to be admitted into heaven, doubtless he would sustain a great disappointment-he would find there no pursuits, he would hear there no discourse but what he disliked on earth.

"Heaven is not heaven, is not a place of happiness, except to the holy.

"For think only what would be the condition of an irreligious unholy person, if he were thrust into the society of saints and angels. How forlorn would he wander through the courts of heaven! he would find no one like himself; he would see in every direction the marks of God's holiness, and these would make him shudder. He would feel himself always in the presence of God. He could no longer turn his thoughts another way, as he now can when conscience reproaches him.

He would know that the eternal eye was ever upon him; and that eye of holiness, which is joy and life to holy creatures, would seem to him an eye of wrath and punishment. God cannot change his nature; holy he must ever be. But while he is holy, no unholy soul can be happy in heaven."

Think, then, I beseech you, and reflect on these things, while yet the power of thought and reflection remains to you.

Would you have your eternal portion with miserable wicked men, who have departed this life out of God's faith and fear, with lost, abandoned, yet immortal spirits, for whom there can be no more mercy, no more hope, no not to all eternity-would you have your portion with these, or with the holy men who have gone before us, prophets, martyrs, and confessors, whose lives, like faithful Abraham's, were devoted to the love and service of their and our God?

Now the choice is in your power; you know not any moment but it may be withdrawn from you; in any moment we may be cut off, as you very well know.

O then let us be wise betimes-let us earnestly seek after those dispositions, and graces, and habits now, which would suit the blessed spirits in heaven; otherwise we may know for certain that we shall find no ad

mittance there; we shall be shut out for ever; the door once closed will be never again opened; and the recollection of the precious opportunities we have wasted, the precious time we have mispent, will be among the bitterest of those bitter tortures.

Again then, I say, think of these things and be wise betimes.

For it is no imaginary danger that threatens us, but one real, positive, and tremendous; one, too, that the great God himself is ever warning us of: and if all shall be found too little to rouse us now, what will be our thoughts when we shall be wakened from our graves by the last trumpet, how shall we dare to meet him who will no longer be our Savior!

SERMON XXIII.

THE CHURCH AN UNWELCOME PROPHET.

1 KINGS Xxii. 8.

"There is yet one man, Micaiah the son of Imlah, by whom we may inquire of the Lord: but I hate him; for he doth not prophesy good concerning me, but evil."

ONE of the portions of sacred history which the church has been most careful to teach all her diligent hearers, by selecting almost the whole of it to be read in the course of her Sunday lessons, is the life and death of Ahab, the worst of the kings of Israel. The reason is, that his crimes and errors, however shocking, were so very natural, so very like what we see and feel every hour among ourselves.

For example, nothing can be more natural or more common, yet surely few things more inexcusable, than the temper expressed in these words: "I hate him, because he doth not prophesy good of me, but evil." Nothing, I say, can be more natural than this: for who likes to be told of evil to come, and hindered from pursuing favorite schemes, upon which he has long set his heart? especially when, as in this case, his conscience tells him that he deserves no good, and cannot therefore expect God's blessing. It is no wonder men should shrink from advice which passes so unfavorable a judgment on them, and represents their own condition to themselves and others as beyond measure dangerous and disgraceful. But although this is no wonder, it is a very great folly indeed: folly of that inexcusable kind, which is sure in the next world, and almost sure in this, to bring after it the punishment of deliberate wickedness. For how earnestly soever one's heart may

be set upon this or that thing, who that coolly considers for a moment would not wish to be warned in time, so that if it were really evil for him, he might give up the pursuit of it altogether? Who does not see, in every one, and despise, in every one but himself, the folly and childishness of accounting a man your enemy, because he tells you the truth for your good?

The thing cannot be put in a stronger light than it is by the circumstances of the king of Israel, when he spoke the words in the text. He was just entering on a dangerous war, and he knew well enough, for all his heathenish behavior, that there was only one power in the world that could bring him safe out of it; and that power was God Almighty. But his conscience told him also, but too clearly, that he was in sight of the just and holy being, stained with many of the worst sins, an idolater, a murderer, a corrupter of his people; to which sins he was so deeply besotted, that no warning, he well knew, had any chance of making him repent in earnest. Good reason had he to think, that neither in this war, nor anything else which he should undertake, he was likely to obtain the blessing of God, or to receive an encouraging answer from his prophets, should he ask their advice what to do. Accordingly, instead of going to him who alone was sure to give a true answer, he betakes himself to the miserable shift of asking certain corrupt prophets, who were ready enough to use God's name for vile any of deceiving souls; these he purpose assembles together, and asks them, "Shall I go up to Ramoth-Gilead and prosper ?" They answered, as a lying spirit had taught them, "Go up and prosper: for the Lord shall deliver it into the hand of the king." Upon this encouragement, in which it should seem he had himself no real reliance, he makes up his mind to the unspeakable madness of venturing into danger without first trying to make God his friend by sincere repentance. And having still one friend who feared God, when that friend advises him to find out a true prophet of the Lord, and inquire of him also, he betrays his own foolish and wicked heart by those words in the text:

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"There is yet one man, by whom we may inquire of the Lord but I hate him, for he doth not prophesy good of me, but evil." Here then you have a person, wise enough generally in worldly matters (for such undoubtedly king Ahab seems to have been), refusing, in a matter of life and death, and that to be decided in a few days-refusing, I say, so much as to ask advice of the only good adviser he could find, because he suspected the advice would be unpleasant: refusing, as long as he dared, to inquire of the Lord, lest the Lord should dissuade him for his good. And to complete the picture of what people come to who have lived so as to make God their enemy, when he had been shamed into sending for Micaiah, he only raged against him, and totally disregarded his warning. He goes on obstinately into the war, and is killed shamefully in the first battle, leav ing a curse upon his whole family.

It requires only reading over, to pass a right judgment on all this. But now let us suppose for a moment, that, as we by the help of Holy Scripture are enabled to look back on the case of Ahab, and wonder at his rash impiety, so Ahab in his turn might have been taught as it were to look onward: suppose that Micaiah or some other prophet, had come to him in the word of the Lord, and told him of a sort of people, who should one day appear in the world, to whom God would reveal for a certainty, what in Ahab's time men only guessed at ; the doctrine of eternal life or death, heaven or hell, prepared for them hereafter. Suppose Ahab was told of a sort of people, who should hear from the Son of God himself, that a worm which never dies, and a fire which never shall be quenched, is prepared for the wicked; and that hell, the place where they must go, if they die in their sins, is well worth avoiding at the cost of a right eye plucked out, or a right arm cut off;-would not Ahab, with much reason, have said, that these things were unspeakably more terrible than what God had threatened to him by Elijah? his own violent death, dogs licking his blood, and the utter and bloody destruction of his family? And might he not also have