prevail against the arm of offended Omnipotence. But beauty and strength, combined with virtue and piety-how lovely in the sight of men! how pleasing to heaven !—peculiarly pleasing, because, with every temptation to deviate, they voluntarily walk in the path of duty.

There is another class yet, with whom I shall expostulate on the propriety of receiving the sacrament, which they are but too apt to neglect, apparently from an idea that they have no concern in it. They claim to be lookers-on, like spectators at a contest for life and death, without any interest in the event. I mean the numerous persons who fill the very useful and creditable station of servants and dependants, apprentices, and labourers for hire. These are apt to consider Sunday merely as a holiday, or rather vacation from labour; a day in which they are to adorn themselves above their rank and station, and to sacrifice to the idols of false pleasure and expensive vanity. To think of the sacrament, or any other serious, affecting duty, on a day devoted to feasting, to jollity, and to wandering from house to house, would throw a gloom upon it, inconsistent with their schemes of enjoyment. Thoughtlessness and folly mark their conduct on that day more than on any day in the week; a day intended for their improvement in all virtue, honesty, and true wisdom. What! have they not souls, as well as their superiors in rank? Is not our God their God? Did not Christ die for them, as well as for their masters or employers? Think of these things, and let not the sabbath-day, intended to promote your salvation, contribute, more than any other day, to your destruction.

Would you have it a day of pleasure? In order to be such, let it be a day of innocence, a day of devotion, a day of rational, sober, discreet recreation.

Think not that religion will destroy your cheerfulness. No; it will promote it. Nothing gives so fine spirits as a clear conscience; a bosom that feels the satisfaction of having discharged its duties to God and man. Then recreation and harmless pleasure are truly delightful. The sweet, in such circumstances, is without bitter; the rose without a thorn; the honey without a sting. I have ever recommended a cheerful religion; because all religion was certainly intended to make men happy; and because gloominess, moroseness, and severity, which some persons require in religious duties, originate in weakness and error, and lead to folly, misery, and madness; to all that is despicable or deplorable. As religion is the comfort, superstition and fanaticism are the bane and curse of human nature. Let us ever beware of excess, even in good and laudable pursuits; for wisdom, and virtue, and happiness, all dwell with the golden mediocrity. Our exhortations to religion must indeed be warm and animated'; because the greater part of men err, rather in not reaching the desirable point, than by going beyond it. Yet cautions are also necessary, lest the willing, the zealous, the tenderhearted, should be urged, by their own ardour and by persuasion, to dangerous and unhappy ex

tremes.

We have, I think, seen that the lively, animating summons contained in the words, Awake, thou that sleepest,' is necessary to a great part of mankind, whose feelings are become callous,

and who (to repeat the emphatic words of Scripture) have a heart of stone, instead of a heart of flesh; necessary to many, who are, upon the whole, commendable for the general decency and propriety of their conduct in the world, as the world now is circumstanced. Even good kind of people, as they are called, and appear to men, are not sufficiently awakened to the calls of religious duty. They acquiesce in decencies, decorums, plausibilities, and the cold formal morality which may be practised on the most selfish motives, for worldly interest, for health, and for pleasure. They are not sufficiently sensible of the gospel truths, its great promises, and its dreadful denunciations of vengeance. They are virtuous bea

thens; followers of the religion of nature, not that of Christ. The world approves them, and therefore they approve themselves; but can the world save them? Can they save themselves? No; assuredly, if Christianity be not a fable, they must come to Christ for salvation.

Persons who live in pleasure, that is, who make vain and sensual pleasure the sole business of their lives, are expressly said, in Scripture, to be dead while they live. They appear with smiles of perpetual gaiety; are often furnished with riches and honours; but yet, in the Scripture sense, they are dead, if they are not alive to Christ. What avail their worldly ornaments? The soul takes no real delight in them, because it naturally aspires to higher things. So have I seen a nosegay of tulips, and pinks, and roses, put into the cold hand of a dead corpse, in a coffin, while the poor image of what once was man, could neither see the gaudy tints, nor smell the fragrance.

Shall we then not cry aloud, as we are commanded, in the hope of awakening such unthinking persons to a sense of their own miserable condition, and the hopes afforded by the gospel? Happy for ourselves and our fellow-creatures, if we could address a slumbering world with the trump of an archangel, uttering these enlivening words, Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead; and Christ shall give thee light.'

All persons whatever, however decent and moral, that are in an unregenerated state, are represented, in the strong metaphorical language of Scripture, as dead; but happily it is a death from which we may raise ourselves by prayer; and returning life will be cherished by heavenly influ

ence.

'Christ shall

For what says the friendly call? give thee light.' The sun of righteousness shall shine into the dark chambers of thy bosom, dispel the shades of ignorance, and disperse the phantoms of folly and vanity that sported in the sunless region. Think, poor darkling mortal, what is promised thee! Christ shall give thee light.' As the sun in the morning breaks into thy chamber windows, and thou arisest from thy bed to feel his genial beams, and see all nature reassuming her beautiful colours; so the light of Christ, the light of grace, shall beam upon the soul, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, and thou shalt arise, and see the truth as it is in Jesus -see the beauty of holiness-the day-spring from on high-feel new vital warmth glowing in thy bosom; and though you have lien among the pots, (in the mire and rubbish of worldly vanity,)

yet shall you be as a dove which hath silver wings, and her feathers like gold."

After living the few days of our pilgrimage thus awake to God, awake to Christ, awake to the blessed influences of the Holy Ghost, your body, indeed, shall lie down, and pay that debt to nature which we must all pay; yet your soul shall separate from it, (though not without a pang, yet) full of hope. Old age, or disease, or accidents will indeed bring your poor, frail, perishing flesh (for such is that of the strongest, the youngest, the most beautiful of us all) to the grave; your bones must lie down in the dust, from which they were taken, and the mourners shall go about the streets; but let them not mourn without hope. Thy flesh shall rest in hope; peaceful shalt thou sleep till the morning of the resurrection; when the trumpet shall sound, and a voice shall be heard, sweeter than the sweetest music to the reviving ear: "Awake! awake! thou that sleepest, and, arise from the dead, and I will give thee light, life, glory, and immortality. Sleep no more! Arise, put on thy beautiful garments!-My glory is rising upon thee. Go-blessed spirit,-and in the vesture of a new and glorified body, shine among the spirits of just men made perfectthyself a spirit, an immortal spirit. Sleep no more in the arms of death; for death is subdued; and as, like a faithful soldier, you watched with me in the militant state, you shall now join me in the triumphal. Sleep no more the sleep of death; but rise, and exult in light ineffable!"

Psalm lxviii. 13.