unto death." Fallen man needs a divine guide: he is a lost sheep wandering on the mountains; he is a traveller who has lost his way; a blind man groping in darkness; alone, childish, ignorant, and helpless. God in covenant offers himself as the guide; the Holy Spirit guides to Jesus; he guides to the Father; and the Father takes us by the hand, receives with kindness, and leads forward in the footsteps of Jesus. If the Christian life is a pilgrimage, it is a pilgrimage begun, continued, and completed under the guidance of our God. Is it a warfare? He "teaches our hands to war, and our fingers to fight." Is it a voyage? He gives the vessel the chart, the compass, the pilot, the anchor, the favouring gale; he makes us to pass in safety over the waves of this troublesome world; he brings us to the haven where we would be. Is it nothing, O ye children of men, to have such a guide in God? From sin he will guide to pardon; pardoned, he will guide you to peace; at peace, he will guide you to hope; hopeful, he will guide you to joy; and thus made joyful by our God, you may be happy indeed. All through life he will be your guide.

However young some of you may be, at first entering into covenant with God (which you cannot do too early in life), and however many years it may please Him to spare you on earth, yet God's promise will be found sufficient for the longest life: the line that runs parallel with eternity, must of course reach as far as the extent of the little spot of this life. The danger, the scriptural danger, of falling away, is on your part, lest you be not sincere or faithful; lest you cherish some secret sin, or abuse your golden opportunities, or, after having seemed to set out well, began to linger oft, and then draw back. Here is the place for fear, for self-suspicion, self-examination, watchfulness, and much effort, in humble dependence on our God. As to his covenant itself it is everlasting: “He will guide even unto death."

And will he leave us there? It cannot be; for if he will "guide us unto death," as one part of our text says, and if he is "our God for ever and ever," as the other clause of the text declares, then he will guide us in death, through death, and over and beyond death. And so some have rendered this passage: instead of "he will be our guide even unto death," they render it, " he will be our guide even over death." There are in Scripture many very fine promises for the people of God in that most trying hour-for such it is to the thinking mind. Many stifle their fears of death and shun the subject. Many affect to laugh at death; and many rush on it with a rash presumption, or submit to it with sullen reluctance. But let a man only think, Death ends a life of probation, and introduces into a life of retribution; death carries the sinner's soul before his God, who judgeth not as man judgeth; death fixes a man's eternal state, for heaven or hell: there can be no return for a man to live his opportunities over again: let a man but think of this, and he will never mock the fears, doubts, sorrows, and anxieties of a dying bed. But God. will be our guide there, brethren, if we come to him in his covenant way: in death, through death, beyond death, he will be our guide: "My flesh and my heart faileth; God will be the strength of my heart and my portion for ever." For himself God was, of course, incapable of death; but as Mediator Christ died, and tasted death for all men. Dying as the atoning sacrifice for sin, and his sacrifice being accepted of the Father, he has taken away the fear of death —which is sin-for all his faithful people. "Though I pass through the valley

me.

of the shadow of death," they can say, "I will fear no evil, for thou art with "To die is gain." This Spirit is still their Comforter even then: their Father ceases not to love them even then. Why, would an earthly father feel his affection diminish at such an hour of his child's affliction? How much less will God, our heavenly Father, refuse to pity his poor child, struggling with the form of death. Will he not guide his quivering spirit to Him who is "the hiding-place from the winds, and the covert from the tempest; as a river of water in a dry place, and as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land?"

But we must conclude. In conclusion that question is again forced upon us, Is this God our covenant God? Time was when he was not: he was our God as a Sovereign and Judge, and a God offended and insulted; but not as our God in covenant. We knew not the office of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: we had no hope, besides a presumptuous one: our faith was only the name, our penitence was a shadow, and our love to God was a cold and dead faith. Such was our state. Are we not humbled? Have we not cause? But is this God our God now? That question has been asked before: I repeat it now, because now you have fresh means of judging. Are you deriving from God those benefits for which he covenants with his people? Are you receiving pardon from the Son, sanctification from the Holy Spirit, and grace and love from the Father? Nay, are you seeking for those things, and pleading your own covenant as your plea? Is God your guide from day to day, by his Word and Spirit, by the motives of the Gospel, by the example of Christ? Now those questions, faithfully applied, will help to settle the question, Is this God our God?

If he is not, do make him such. Let not this, which is the last of our great festivals of this year, pass by and see you still what you were—out of covenant with God. Without and beyond that covenant all is darkness, misery, and death; within all is life, blessedness, and light. Come while you may; death will soon be here: let it not find you strangers to our God, and to his grace, while his covenant, with such blessed promises, invites you to accept it. If there be motive in the cross of Christ-if there be persuasion in the grace of the Holy Spirit—if any influence in the Father's love-let this be a day of covenanting with God, in a covenant never to be broken,

To those who are coming presently to the sacrament I would say one word: I cannot, and I need not, say much. Time presses; our whole subject has addressed them; and the occasion connected with our sacrament to-day is too interesting, and excites feelings too deep for many words. For this is the day, even our Trinity Sunday, on which our church is to receive, I believe some sixty or seventy, or more, youthful members in full communion from this congregation. This is no every day occurrence. I have been, and still am, oppressed with the responsibility. I have laboured with them in private; my conscience and theirs are witnesses, that after having endeavoured faithfully to teach them and encourage them, I have also endeavoured, on the one hand, that I might restrain any of them who might be too forward or too careless, to restrain them from coming in their present state of mind to so sacred an ordinance; and, on the other hand, that I might encourage the weakest and most timid who ought to come; whom the Saviour himself (who never broke the bruised reed, nor quenched the smoking flax) would not discourage if he were

personally here. If in this difficult duty I have erred, and unintentionally made one sad whom the Lord would not have made sad, may the Lord himself forgive. But now having laboured to prepare, and been much encouraged by many hopeful signs and proofs that my labour in this matter has not been in vain in the Lord, let us go presently, with a prepared heart and quiet conscience, and a humble faith, to that spiritual feast, to receive the appointed tokens of the dying love of our blessed Lord and Saviour; and there to seek and to have faith in him exercised, gratitude to him, and to his Father, and to his Holy Spirit increased, and devotedness to this Triune God greatly confirmed. O may this be to you, my young friends, the first of many happy communions; the foretaste of heaven, as the grapes of Eschol, the specimen and the pledge of the fruits of Canaan!

To the young, and persons not yet confirmed, and to others not yet coming to the sacrament, who have felt their desires drawn out on this occasion, I would say, Look forward with hope, and prepare with diligence, that your time may come, if it please God to suffer you, you may be admitted to the same gracious privilege.

To elder Christians, who may come now, or who may have come on the last or present Sunday, let them yet endeavour to help the young with their prayers. If there are worldly friends of any of the young persons, I would earnestly entreat them to refrain from any thing like mockery or discouragement towards any one of these young disciples. Let brothers and sisters who may not at present feel as they ought to feel, and as I hope they will soon feel, the value of the Saviour, and the blessedness of an interest in the covenant of God-let them beware lest that warning should apply to them: "Whosoever shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the depths of the sea."

Let aged believers rejoice that so many are stepping forward in the Christian ranks, ready to supply their places, which they know must very soon be left vacant. Young and old, high and low, rich and poor, all you that have to die see that you have this God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-now, henceforth, over death, and beyond death, even for ever and ever.

THE UNALTERABLE NATURE OF THE DECISIONS OF THE JUDGMENT.

REV. G. SPRING, D.D.

UNION CHAPEL, ISLINGTON, MAY 16, 1835.

"And besides all this, there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence."-LUKE, xvi. 26.

No truth is more fully accredited by believers in divine revelation than that there will be a day when God will judge the world. O! it will be a day of deep concern and deep solicitude. Every mind in the universe will be awakened when God pronounces the destinies of men. It is a day that will lift the curtain-that will bring forward the long-expected scenes of the future world—that will usher the race of man into the regions of immortality-and that will disclose the catastrophe of that vast, magnificent plan which has occupied all time to accomplish. Think of Lazarus-think of Dives; and you will know how to estimate the designs and the decisions of the great and fearful day. It was, you know, the rich man that lay in that burning lake, and that the father of the faithful announced in his ears the unchanging decree that I have just read. He had been imploring Abraham to send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water to cool his tongue, because he was tormented in that flame. But even this was a boon that could not be granted in that world of torment: he in his life-time had received his good things, likewise Lazarus his evil things; but now Lazarus is comforted, and he is tormented. Besides, Lazarus could not go: there was an impervious, insurmountable barrier: "Between us and you," says the father of the faithful, "there is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot; neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence."

In this very affecting declaration, three things are distinctly observed: That by the allotments of his providence in the present world, the God of heaven does not distinguish between the righteous and the wicked; that at the close of their probationary state there will be a difference between them; and that their condition then will remain for ever unalterable.

In the first place, BY THE ALLOTMENTS OF HIS PROVIDENCE IN THE PRESENT WORLD GOD DOES NOT DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE RIGHTEOUS AND THE WICKED. It has been the grief of many good men that the dispensations of providence in this world afford so little evidence of the impartiality and rectitude of the divine government. Indeed without some intimation that the present is a state of trial rather than a retributive state, there would be no inconsiderable ground for their apprehension. It was the complaint of the wise man that "there is

a vanity that is common upon earth; that there be just men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the wicked; again there be wicked men unto whom it happeneth according to the work of the righteous." In the distribution of mercies and judgments in the present world there is so little discrimination of the moral character, that one might be tempted to contend it were matter of indifference to the Sovereign Ruler of events. "All things come alike to all: there is one event to the righteous and to the wicked-to him that serveth God, and to him that serveth him not: no man knoweth either love or hatred by all that is before him."

It is true that the friends of God enjoy a sweet composure of mind, an inward serenity of peace, a hope of pardon and acceptance which the wicked do not enjoy: but with regard to outward mercies, his enemies are often blessed above his friends. The Church has often complained that the wicked were happythat they that work wickedness are set up-that they that tempt God are ever delivered. The most choice comforts are often reserved for the proudest heart, the highest honours for the most flagitious life, the most remarkable deliverances for the most presumptuous. The Psalmist once thought to understand this, but it was too painful for him; his feet had almost gone, his steps had well nigh slipped; because he was envious at the foolish, when he saw the prosperity of the wicked. The men of the world are represented in the Scriptures as having their portion in this life: whether it be to shew the comparative meanness and insignificance of all earthly good, or that the Father of mercies is kind even to the evil and the unthankful; or to illustrate their own impenitence and obduracy; or to give them an opportunity of more rapidly filling up the measure of their iniquity; or to accomplish all these purposes-the fact is unquestionable that, in the history of our world, by far the greater portion of those who, like the rich man in the parable, have fared sumptuously every day, have been of the wicked rather than of the righteous. It is true that there are impressive indications of the divine declaration against iniquity; the hurricane, the volcano, the pestilence, the flood, the tempest, with all their terrific ravages, together with the numberless sorrows and many agonies that agitate the world in which we dwell, are tokens of human apostacy only as they are tokens of God's displeasure for its iniquities. Nor have there been wanting instances which could not fail to attract attention, in which the wrath of God has been revealed from heaven against the unrighteousness and the ungodliness of men. The whole world was swept away by the waters of the deluge: Sodom was overthrown as in a moment: Babylon sunk like a millstone into the depths of the sea. And yet an attentive observer will be drawn to the conclusion, that this is not the world in which the holy God designs to make the distinction between righteous and wicked men. The real disposition must be exhibited in the distributions of good and evil in accordance with their present character. The present world, therefore, is but the scene of trial with a view to a righteous retribution: we must look beyond if we would see the line of demarcation between the friends and the foes of God drawn with visible hand.

We follow the suggestions of our text, and observe, therefore, in the second place, that AT THE CLOSE OF THEIR PRESENT STATE OF TRIAL THERE WILL BE

A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE RIGHTEOUS AND THE WICKED.