If that is all, our subject has a second part. Are any of you proved to have been those who have been living in pleasure? Then this is God's judgment of the state of such: "SHE THAT LIVETH IN PLEASURE"-WHOEVER LIVETH IN PLEASURE" IS DEAD WHILE ALIVE." Now that is the sentiment, or rather the sentence, of God himself. "What does it mean? She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth :'-how can one be dead while alive? What a parodox; we cannot understand it." I think you can, if you try. Dead while alive. Think of that serious, pious Christian, once in the circle of your acquaintance, once a friend, and even a brother; but now he seems as one dead to all your pleasures; dead to the world; dead indeed unto sin. You say in scorn, that you might as well ask a dead man as ask him to join your worldly pleasure: he has become what you term a poor lifeless creature: he is buried alive. Then you can understand how a man may be dead while alive; alive naturally, and, though you may not know it, alive spiritually; and yet dead to what you call the pleasures of life. But, in God's judgment, your state is just the reverse to that; you are alive to pleasure, but dead towards God.

How true, how just, how striking that description! The dead neither move, nor see, nor hear, nor smell, nor feel. Your heart moves not in love to God; your mind's eye sees no suitableness in the Saviour; you hear not his voice; you perceive no fragrance in his name, like that of ointment poured forth; you feel not the constraining force of his dying love. The dead breathe not: there is no pulse of holy delight; no joy beating in that pleasure-loving heart. The dead sigh not and when does God hear from you the sighing of a contrite heart? The dead are cold; their touch is chilling to the hand: and you (I must speak faithfully, even though I offend for the moment, if I might but win your souls)-you, though warm in the service of pleasure, are cold as ice, cold as death, when God is mentioned. Thus are you without spiritual life, not quickened by the Holy Spirit, strangers to Him who is our life, as many of you who are still lovers of pleasure.

Then death is, further, a state of insensibility and helplessness. The dead body knows not that it is dead; it has no consciousness: and so they who are spiritually dead, are often unconscious of their state for years together; they give it no thought; they have no spiritual feeling. The thunder may roll over the dead body; the lightnings may flash around it; ministers may be preaching in the church on subjects of the deepest interest to every human being; the dead in the church-yard around, or in the vaulted chambers beneath, sleep on in utter indifference. So, oftentimes the thunders of the law of God disturb not the souls chained in pleasure; the flashes of God's wrath, which ever and anon break forth between the clouds and darkness which surround us, are by them less heeded than the lightning of a summer's evening. Ministers may preach how they please, they will not come to hear; or hearing they will not understand. O, there is a deadness, a stupor, an awful insensibility, in careless, pleasure-loving souls. And there is a helplessness too: no man hath quickened his own soul. Only Christ can command the dead man to arise, and be instantly obeyed. We are to exhort in his name, “ Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead;" but in saying it we look, and we entreat you to look, to Christ for his grace to make the command effectual. The dead soul is an impotent thing. It is good to feel this; the feeling it is a sign, often the first

sign, of life: let it lead you to entreat the grace of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life.

But further still: "She that liveth in pleasure, is dead while she liveth," because under sentence of death. If a criminal were convicted of murder, or some capital crime, and sentenced to death, in the interval between his sentence and his execution he is considered as dead in the eye of the law. The king might reprieve him for a season, or send him a free pardon; but in the eye of the law he is dead. And is there not a sentence of death passed on every one that is living in worldly pleasure? Is there no sin in not loving God with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength? Is there no sin in misemploying the talent of life-in wasting health, strength, and precious time, in a round of frivolity, luxury, dissipation, and sensuality? In all that there is sin, the continued cause of sin; and "the wages of sin is death." The sentence, therefore, is past: Lovers of pleasure, you are prisoners condemned to die. This is the interval between the sentence and the execution: you are reprieved for a little interval; you are dependent on the king's mercy: will you not humbly sue for his free pardon?

And that, as the minister of Christ, I am sent to offer. In the name of the King of Heaven, in the name of the King's own Son, who died to atone for the sins of man, I offer to every one this evening who has been living in pleasure, a free pardon, and a full salvation. Ye lovers of pleasure, look to that longneglected Saviour. In the midst of your vain mirth and sensual delights, you have thought nothing of the Man of Sorrows: you have not considered the anguish with which sin pierced his heart; the agony which he sustained under the load of our guilt; the horror which filled his mind, when God had forsaken him for a moment, as he might have justly forsaken us for eternity. And there, sinners, is your life: Christ is the way, the truth, and the life; he endured that sentence of death for us: there is life for your souls, if you will trust him for your salvation. And, lo, while feeling and confessing sin-while looking with anxious faith to Christ as you never looked before, God, you will find, has been at work in your souls, infusing life and grace. "You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins." He hath brought you who were living in pleasure to begin to live to God. “If any man be in Christ”— and if we are found in Christ, it is by a true faith-" If any man be in Christ he is a new creature; old things are passed away, behold all things are become new."

But are you afraid that you shall now lose all pleasure? You will lose the phantom, and gain the substance; you will throw away the counterfeit, and receive genuine gold; you will drop worldly pleasure, which is connected with death, which has death inseparably tied to it, and enjoy spiritual pleasure, which is connected with eternal life. While the lovers of pleasure are such, they wonder at Christians who will not run with them to the same excess of riotthat will not run their round of frivolity and dissipation; and yet it is a remarkable fact, that as soon as any of them become impressed with divine truth, see the evil of sin, the shortness of life, the work of Christ, the love of the Father, and the spiritual character of the religion of which the Holy Spirit is the inward teacher-they all, one after another, drop their love of vain pleasure, and see that there is, and must be, a wide distinction between the spirit of the world

and the spirit of Christ. Thus, while none go back from us to the world (except here and there a Demas, or a Judas, or a Simon Magus, or a hypocrite, or a backslider) many of the world are continually coming over to us. As they acquire a taste for new and spiritual pleasures, their taste for old vain pleasure is gone. They have tried vanity long enough: they know what the world has to offer; they have discovered the emptiness of its promises, the deceitfulness of its smiles, the insipid character of its pleasures. They well know that worldly pleasure deadens all spiritual feeling, choaks the good seed-enslaves, debases, surfeits, and wearies the spirit of man; that it is inconsistent with the love of God; that it ends in vexation, disappointment, and death. Hence, just as the burnt child dreads the fire, so in every renewed soul there is a holy dread of worldly pleasure. And if whoso liveth in pleasure is dead while alive, the world must excuse us, or, if they will not excuse us, they may call us unsociable, if they will: if our souls have any spiritual life, if we would cherish that life, if we would not become dead before God, how can the living and the dead be close and intimate companions?

But I had not meant to say much more which might seem harsh to those who will still be of the world; I was endeavouring to lead those who are desirous of coming out of the world to come into new life. "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace." The pleasure of spiritual religion (I mean the entering into the religion of the cross of Christ, heart and soul) are of a satisfying nature: they bring peace to the conscience. Does worldly pleasure effect that? Is every heart happy in the gay circle? There is something in the knowledge of God's reconciling love through Christ Jesus, which enters, pervades, and fills the heart-which sustains under trials, which elevates the affections, which refines the soul. Now you who have tried it most, know that worldly pleasure leaves sometimes an aching void, and sometimes a sting in the heart; that it fades and withers before the breath of trouble; that it debases the affections, and stupifies the soul. In the new pleasures to which I invite, there is an independence of man and outward things. The lover of pleasure is dependent on many things and persons for his gratification; but the pious Christian can be happy with his Bible and his God, though everything besides were gone. Though health, fortune, and friends, were all vanished, still he could say, or rather he could sing, with the prophet-" Although the fig-tree shall not bloom, neither shall fruit be in the vines, the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will joy in the God of my salvation." Thus there is an independence in religions pleasure; a pleasure independent of man; dependent on the faithful God. The Christian carries what has been well called a portable joy about with him, in the secret of his heart.

Then how noble, sublime, and glorious, are the objects with which religion is conversant. The knowledge of God, the greatest and the best of all beings; the wonders of creation; the mysteries of redemption; the covenant of grace; the system of Providence; the eternity that is to come, the grace and glory of Immanuel; the things of the Spirit of God; "whatsoever things are true; whatsoever things are honest; whatsoever things are just; whatsoever things are pure; whatsoever things are lovely and of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise," these things religion makes the subject of

pleasant acquaintance. Now what are worldly pleasures put by the side of spiritual pleasures? Will the topics of conversation in circles of worldly pleasure bear to be examined in the light of His word, who has said, that for every idle word that man shall utter they shall give account in the day of judgment? What is there in their world of fiction, so grand, so glorious, so vitally interesting, as the realities, the sober realities of our religion? What are the world's vanities to the pious Christian more than the toys of childhood to the man?

I add but another thought. Religious pleasures are the best, for they have the approving smile of God on them now, and they can be carried with the soul into another world, and there be ripened into perfection. The worldly man must contradict the plain Word of God if he fancies he is walking under the smile of God's favour. "If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." And the pleasures of sin are but for a season; they must die when you die: they will continue to live but in bitter remembrance. Now, why walk contrary to God? Why try to do without His smile who lights up heaven with gladness? Why meet His frown which fills hell with terror? Why still love pleasure; which you know leads to death?

"Stay, thou unhappy sinner, stay,

Smooth gliding down the flow'ry way,

The broad frequented road;

Stay wretch that dost in pleasure live,
And all thy joy on earth receive,
Thy soul is dead to God.

By death when summon'd to depart,
If dead to God, even then thou art
Excluded from the skies:

Shut up in darkness palpable,
And justly left to its own heil,
Thy soul for ever dies."

The subject has been

chiefly to lovers of pleasure: let me hope it has not spoken to them in vain. I have thus tried to shew them that their life is death, and to invite them to a new life, to new and better pleasures. And now who is persuaded? There must be the earnest desire, the vigorous effort, the determined resolution, the importunate prayer. The world is such a tyrant, pleasure such an enchantress, Satan so crafty; they will keep you if they can, bound in their three-fold cords for ever. May God enable you, by his great grace, to come out and be separate!

This subject must, if attended to, also have detected some who try to keep friends with the world and the professing Church of Christ; to have the pleasures of the world, and the credit of being religious at the same time. They are here to-day, to-morrow they are in the world's vanities: now in the religious meeting, presently in the gay party: bowing the knee to Christ in one place, bowing the knee, or the heart, to some golden image which the god of this world has set up and consecrated in another. But are they dead or alive? Are they living in pleasure, or living to God? My friends, that doubtful, mongrel, spotted sort of religion will not serve. A doubtful piety will prove but a sorry comfort in trouble. There must be decision in order to any real benefit from our religion. I cannot but fear that you have but skimmed

along the surface of religion, like the insect sipping the flower, or the bird just dipping its wings in the water. You have not come heart and spirit to religion, or you would have come heart and soul out of this vain world.

You, my brethren, who have so come, exhort over and over again those who are living in pleasure. You were so once living in danger; who but God made you to differ? I need not say, do not envy the world in their pleasures: you know that they will soon have done with pleasure for ever, unless they repent and find mercy through Christ. But this should be our heart's desire for themto recommend this religion whose ways are pleasantness indeed to their notice; and to draw them, if we can, to our gracious Saviour. To this object should tend your example, your influence, your prayers, from day to day. Shew them that while you must shun worldly pleasures, for your soul's life requires it, yet you are cheerful, contented, and happy. Pray for a blessing on this poor effort to win, if it be but one child, from vain pleasures over to God. The Lord grant at least one soul as my triumph, and my gracious reward for this evening's service.