calling and election sure, have lived, as it were, all their days with one foot in the grave, almost expecting to die daily. Holy Baxter was such a man, laboring his life long with a feeble constitution, a liability to disease, and almost incessant pains and ailments, that would have prevented an ordinary mind from attempting any thing, and that made him practically feel each day as if it might be his last. And yet how nobly did he live for himself and for God; and with. what unwearied industry and success did he pursue life's great end, the good of his fellow-men, and the glory of his God. Who is there too, that has not observed in his own experience, that just in proportion to the felt nearness of death has been his earnestness in devotion, in well-doing, and in serving God? It is not when health is the most vigorous, spirits the most buoyant, prospects of life the brightest, and the expectation of beholding many days, and of seeing much good the most sanguine, it is not then that the Christian lives most above the world, and the flesh, and the nearest to God. But when sickness comes upon a man; when bodily infirmities weigh heavily; when the spirits droop, and life looks clouded, and the world dark and dreary; when thoughts

"Of the last bitter hour come like a blight

Over thy spirit, and sad images

Of the stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house,

Make thee to shudder, and grow sick at heart,"

then it is that a man doth gird up the loins of his mind, become sober, and watch unto prayer. Then do we bestir ourselves to forsake folly and vanity, and mind what we are about. Then do we betake ourselves to serious thought and devotion, and holy living, and serving God. Then it is, if all has not been wrong before, if we have not been doing every thing else, (as alas, so many are,) but getting ready to die, so that we can look death in the face, with the composure of a Christian whose peace has been made with God in health; then it is that the soul plumes her feathers for the flight into eternity.

That we may keep our wings, as Christians, poised and ready for such a flight, that they may not flutter and tire if we are called to mount suddenly, we must converse often with death, we must go to the house of mourning, we must entertain the intimations of our mortality, we must purposely lay to heart the lessons of our frailty, which are constantly being taught us, in the changing seasons, and all the discipline of life. Under the moral effect of such lessons we shall be most likely to live right for ourselves and for God.

III. It is important to keep in mind that we must soon die, in order that we may be stimulated to make the most of life for doing good. It is the consideration of the work to be done in this, our probation; of the incalculable good we may each accomplish; of the opportunity and power we have to make impressions upon each other lasting as the soul; of the immortal interests here pending; of the eternal destinies here making up; of the priceless souls here to be saved or lost it is this that stamps eternity upon fleeting time, and gives an interest solemn as the grave to every hour of our earthly existence. Oh! if we felt it as we ought, how busy would these hearts, and hands, and powers of speech be in doing good! How penurious we should have been of the days of the year that is now closing, that we might have had them all to spend in usefulness and duty; in relieving distress and want; plucking brands from the burning; reclaiming the vicious and profligate; confirming the reformed; winning souls to Christ; preparing ourselves and preparing others for the awards of eternity.

If we truly realized that our time here were so short, the precious working-days of our probation so few, the winter of life so soon upon us, and this in all probability the only period of our existence in which we can be instrumental of saving souls, how would it quicken our zeal in the service of God; how fertile we should be in plans of usefulness; how enterprising and eager to bring them to a head; how instant and self-denying to improve all facilities for doing good; nay, how should we pant for the accomplishment of all we possibly could do in this dream-like life. How would our hands and tongue wait upon our heart in the cause of Christ and salvation, till heart should cease to beat, and tongue could talk no more. What, then, we might be we ought to be; and it is this realization of death as standing at the door, and just ready to summon us away from reaping a harvest in this broad field of christian activity, where he that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him; it is this keeping in mind that we must so soon die, and leave forever this broad land of labor for Christ and men's salvation, that would be a powerful incentive to work while the day lasts, and to do with our might whatsoever our hands find to do for the eternal well-being of our fellow-men, and the glory of God.

If the christian minister, for instance, had brought it feelingly home to his heart, as he began the year which is now departing, that this might be the last of his being a shepherd to his beloved flock, the last year in which he could stand as the ambassador of heaven, and be

seech men for Christ's sake, to become reconciled to God, what faithfulness and pungency it would have given to his preaching; what force and earnestness to his appeals; what untiring energy and zeal in urging upon the unconverted the claims of the Gospel, and striving to bring them to repentance, that they might be represented as his jewels in the day of the Lord Jesus. Or, let the conscientious business-man seriously have entertained the thought, as he stood upon the threshold of the year whose sands are now ebbing, that this would be the last wherein he should meet and manage his family, his journeymen, and clerks, how carefully would he have dealt with, and walked before them, and how would he have endeavored to exert such an influence, and leave such an impression upon their minds, as would speak in favor of God and religion, when he should be in his grave.

Now, none of us know what lies in the lap of future years, any more than we did what lay in the lap of the year just expiring, at its commencement. But one thing we are certain of, that our time here is short, and it becometh us, as Christians, to do with our might whatsoever our hand findeth to do in the service of God. And it more than becometh those who are not Christians, it is of infinite consequence for them now to repent. Let not the good resolutions which every wise man will be forming at a time like this, perish in the intention merely. Make every good intention an act, and acts will become habits, and you will be established in well-doing and holy living. It is by virtue of the same great law of habit that men become both good and bad. Good men execute good intentions, and repeat good acts, till they have passed into habits, and the good man is wedded indissolubly to what is good, settled unalterably in ways of virtue, piety, and obedience, and the soul becomes free with the freedom of goodness, the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Vicious and selfish men, on the other hand, repeat vicious and worldly pleasures and indulgences, till they, too, have become habits with the grasp of an iron vice, and the soul is in bondage to sin, enslaved to corruption.

If there be one among our hearers or readers, who is conscious that the folds of evil habits are coiling around him, like the spiral of the anaconda about his victim, we earnestly say to that man, Now or Rise

NEVER IS THE TIME TO BREAK FROM THEIR DREADFUL EMBRACE.

like Samson, with the energy which the sight of opening perdition must give you, and in the strength with which Christ himself will endow you, if you will but trust in him, and break their bands asunder, and cast their cords from you. How dangerous to defer those momentous reformations, and that making ready for death, which conscience, and the loud voices of Providence, and the changing eras of

time are so solemnly preaching to your hearts. The longer the claims of religion, and the monitions and calls of God, by his word and his discipline, are neglected, the more do the indisposition and difficulty of yielding to them increase; and, all unknown perhaps, to himself, a man will be receding, step by step, degree after degree, from the warm zone of tenderness, hope, and impressibility, till his heart will enter the arctic circle of utter insensibility, and become fixed and relentless in eternal ice.

ance:

And, do any ask how this may not be with them, and how they shall avoid being bound forever in the icy fetters of stupidity, and fatally settling down in the frigid zone of carnal self-complacency, for religious indifference; then we can tell them, It will not be without such a resolute and decisive struggle of effort on their part, and such an earnest application to the Lord Jesus Christ for pardon and eternal life, as made the Saviour of sinners himself say, seeing its importAgonize to enter in at the strait gate, for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able." May the Holy Spirit nail this charge to your memory and conscience, until you have truly entered in. Under his teaching may you adopt the prayer of the text, and be so taught to number your days as to apply your heart unto wisdom. Be instructed by the swiftness with which this year has fled, how soon another will hurry away, and how quickly the years of eternity will begin. Even now the death-ambush may be laying for your feet, or the arrow may be on the string that is to pierce and lay you low.

"Death steals on man with noiseless tread;

No plea, no prayer delivers him;

From midst of life's unfinished plan,

With sudden hand it severs him:

And ready or not ready, no delay,

Forth to his Judge's bar he must away."