mands you to pray to him-not making use of this appointed method of obtaining forgiveness, and sanctification, and eternal life; you must necessarily remain guilty and corrupted-children of wrath and heirs of bell. This is the conclusion that the word of God forces upon you, and from which no ingenuity can enable you to escape. And have you courage to rest in this conclusion? Are you prepared for enduring the gnawings of "the worm that never dies," and the torments of "the fire that is never quenched ?" Are you ready to meet in judgment, and to bear through eternity, the vengeance of that God whose commandment you have disobeyed, and whose kindness you have set at nought? None of you, I trust, is so stout-hearted. "Arise, then, and call upon your God." "Seek him

while he may be found, call upon him while he is near." Delay not till death has formed an impassable gulf between you and your Maker. You are now not far from the graves where the dust of many of your fathers, and your neighbors, and your friends, is reposing in awful and unbroken silence. And you know not how soon-you know not how suddenly-your dust shall be mingled with theirs. O then, improve this the "day of your merciful visitation"—and "harden not your hearts." Live no longer "without God in the world." Let it not be said of any one of you, when you are sleeping in the earth, "This is the grave of one who once had free access to the throne of grace, but never went to it-never bent his knees-never lifted up his eye to heaven-never uttered a devout petition-never conceived one cordial wish for the salvation of his soul. And now the ear of mercy is shut, and the power of addressing it is gone forever." O thoughtless and prayerless sinner, return unto Him whom you have forsaken, and away from whom you can have no comfort in distress, no happiness in life, no hope at the hour of dissolution. Return to him-return to him with your whole heart; return to him through Jesus Christ, who

is the true and living way; and he will "receive you graciously"—he will "love you freely"-he will put into your heart "the spirit of grace and supplication' he will guide you through the wilderness in which you are now wandering with heedless steps; and he will at length conduct you into the land of promise and of eternal rest.

SERMON XVI.*

THE PENITENT'S PRAYER.

JEREMIAH xvii. 14.

"Save me, O Lord, and I shall be saved."

THESE are the words of a true penitent. It is probable that they were used by the Prophet, in reference to the persecutions in which he was involved, as a messenger of God, and a preacher of righteousness. But if they were rightly employed by him, when exposed to outward or partial dangers, with still greater propriety may they be employed by those who feel that they are subject to all the evils and perils which sin brings upon its votaries. And it is in this application that we propose to make them the subject of our present discourse.

I. In the first place, then, we may regard them as expressing a deep concern about salvation, and an earnest desire to obtain it.

Every man's real state as a sinner consists in his being under a sentence of condemnation and under the dominion of depravity; and in his being liable, in a

Preached in St. George's Church, before the celebration of the Lord's Supper, on Sabbath, 5th November, 1825.

future world, to all the threatened and dreadful consequences of his violation of the divine law. This is the fact; though it often, alas! too often, happens that those with respect to whom it is most undeniably true, are either not aware of it, or not alive to it; and though continuing to be thus ignorant, or thus careless, they have nothing to expect but final and inevitable ruin.

All, however, are not so insensible to the horrors of their situation. There are some who have been awakened to a conviction of their sin and misery, who not merely acknowledge that they are transgressors, but are roused to a serious and alarming view both of the degradations and of the perils which are attached to that character, and who are oppressed by an overpowering perception, and a deep unconquerable feeling, of the helplessness and hopelessness of their fallen condition. In such circumstances there exists a strong and restless anxiety to be delivered from the evils with which their consciences are burdened, and from that everlasting destruction into which sin will ultimately plunge its victims, and which rises up before them as the fate to which they are justly doomed. Looking up to God, and beholding in him the Being whose will they have disobeyed, whose goodness they have despised, whose indignation they have provoked; looking forward to futurity, and realizing "the judgment of the great day," ""the worn that never dies," and "the fire that never shall be quenched ;" and calling to mind, and dwelling upon, the multitude of circumstances by which their guilt has been aggravated, and by which their punishment shall be increased; how dreadful the apprehensions by which they are agitated! how poignant their distress, how intense and vehement their desire for deliverance from the divine displeasure, and from "the wrath to come!"

But the true penitent is troubled not merely at the thought of condemnation; nor does he confine his longings to deliverance from it. The wrath to which he is exposed may be first and uppermost in his mind;

nor are we to wonder that for a season it should absorb every other consideration, and that it should never cease to occupy a large portion of his anxiety. But his views of salvation are much more enlarged. He adverts not merely to the greatest and most overwhelming of the calamities of which his sinfulness is productive he regards every one of them with proportional concern, and is solicitous for its removal. He not only cherishes a lively aversion to all that stings him with remorse, or that fills him with alarm; he mourns also the loss of those positive blessings of which his apostacy has deprived him, and thirsts for their recovery. He limits not his attention to any one department of his sinful and miserable estate, nor treats the most inconsiderable portion of it with coldness or unconcern; he surveys it through all its variety and extent, and feels alive to all the fears it is fitted to create, and to all the pain it is fitted to inflict, and to all the solicitude it is fitted to awaken. And salvation, in its most comprehensive import, becomes the object of his intensest interest and of his fondest affection, as implying his emancipation from all that is most formidable, and his attainment of all that is most precious, to a fallen but immortal nature. The anxiety of which he is conscious is not merely to escape from hell; as if, escaping from hell, he were careless about his future destiny; he knows that he has lost heaven, the place of happiness and purity, for which he was originally formed, and which is worthy of his best ambition, and he is desirous to regain it. It is not merely to be relieved from the terror of God's anger, as if, would God but cease to frown on him, he were careless how God might regard him otherwise; but to be reconciled to him and to "walk in the light of his countenance," from the persuasion that this would be alike his honor and his joy. It is not merely to be restored to the favor of God, and to the hope of heaven, as if he would be satisfied to have these along with the gratification of still unmortified passions, and the possession of a still rebel