design than to pass away the time without reflection; to forget ourselves; to hide the prospect before us—death, judgment, heaven, and hell!

How stands the real state of that religion which we profess? We learned our catechism in our infancy; we read the Bible at school; we go to church like others; we hear and repeat our prayers; but have we, indeed, considered our religion as our principal concern? Christianity is either true or not true. If we believe it true, it must be our chief concern; if not true, then why mock we both God and man by our hypocrisy? But we profess to believe it. Have we any secret exercises of the soul in converse and communion with God? Do we spend any time with our own hearts? Have we no sweet intercourse with heaven in solitude? no fervour of piety, no inward religion, no spiritual sensibility, no pious ardour, no secret store of comfort unknown to the world, and which the world cannot reach, locked up as a precious jewel, in the casket of the heart? If we have not, we are assuredly in that state which requires us to listen to that animating call,

'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;' for dead we are to God; dead to every thing but that vanity which ever terminates in vexation; dead to all those remains of excellence, which have preserved, amidst the ruins of human nature, some faint vestige of its original grandeur and grace.

Take away the spiritual life, and you level a man with the brutes. He becomes immediately what the philosophers of old called him, an animal with two legs, and without feathers. How are

the mighty fallen! The wings of the eagle are clipped. He no longer eyes the golden sun, but grovels, like a reptile, on the earth. You not only level him with the brutes. You make him more miserable than they; for he is sorely sensible of his evils, which they are not: he is sensible of his forlorn condition, sensible of the shortness and possible evils of life, suffers imaginary as well as real woe, and sees the gloomy prospect before him-the grave opening to swallow him up, and the possibility of something terrible beyond it. If we are but animals, then are we of all animals most miserable!

a

Since a religious lethargy is thus degrading to our nature, thus productive of misery, let us rescue ourselves from it to-day, while it is called today; and let no man say with the sluggard, little more sleep and a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands to sleep.' ebbs apace. The day is far spent to many of us. The night is at hand, when the sad licence may be allowed to us in that severe permission, Sleep on, now, and take your rest.' Your sun is set, to rise no more. Death's scythed, trium

phal car, drives on rapidly, and mows down all that stand in the way. It is computed, by the ingenious in calculation, that, on the surface of the globe, more than fifty thousand mortals, men, women, and children, die every night. How soon may any one of us make an unit in the thousands that every hour go down into the pit, and are no more seen!

One of the best means of exciting ourselves, is a due preparation for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Let us never fail to receive it at Christmas, Whitsuntide, and Easter. We shall thus experience a resurrection from the sleep and death of indifference, to life and hope in Christ our Redeemer.

It is, indeed, an alarming symptom of the spiritual slumber, that many of us go on from month to month, and from year to year, without receiving the sacrament; without seeking that mysterious communion between God and our souls; without feeling any need of it; without desiring it; without any hunger or thirst after it. If we were not wrapt in a deep sleep, or state of stupidity, we should long for it; feel an appetite for the heavenly manna; and come to the Lord's table, as to our daily meals, with eagerness and alacrity.

What shall we think of those numerous persons who, from year to year, hear notice given of the sacrament to be administered, and pay it not the least attention? who think it a matter which may concern any body but themselves? How many among the poorest of the poor never approached the altar; live and die, without having once received the sacrament, or sought any other means of grace? Do they think the rich only are capable

of grace; that the rich only have souls to save; that our Lord, like the world, invites the rich only to his table? Think, did I say? Alas! they think little on the subject. They are in a deep sleep; lost in the night of ignorance. And it unfortunately happens, that if they are awakened at all, it is usually by the call of some enthusiast, who leads them from the chillness of indifference, to the burning fever of fanatical devotion. Let them rather hear the evangelical call, and apply it to themselves without delay; 'Awake, thou that sleepest:' and let them obey the friendly voice of him who came expressly to preach the gospel to the poor. Let them prepare themselves immediately to use the means of grace afforded them by the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and be thankful that at that table there are no invidious distinctions; that the rich and poor meet together, prostrate on their knees before their Maker, partaking his bounty without partiality, and supplicating his mercy; all equally poor and helpless, without his grace.

There are, it seems probable, many others among us, who think themselves too young to be at all concerned with things so serious as the sacrament. They go, indeed, to church, but never think of the holy communion, because they are too young to be serious. Permit me to ask, what is the precise age at which the care of the soul is to commence? When does the minority of the soul terminate? If all are exempt who are young, and who think themselves young, how great will be the number? Is not going to church, a serious thing? They do not think themselves too young to go to church. May it not then be suspected, that as they think themselves unconcerned with the sacrament,

they may also think themselves unconcerned with the prayers and the discourses of the church; and so may frequent the church, merely to display their external garb, to gaze and to be gazed at, to pass away an idle hour, and to comply with an established custom? But if there be truth in Christianity, they are trifling with the most important matters, in a most dangerous manner. They are acquiring a habit of considering the most sacred things with indifference. If they are too young to think of serious things, they certainly are not too young to die. Let them take a walk in the churchyard, and read the inscriptions on the tomb-stones. They will find, perhaps, as many young as old, among the victims of death; and they must allow that youth is a more dangerous season, with respect to temptations, than any other; and consequently, that it more particularly requires the succours of divine grace, to keep it from falling into sin and misery. And what so powerful a means of grace as the sacrament, after a due preparation ?

No; you are not too young to receive the divine blessing of grace. Only be sensible how much you want it; how wretched and how profligate you may become; into what shameful and dreadful conduct you may fall, without it. Awake, therefore, from a sleep, which you cannot indulge without losing the morning of life; the best season for every kind of work, spiritual as well as worldly. Begin well, in order to end well. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, and he will not forget you in the days of your old age. Trust not in beauty. Trust not in strength. Beauty alone has no charms in the eye of heaven. Strength of body cannot