denials, as we see, are necessary to enabled us to act a part with dignity and propriety on the brief theatre of the present world; are none, nay, are not infinitely more required to prepare us for a glorious and immortal existence? This world is our school, our discipline for eternity. And as youth impresses its character on our maturer years, so the character which we bear with us hence, shall form the basis of that endless progression which shall commence when we enter on a future state of being.

These reflections, while they vindicate this doctrine of religion from unreasonable severity and gloom, and demonstate its analogy with the course of providence, urge us to the most faithful and earnest improvement of our precious time. This invaluable season, and this only season of our salvation, is hastening to pass away. It is consuming while we speak. And when once the summons of death, or the trumpet of the archangel, shall proclaim that time shall be no longer, that the Judge is approaching, if you have no oil in your lamps, while you go to buy, or, in all the agony of prayer intreat of hea ven, Lord! Lord! open to us-then, the door shall be shut.

;

Do you ask if this is not robbing the last moments of men of their only remaining consolation? No, it is inviting them never to expose it to such a desperate hazard it is inviting them to place it, in proper season, on an immoveable foundation; on the rock of ages; it is destroying an idea fatal to true religion, and the happiness of mankind. For if sinners can flatter themselves with enjoying their pleasures in the full career of health, and, when they can enjoy them no longer, of obtaining salvation from the indulgence of heaven in the last crit

How

ical moment of a mispent life, will not their hearts for ever repel all the persuasions, or the terrors which the gospel can address to them to bring them to repentance? Do you ask then, what are all those appearances of a lively and sincere repentance exhibited by dying sinners in their last moments; their tears, their prayers, their agonies of mind, their self-reproaches for the past, their resolutions for the future? Are they of no avail with a merciful God? I have already shewn that the divine government and the sympathies of mortals move on different principles. If that which touches our compassion could move the purposes of God most just and holy, or change the laws of the moral world, who would not be saved? Few can preserve their insensibility to the last moment of life. ever they may have lived, all tremble, all pray, all resolve, and repent, when they see before them the opening grave, and the tribunal of judgment. Then we have heard those who never prayed before, pour out their souls with a frightful earnestness at the throne of grace: but they uttered rather the cries of despair than the prayers of penitence and faith. Those who in the days of their prosperity only scoffed at the ordinances of religion, now call for them with importunity, solicit the prayers of its ministers, and of all good men, and seem disposed to rest too much upon them, because they find nothing in themselves on which to rest. Nature is dissolving; and, having no anchor of hope in the dreadful storm, they endeavour to east their souls, in this moment of anguish and despair, on their counS and prayers. They seize them as a perishing

rer, one miserable and almost hopeless plank in

Good God!

the universal wreck of soul and body. how awful is the situation!-struggling in the ago. nies of death-distracted with the terrors of remorse and guilt-overwhelmed with fearful apprehensions of a judgment to come to be forsaken of thee!!—But thou hast numbered and finished thy mercies!

SERMON XVII.

WARNING AGAINST SELF-DECEPTION.

(IN TWO SERMONS.)

Matt. vii. 24, 25, 26, 27.

"Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them, I will liken unto a wise man which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock," &c.

BY THE REV. UZAL OGDEN, D.D.

Newark.