crimes, and yet many perish; let every man learn that it is not only great crimes which condemn to hell. No, my brethren: "the wicked shall be turned into hell, and all that forget God." It is by little and little that men perish; by little habits of sin consciously indulged, by little forgetfulnesses of God, by little errors, by little vices; if, indeed, any thing can truly be termed little which is of the nature of sin.

Mark, I beseech you, how even in the very order of nature all things proceed and are completed by little and little. By little and little the shadows alter their places, the sun rises and sinks, the stars appear and disappear-you cannot see them come or go. By little and little the fruits of the earth grow in their kinds. By little and little the seasons melt one into another: winter into spring, spring into summer, summer into autumn. By little and little the tides rise and fall. By little and little the world itself moves round. By little and little day is transformed into night; night into morning. By little and little the clouds change their shapes; you see that they are changed, yet you cannot see them changing at each moment. All things go on by little and little; this is the order of God's providence. Time itself passes away to each of us by little and little; it is not marked as it passes. Thus all things steal on in their course; they steal on by little and little, and men mark it not; they steal on each to its end,

and that end to perish-winter to perish in spring, spring to perish in summer, summer to perish in autumn, day to perish in night, night to perish in morning, the shadows to perish in darkness, the clouds to perish in rain, the sea to perish in drought, the earth to perish in fire, the stars to perish into the skies, time to perish into eternity.

Seeing, then, that all things thus by little and little are hastening to their end, and that end to perish, let not men be surprised to hear that it is also by little and little that mankind perish: by little and little their souls consume away, through the deceitfulness of sin; till in the end they are called to their account, and can bring forward nothing else but a long catalogue of thousands of petty sins continually indulged in: petty, that is to say, petty and trifling in their own eyes, but a fearful mountain of crime in His sight who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, who has said, “Be ye holy, for I am holy;" fearful when considered as an evidence of their want of real faith in Christ, and earnestness in religion; more fearful still when regarded as having sinfully engrossed portions of time which were given them that they might work out their salvation with fear and trembling, instead of living indifferent, lukewarm, content with themselves, careless of little sins, and satisfied with a formal repentance, like the rest of the world.

Learn, then, to doubt yourself. Be warned in

time. Better to live for ever in anxiety about your daily sins than to become hardened. Sift and examine your works and your ways. Search into your evil habits, and minor unknown transgressions; and pray for the gift of repentance. If you can discover few sins, pray that you may discover more. Be certain, be sure that they are many; and if you cannot see them, it is only because so far you are already hardened, or at least becoming hardened, through the deceitfulness of sin.

Above all, pray to God for His Holy Spirit to take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and to unclose your eyes to your real state by any means. Better to endure all human afflictions-pain, grief, poverty, disease, the loss of every hope of liferather than be contented with remaining what you are. Be ever making a continual effort after holiness. Seek for the transformation of your whole heart and soul. Struggle to become better. Imitate Christ and His saints; and when all this is done, God only knows how much unseen sin remains, and with what difficulty you shall inherit glory.

SERMON XVI.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PAST.

ECCLESIASTES iii. 15.

"God requireth that which is past."

THERE is a truth, connected with the past, upon which the more we meditate the more fearful it appears I mean, its irrevocable character, the fact that it cannot be recalled-that what has been done by us has been done for ever-that what has been said by us has been said for ever, and cannot be unsaid that even the thoughts of our hearts, whatever thoughts we may have had through the whole course of our lives, however unheard by man, are yet registered in the unalterable past, and have not perished, but remain there, reserved till that great day when the thoughts of all hearts shall be revealed.

This idea of the irreversible past has been more or less dwelt upon, even by those ancient philosophers and poets who knew nothing of Revelation nor of the Day of Judgment; even to them this life which we now live appeared full of mystery

and wonder. They perceived evidently that what is past of it is irrevocable; they looked back on their lives, and saw thousands of deeds done which could not be undone, those deeds running into consequences beyond their control, those consequences germinating into other consequences still Thus they found themselves burdened with responsibilities more than they could bear; to escape from which they laid down the doctrine of fatality, and threw the burden off themselves upon a supposititious destiny.

to come.

We, my brethren, are not driven to this view, to relieve ourselves from the irrevocable past: we know that God has provided an offering most pure, most spotless, most holy, for the sins of the whole world, even His only Son, Jesus Christ, begotten from all Eternity. We know that, on our sincere repentance, He who for our sakes became "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief," will take upon Himself the burden of all that is past in our lives. Nevertheless, I conceive that Christianity has placed us in a position in which the past is become a matter of still greater fearfulness to us than even to the heathens of old; for if, on the one hand, Revelation has declared to us a Mediator between God and man, on the other hand, it has opened to us a wider and more certain range for contemplation in regard to a Judgment to come we perceive more clearly than they did, that the life which we now live is part and portion with