save the single one, that he must die. But shut out this message of God's redeeming mercy, and what a fearful certainty is death! Peradventure his course may be serene and cheerful up to that hour of sadness; but there darkness overshadows him-terror agitates him-deep and heavy clouds settle over the gates of death. All beyond,-what is it? Yet is there a "clearing" even through this dark valley; a bright opening; a vista of the heavenly world. O there is everything in death to make us dread its approach, apart from those principles and hopes, which rise like the star of promise on the soul.

"Go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The Ancient of Days, the Son of man, the Spirit of truth and grace in all their undivided love authorize this mission, and stand pledged to confirm the message which it bears. The words of men may be counsels of wisdom-the words of God have the force of law. The words of men are of doubtful verity;-the words of God are truth. The words of men may be unaccomplished words;-God's counsel shall stand, and he will do all his pleasure. The heavens and the earth shall pass away, but his words shall never pass away. Wonderful as these truths are, gracious as they are, and tremendously fearful as they are, they are as unchangeable as the Deity; they are settled in heaven, and established forever. There is all the sincerity about them which belongs to the essence of truth and goodness; all the authority belongs to them which belongs to Infinite rectitude and Omnipotent justice. They are fixed and permanent as his throne ; they will never be retracted, never altered; nor are they revealed in such a way as to stifle our hopes, or excite one needless fear. There is nothing wavering, nothing uncertain in relation to any one feature of this Gospel; come what will, it will stand in all its forms and colors, in all its promises, and in all its threatenings. Whether men receive, or reject it, it shall pursue its steady course, impelled by an unseen, but Omnipotent hand, and bring everlasting glory to its Divine Author.

How constraining the motive, then, to listen and obey when God thus addresses us! How solemn the admonition, "See that ye refuse not him that speaketh; for if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth; how much more shall not we escape, if we refuse him that speaketh from heaven!" There was binding authority in the message of the ancient dispensation; God was its Author. Yet was it preparatory only to the one that "cannot be moved." God "who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." Were an angel from heaven to visit our world, we should crowd around him, and should be anxious to know the errand on which he came. Angels have descended in times far gone by, and men listened to their errand with astonish

ment.

But their message was a very subordinate one to that

brought by the Son of God. "For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall they escape who neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him." We have the same testimony. Men disregarded the voice of God's prophets; they stoned some, killed sone; "yet having one Son, he sent him, saying, They will reverence my Son!" It is the Saviour's voice by whom this message is uttered. He bows his heavens and comes down. He walks amidst the golden candlesticks. When his ministers speak in his name, he is with them; when his people meet together, he is there. He will be sanctified in them that come nigh him, and before all the people will he be glorified.

It is a solemn thought, too, that to those who reject this divine message, it is as though no real message had been revealed. We have spoken of the power of the pulpit, of the constituent elements of that power, and of the correlative obligations of its ministry; but what is all this to the man who disregards the message it brings? It is as though the pulpit had no power; nay, it is as though there were not a Christian pulpit in the world. It is as though there were no Sanctuary, no Sabbath, and no Gospel and all the light of these precious hopes were blotted out in the darkness of Paganism, and in the gloom of the grave. Shall it be thus? Shall the voice of nature demand these instructions, and shall that affecting cry for help be suppressed? Shall the pulpit win its ten thousand triumphs, through darkness, through trial, through enemies, through the faggot and the gibbet; and shall there be obduracy, more powerful than they all, that leaves the dwellers in Christian lands bound in chains to the ignominious car of sin and death? We have spoken of what the pulpit has done. Time would fail to tell of the millions whom it has made holy and happy. They have lived in peace, and when death came, have lifted their eyes to the eternal hills whence cometh their help. Over a world strewed with the ruins of a thousand generations, this message of heavenly mercy has passed with a life-giving power, quickening them who were dead in sin, and raising them up to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

O the blessedness of this sweet hope in Christ! Just conceive of a man in the state of William Howard, so distressed by a view of his sins and danger, that he says, "So great was the anguish of my soul, that I lamented God had spared Noah and his family. O that they had been swept away by the Deluge; then I had never been!" And after he had become reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, speaking of his joy, he says, "My tongue, or pen, can faintly describe it. All the bliss that I had ever enjoyed, was no more like it than midnight darkness is like the meridian sun. It was heaven indeed; something of the real nature of heaven I then enjoyed. My soul was wrapt in the embraces of the adorable Jesus, and I was so overpowered with holy love that I was lost to everything

else." It is related of the Countess of Huntingdon, that she was brought to the knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus, through the instrumentality of the single remark of the Lady Margaret Hastings, that "since she had known and believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, she had been as happy as an angel." When the Sun of righteousness beams on the soul, sometimes rising like the faint light of the morning, and sometimes bursting upon the benighted mind in meridian splendor, joys visit it that are alternately serene and rapturous, now tranquil, and now unspeakable and full of glory.

The brightest earthly career has its trials, and they are trials which find no relief and no alleviation but from the Divine presence and favor. Here alone is the febrifuge for the burning heart; the pillow for the aching head.

"How soft to lean on Heaven!

To lean on Him on whom archangels lean."

This world forsakes us on the approach of the winter's storm; before the chill blasts of adversity it retires. Not so the religion of the Gospel. Misery in all its forms has peculiar attractions for this message of heavenly mercy. The spirit of the world and the spirit which is of God often meet at the door of human wretchedness; but the former leaves it because the sources of its joy are dried up; the latter enters because there are sources of bitterness, and tears to be wiped away. Such love and pity are found in the Gospel of Christ, and only there, for misery and poverty like ours. Not until this celestial messenger is made welcome, can men be holy, or happy. The voice of reason, the voice of conscience, the voice of God, every cross and disappointment, and trial repeats the call, "My son, give me thy heart!" And O that, from that insatiable thirst for happiness so deeply implanted in the soul of man, every one of my readers may respond, My heart, blessed Lord, will I give!

But there is another alternative. "He that is not with me," says the Lord Jesus, "is against me.' Those who reject this message of the Christian ministry, do so on their own responsibility, and at their own peril. "If thou be wise, thou shalt be wise for thyself; but if thou scornest, thou alone shalt bear it." Men who have been distinguished for the success which crowned their labors, have also been distinguished for making hard hearts harder, and blind eyes blinder. There is a reason for this in the nature of their message; for the very truths which are most fitted to interest and impress, when long and perseveringly rejected, only leave the mind more obdurate. This is the way men become ripe for destruction; it is in the midst of scenes of mercy, where they wander as in a desert and parched land, and whence they go at last, where there is not a drop of water to cool their tongue. This is the direful catastrophe. This will be the end of disregarding and rejecting the message of the Christian ministry. As God liveth, this will

be the mournful end of rejecting these messages of heavenly mercy. It is no common responsibility that such men incur. If the smallest talent must be accounted for, what account must they render who all their lifetime have been favored with a preached Gospel, and who have only heard and rejected this gracious message? How bitter the reflections of such a man, as he sees the last hours of human life passing away, and the lamentation is extorted from his bosom, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved!" What a fearful transition will that be from the Christian sanctuary to the bar of God! There will be mourning then, when "many shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and sit down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of God, and they themselves are cast out." Ah, they know not what they do, to whom God has given a faithful ministry, and who reject the great salvation. They are not the atheist, and the infidel, and the immoral only who perish. Large and free as it is, the love of God is no refuge even for the moral and the orthodox, who treat the message of his ministers as they treat their Master, and tread it under their feet. It is the last message. Infinite love makes its greatest effort here. It cannot do more. "There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin."

Nor

When the rich man in the parable lifted up his eyes in hell, and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom, he cried and said, "Father Abraham have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame!" The time will come when the despisers of our message will cry for mercy, whether they ever did before or not. They will cry long and loud; they will lift up their voice in awful distress; but there shall be none to answer. will it be long before that day of calamity shall come. It may be forty years; it may be twenty; it may be ten; it may be five; it may be two; it may not be one. Eternity is nearer than they think of, and that place of torment is as near as eternity. We know not what a day may bring forth. Yesterday is fled upon the eagle wings of time; to-morrow belongs to God and not to man. These golden Sabbaths will soon have passed away, and the voice of the living ministry will soon be silent among the silent dead. Could those who die in their sins come back again and live, its message would not be so urgent. But they come not. You call, and they answer not again. You look for them in the visions of the night; but it is all a dream. They appear not to mortal eyes; they speak not to mortal ears. They are not in heaven, but are shut up in hell. Would that the man who rejects the salvation of God could be transported to eternity for an hour, if it were but to witness the agony of those who once occupied a place in God's sanctuary, and whom nothing could induce to fall in with the redemption that is in Christ Jesus! O dreadful doom! not to be described by mortal

tongue; yet to be endured by every mortal man that refuses this offered mercy!

If the writer dwells a moment longer on thoughts like these, it is because they are affecting thoughts to his own mind, as a preacher of the everlasting Gospel. The Christian ministry is God's selected instrumentality in accomplishing his purposes of grace. It is set for the defence of the Gospel, and for the vindication of the Divine government over this fallen world. Eternity alone can disclose the responsibility of preaching this Gospel; eternity alone can disclose the responsibility of rejecting it. Think of a man sitting for ten, or twenty, or forty, or sixty years under the varied influences of an instructive pulpit. What a vast amount of truth has he listened to! How much toil and ingenuity have been expended in order to frame arguments to convince his understanding, to construct appeals that should rouse his conscience, to furnish illustrations that might interest him, and to urge motives that might persuade him to become reconciled to God! How often has he trembled at the rebuke, and wept under the affecting persuasions that would fain have constrained him to become a Christian! Who can measure the responsibility of such a man, even though he may have listened to the meanest pulpit in the land! That pulpit, what will be the testimony, and what his recollections of that pulpit, when the Saviour there made known shall judge the world in righteousness! What a stream of light has poured from it upon many a benighted mind, which, if it had enlightened Sodom and Tyre, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes!

Men who enjoy a faithful Christian ministry know too much of God and his Christ, to consent to go away into everlasting burnings. Better for them to have died from the womb, or as a hidden, untimely birth that had not been, as infants which never saw the light, than to have been dwellers in this world of mercy, and at last make their bed in that lake of fire.

Behold, ye despisers, and wonder and perish! Adore, ye lovers of God and the Gospel of his Son, that by the foolishness of preaching he is pleased to save them that believe!