the grave? Never! none can say this, and even if you could say "never," can you speak of the future? May you not perish suddenly, instantaneously? Is it not certain that we may, each of us, look our neighbour in the face and say, "Truly as the Lord liveth, and as thy soul liveth, there is but a step between me and death ?" "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." Turn, says Jesus, turn from the sufferers to yourselves.

Again. Look from their destruction to the perdition of hell.

The Jews were busily thinking of the death of the eighteen who had perished at Siloam, imagining the state of their mangled bodies, and calculating the amount of their crime: but Jesus startled them by bidding them look from the sufferers to themselves, from time to eternity, and behold in their destruction an image of the perdition of hell. "There is," said He, "the calamity in the other world, as well as here; let the awful calamities of this, remind you of the calamities there, which are far, infinitely more, awful." Such counsel was in full harmony with the uniform tendency of the preaching of Christ, to lead the minds of men from the present to the future, from the seen to the unseen. He requires all to be familiar with the infinite and the eternal, that they may live under the elevating influence of the Sublime. Hence, then, my brethren, we are called to send our thoughts, on the wings of faith, into the eternal world, and ponder the death of the damned.

Lastly. Repent, that you may escape that perdition. Helpless and irremediable though the misery of hell be, and agonizing its despair, every sinner has been doomed to it. Every soul that has actually sinned, and especially by rejecting or neglecting the Gospel, has received sentence of condemnation

to all this misery and despair. Mark you, I say, has received : yes, every man man has been put on his trial, has been found guilty, has received sentence of death. "He that believeth not is condemned already." You may ask, Where then is the need of the Judgment-day? I answer, though judgment is passed, and sentence is pronounced by God, in His Word generally, and His own mind individually, this is to be published to the Universe, and it will be published at the last Great Day. The question then to be asked is, How may I escape the execution of this sentence? "Repent ye," says the Son of God," repent ye, and believe the Gospel.” Faith, --that simple and beautiful act of the mind-faith can save you-faith in Christ, as the Saviour: faith and only faith. To believe in Him, is to believe that you are a condemned sinner: this will lead to repentance, a hearty sorrow for your sins, followed by a uniform endeavour to forsake them. It is, to believe in the atoning efficacy of His blood, as the only thing on account of which God will save you; and this will make you humble and grateful, so grateful that, constrained by the love of Christ, you will not live unto yourself, but unto Him who died for you, and rose again.

The question of questions, then, my brethren, which I would put to each of you, is, Have you repented? If you have not, I ask you, Why? Do you believe these words or no? You have been spared, whilst others have perished: you have been in danger, perhaps you have been in danger a hundred times; and more, "if you do business in great waters," you have been living within a few inches of death; yet you have been spared : but does your preservation prove your security that you shall not die in an awful manner, that you shall not perish in hell?

Look at the words which follow the text: they contain the parable of the barren fig-tree: that tree had been spared, had been suffered to cumber the ground three years, and yet another year it was "let alone:" but if it did not bear fruit during

that year, it was to be cut down.

Was its past preservation

Oh, no! Here is a warning

any security against the future?
you, for myself, for every one of us.

for

Will you, then, to-day obey the voice which speaks in these providences? If you will not, it argues ill for your state of mind: it shows a hardened heart and a seared conscience, and it argues ill for your prospects. Once there was a city besieged, it was stormed, its gates burst open, its walls battered down, houses were in flames, children and women screaming, men running to and fro, blood flowing down the streets; and yet in that city, in the midst of these sounds and scenes, there sat a philosopher, so absorbed by his studies as to be unconscious of danger, till a soldier's hand grasped him, and his sword trembled over his head. I repeat it, if I repeat it, if you will not hear

this voice, it argues ill for your

prospects: the voice of God

has sounded in its most solemn and awakening tones, "Prepare What can he now do more than strike

to meet thy God!" the blow? Beware! It is true the poor sufferers perished; and it is equally true that thousands and tens of thousands of our fellow-creatures have perished in Ireland, in the Crimea, in India, and elsewhere; but still God has arrows in his quiver, an arrow ready, it may be for you,-an arrow in his bow, an arrow aimed at your soul. Christ has only to speak the word, and you are lost. I ask once more, will you hear this voice? If you will not, "neither would you be persuaded though one rose from the dead."

R

But of some of you, aye of many of you, brethren, I am persuaded better things, and things that accompany salvation, -that you have "sorrowed to repentance," that you have sorrowed after a godly manner; for "godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of."

SERMON XI.

JAMES V. 16, 17, 18.

"THE EFFECTUAL FERVENT PRAYER OF A RIGHTEOUS MAN AVAILETH MUCH. ELIAS WAS A MAN SUBJECT TO LIKE PASSIONS AS WE ARE, AND HE PRAYED EARNESTLY THAT IT MIGHT NOT RAIN; AND IT RAINED NOT ON THE EARTH BY THE SPACE OF THREE YEARS AND SIX MONTHS. AND HE PRAYED AGAIN, AND THE HEAVENS GAVE RAIN, AND THE EARTH BROUGHT FORTH HER FRUIT."

66

Prayer has been well defined as the offering up of our desires to God for things agreeable to his will, in the name and through the mediation of his Son Jesus Christ, and by the aid of his Holy Spirit. This is the strict signification of the word prayer: but, in its wider application, the term includes confession, praise, and thanksgiving."

The duty of prayer is enforced both in the Old and New Testaments, by several weighty considerations; and many