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in your own parents a bad example? Have you been led far from the ways of godliness, even before you ever heard of them? Have you never been taught in your childhood to distrust your own heart? never taught to read the blessed Word of God? never been told, or in any way taught to pray? Let all this have been the case with you let your advantages and opportunities have been few and rare indeed. Yet something you have known-something of the shame of doing wrong, the comfort of doing right—something of a check and a pang within your bosom, or a calm and blessed satisfaction there? Have you known only this? and have you, with your eyes thus open to the right, wilfully and purposely done the wrong? then to you it is sin. I know not what it may have been, but I ask-Has it been a thought encouraged, a word spoken, an action done, and has it been deliberately persisted in, when met by nothing more than a check from your conscience, or a blush of conscious shame upon the cheek? then to you it is sin, sin that must be forgiven and forsaken, or sin that will not fail to work out your destruction to all eternity, as surely as the unheeded leak will at last sink the whole stately vessel.

SERMON II.

FORGETFULNESS OF GOD.

PSALM IX. 17.

"The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God."

THE man of honest purpose will bless God from his heart, for the decided language of the holy Bible. The double-minded man might wish to be able to plead a want of clearness in the inspired word, and, therefore, an excuse for misunderstanding on his own part. There is no want of clearness on any point where the salvation of man is the point considered. For instance, where is the obscurity of this sacred sentence, "The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the people that forget God?" If we disregard it either in our principles or our practice, the fault is not to be laid to the difficulty of the Scripture. So far as the comprehension of man's mind is concerned, the language is plain enough. The double-minded man might tell where the difficulty really lies.

I. This passage of Scripture, in its chief sense, seems to refer to those nations in which the Lord God was once known, but who have gradually forsaken and denied Him, and by whom He may be now said to be almost forgotten. Their state has been increasing impenitency, and therefore a gradual hardening under the means of grace. Thus they have, in fact, "treasured up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God." This has been their own deliberate act and deed, and therefore they have brought themselves under the sentence of indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, which shall be revealed at the day of perdition-their own deliberate act and deed, I repeat, for it is not till men have themselves almost put out the bright shining of the candle, that the Lord "removes the candlestick out of his place."

It is not, however, to the national guilt of a whole people that I would call your attention, nor to the state of a nation in which the light of a revealed religion can be at last but dimly traced. I would have you consider with me the guilt of individuals, even the individual inhabitants of a country like our own, where the light of the gospel shines forth with noontide brightness. Yes, it is among ourselves that I would bring forward this awful sentence, and I would

urge it upon you; if it will be thus with the wicked, and with those that forget God, in those nations where the word of God is not found, and among a people where the will of God is but imperfectly known, how will it be with ourselves when we are called upon to meet our Judge, and hear our sentence. Their knowledge is ignorance compared to our's; their light, the dimness of darkness compared to our's. "That servant," said our blessed Lord, "which knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." All men, indeed, will have to answer for the degree of light which they have had, and we are not passing any judg ment upon those nations where the light is almost gone out, when we speak of their responsibility, and of the coming doom of those among them who have not lived up to that light. It is according to the word of God, that all nations may be proved guilty, in their several degrees, of holding the truth in unrighteousness, of knowing something of the right and yet doing the wrong, and thus, to use the words of a well-known wri

ter, "all may be found of guilty of acting in opposition to their knowledge and the conviction of their own consciences. All have been acquainted with many leading truths concerning moral duties, but their depravity imprisoned those truths, and so restrained them from influencing their conduct. All might have known far more than they did, had they not hated the light, through love of sin: indeed, to this day, no man of any sect or nation perfectly lives up to his own principles. All, at some times, and in some things, do what they know to be wrong, and omit what they know to be their duty; so that the plea of ignorance cannot be admitted in its full latitude, in favour of any but idiots, for all rebel against that light not only which they might have obtained, but which they actually possess."

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II. Let us turn, however, to the consideration of the Scripture before us with a close reference to ourselves in this land of clear gospel-light; and may the Lord and Giver of life' be present with us now, and make us earnest and anxious to receive that grace, which He is more willing to give than we are to ask.

"The wicked shall be turned into hell." There are few who profess to know any thing of the ways of God to man, who question this; and the more decent part of the community would, perhaps, gravely express their fears, that

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