tions to be enabled to amend wherever we have done amiss; and to all this, if there be added a humble, regular, obedient attendance on those gracious means of spiritual improvement, which have been vouchsafed to the church of God through many trials and perplexities, down to this day; if you thus endeavor to serve your God and Father from day to day, and from week to week, you need not doubt that so far at least you have made progress in the fulfilment of the sacred rule of "godliness with contentment.'

But we must, as I before said, be very careful in this as in other cases; be careful, I say, not to separate what God hath joined together; we must not be satisfied with a form of godliness without real contentment, nor with a show of contentment without godliness.

Remember, then, that as we none of us can choose our stations nor our places, so we all have very difficult duties to perform in them. To live an easy, undisturbed life, is out of the question. I mean it is out of the question for any one who would faithfully do his duty to his God and Savior.

Hence the necessity of contentment; not that we may grow indolent and slothful, but the very contrary; that we may take things as they are, and do our own duty under them; never expecting that the world will grow better, or our difficulties less, but earnestly hoping that we may grow better, and more worthy of the great name by which we are called.

Then only can we truly lead a godly and contented life, free from the slavery of the world, and of our own evil passions, walking always in the love and fear of God, and having resigned our wills to his.

It is unquestionably in this frame of mind that true devotion consists; and if we are not habitually praying and endeavoring in this way to regulate our affections before our omniscient Judge and Savior, we may indeed have religion enough to satisfy the world or our own feelings, to pass respectably through life, and to meet death with decency and calmness-but what will all this avail, if God shall try us by a different rule, even

by his most strict and sacred precepts delivered to us in his gospel?

And yet certain it is--and unless we are infidels we cannot deny or doubt it-that by this rule we shall be judged, according to his own most awful warning :

If any man (said he) hear my words, and obey them not,
I judge him not.

that is, not now, in this present life of trial; nevertheless he shall not escape-for

He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words,

Hath one that judgeth him.

The word that I have spoken

The same shall judge him in the last day.

SERMON XXXII.

CHRISTIAN PREPARATION.

AMOS iv. 12.

"Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!"

THESE few but solemn words form part of an address delivered by divine authority to the Jews, under the following circumstances.

The kingdom having been, after the death of Solomon, divided into two parts (as all persons know who turn their attention to Scripture history), and thenceforth be coming two separate states, the one called the kingdom of Israel, and the other, that of Judah; the kings of Israel were, with few (if any) exceptions, given to idolatry, and in other respects too like their founder, the usurper Jeroboam, the son of Nebat.

Nevertheless, some of them were powerful and successful monarchs, among whom may particularly be mentioned Jeroboam the Second, who, in his wars with the Syrians, prevailed against them, and recovered Damascus and other ancient long-lost possessions of the Israelites. With this success, no doubt, he and his subjects were much elated; but it does not appear that they were at all the more inclined to seek Jehovah, the God of their fathers, or to acknowledge their own past sinfulness with true penitence and resolutions of amendment. At this time, to warn them of their danger, and of the ruin that awaited them without timely repentance, God sent to them two of his messengers the prophets, if so be they would listen, before it should be too late, to the voice of mercy.

These two prophets were Hosea and Amos.

The writings of these holy men have been preserved to us, and they contain abundant and awful proof of the

dreadful corruptions into which the Israelites of that time had fallen; proof, also, no less decisive and awful (if any were wanting), of the dreadful indignation of God against those who despise his warnings, his goodness, his forbearance and long-suffering.

With respect to the prophet Amos, it appears that he was specially called out of the land of Judah to prophesy to Israel, and that he fulfilled his commission with the most heroic courage, delivering his warnings at Bethel itself, the chief place of Israelitish idolatry (as we find in the seventh chapter).

He, indeed (as was the case with most of the prophets), was commissioned to utter the divine counsels, not merely as they respected his own nation of the Jews, but other nations also, the inhabitants of the neighboring countries and cities.

Yet though his warnings (see the first and second chapters) are severe toward Damascus, Gaza, Tyrus, Edom, Ammon, Moab, and even Judah, it is against Israel that his most indignant threatenings are denounced, for their forgetfulness of their God, and their oppression of one another.

And then, in this fourth chapter, he proceeds to mention the different judgments which, one after another, God had sent on them; famine and want of bread, then want of rain and water, then blasting and mildew, pestilence and war. And then he refers to some awful destruction by fire from heaven, or perhaps lightning, the particulars of which have not been recorded. But something of the kind seems to be certainly implied in these words: "I have overthrown some of you, as God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah, and ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning: yet have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord."

And then, since all had been in vain, and not even these awful judgments could move their stony hearts, he seems to say, that nothing more could be done, their destruction as a nation was unavoidable.

"Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel !"
[And] because I will do this unto thee,
Prepare to meet thy God, O Israel!"

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That is, prepare thyself, if penitent, to meet him with supplications, prayers, and tears; but if still hardened and impenitent, to encounter his just vengeance and fiery indignation. But at all events, whether penitent or impenitent, grieved or hardened, "prepare, O Israel, to meet thy God;" still thy God, though thou hast disowned him.

Now, whatever might be the condition and conduct of those Israelites, it cannot, I suppose, be imagined by any person of the least consideration, that such a warning as this is less applicable or less necessary for us than it was for them. For, like them, we have received warnings and notices in abundance of what we are to expect; like them, too, alas! we have, for the most part, disregarded those warnings, and gone every one his own way.

However, meet our God we must, prepared or unprepared; and surely it were far better to meet him now with sorrow, shame, and sincere endeavors after amendment, than to meet him hereafter in the day of his wrath, and when the door of mercy shall be for ever closed.

As Christians, then, immortal spirits redeemed by the blood of Jesus the Son of God, placed here for a little space on our passage and trial for eternity, preparation is our business-and our only business: preparation, that is, for the great changes which are drawing on upon us, and of which we must all soon be witnesses; but whether in joy or in sorrow, in hope or in despair, it is left to ourselves to determine.

Now religious preparation implies in it, at least these three things: First, serious forethought; Second, actual search and inquiry; Third, a resolute course of practice suitable to what appears to be the truth of our condition with respect to the future.

Without these, it is vain to flatter ourselves that we are "preparing to meet our God."

Serious forethought and anxiety about what end we are coming to, the reasonableness or rather the neces sity of this, is what no thoughtful person can deny or question.