but to deliver a message from God. Let it not, for a moment, be imagined, that the book of life, and the religion it reveals, are only necessary for the children of the poor, or their equally ignorant and destitute parents. Believe me, my brethren, little as some of us may now think of these subjects, an hour is fast approaching that will compel us to admit their infinite and awful importance for ourselves. In that hour the pomps and vanities of this world shall recede from our view, and the solemnities and realities of the next shall appear before us. Ah! could we persuade you to turn your thoughts to that period, and to dwell upon the scenes which shall then be witnessed by an assembled world, methinks you would be ready, one and all, to exclaim; Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his.

Thus have we endeavoured to consider and enforce the momentous truth contained in our text, as it regards Individuals and Families. Suffer me now to direct your attention to the last particular, which is to notice the bearing of this assertion upon

III. NATIONS.

The individual character will have a direct influence on the domestic character, and the domestic on the national. Nations that honor God shall be honored of Him, and such as despise Him shall be lightly esteemed. This the history of the world most plainly and pointedly declares. It is impossible not to perceive its truth in the Scriptural account of the rise, the victories, the progress, the decline, and the overthrow of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel. How remarkably were the words of Moses fulfilled to that people! And it shall come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the Lord thy God, to observe and to do all his commandments, which I command thee this day; that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth. And all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God. Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the field. The Lord shall cause thine enemies that rise up against thee to be smitten before thy face: they shall come out against thee one way, and flee before thee seven ways. And all people of the earth shall see that

royal city, Jerusalem, at one time the joy of the whole earth, having trampled on God's laws was indeed treated by him with marked contempt and summary vengeance. Upon its walls were written, with the finger of the Almighty, and in letters of blood, Them that honor me, I will honor; and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed.

But a more recent instance is at hand, in confirmation of the truth declared in the text. Look, for a moment, at the curses inflicted on a neighbouring nation, at the period of the French Revolution. France rejected the counsel of God against herself, and desecrated the holy Sabbath; yea, attempted to abolish it. One day in ten was appointed instead of one in seven, and that day employed not in the worship of Jesus but of Reason; in the enjoyment not of the peace of God but of sensual gratification; a communion not of saints but, I had almost said, of fiends; the picture and representation not of heaven, but of hell. How do our hearts bleed at the recital of enormities and wretchedness that scarcely admit of a parallel or a name !

Our own happy country outrode the storm-under the wise guidance of able senators, and the paternal government of a pious king, and favoured with that Divine blessing without which the wisdom of our senate would have been utter foolishness, and the troops of our sovereign perfect weakness-and escaped the destruction prepared for her by her foe. Still, we trust, God is with us. True, our late revered monarch, our late beloved father, sleeps in his grave and rests in peace, But, true also, his son sits upon his throne; and long may he sit! God save the king! in every sense of the term, but especially in the highest and best sense. Be this the prayer of every pious and loyal heart. Long may he live in the hearts and affections of his people! And, after giving satisfactory evidence of a real, a sound, and a scriptural conversion; after ruling over us in the fear of God for many, many years to come, as the nursing father of the church; may he, at some very distant period, be received to everlasting habitations, and be counted worthy to stand before the Son of man, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.

But allow me not only to declare my feelings as a loyal and devoted subject, but also to express my fears as a minister of Jesus, as an ambassador of Christ. Many indeed have been our advantages, but ungrateful have been our returns. Ah! my brethren, have we not reason to be alarmed at some of the crying sins of this nation? If, where much is given much will be required; if such only as honor God can expect to be honored by Him; have we not abundant reason to tremble under a sense of our solemn responsibility as a nation, and of our manifold transgressions as individuals.

But to leave the provinces, and to confine myself to this great Metropolis. And I do this the rather as I have the honor this morning of addressing the Right Hon. the Lord Mayor and the Sheriffs of this ancient and loyal city of Londonthe first city of the first empire in the world. I rejoice to see her chief magistrate, and the other officers of her bodypolitic, patronising the dissemination of the Scriptures (together with those various charities with which this great city