were taken away;-such a loss you sustain. No tears, nor lamentations, nor bitter upbraidings, will ever recall that golden period. The star sets to rise no more; the flood rolls away never to return.

Your own experience, my aged brethren, will urge the instant necessity of redeeming the time. Consider the fate that awaits you soon: A few steps will bring you to the threshold of that house which is appointed for all living. Man that is born of a woman is of few days. He cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down; he flieth as a shadow, and continueth not. By the unalterable law of nature, all things here hasten to an end. An irresistible rapidity hurries every thing to the abyss of eternity; to that awful abyss, to which all things go, and from which nothing returns. The great drama of life is perpetually going on. Age succeeds to age, and generation to generation. Not long ago our fathers trod the path which their fathers had trodden before them; we have come into their room, and now supply their places. In a little time we must resign to another race, who in their turn also shall pass away, and give place to a new generation. The race of men, saith a Jewish writer, is like the leaves of the trees.

They come forth in the spring, and clothe the wood with robes of green. In autumn they wither; they fall; the winter wind scatters them on the earth. Another race comes in the season, and clothes the forest again.

Consider the world, my friends, as you saw it at first, and as you see it now. You have marked vicissitude and alteration in all human affairs. You have seen changes in almost every department of life. You have seen new ministers at the court, new judges on the bench, and new priests at the altar of the Lord. You have seen different kings upon the throne. You have seen peace and war, and war and peace again. How many of your equals in age have survived? How many younger than you, have

you

you carried to the grave? Year after year hath made a blank in the number of your friends. Your own country hath insensibly become a strange land, and a new world hath arisen around you, before you perceived that the old had passed away. The same fate that hath taken away your friends, awaits you. Even now the decree is gone forth. The king of terrors hath received his commission, and is now on his way. If you have misemployed your time, that talent which God hath put into your hand; if your

life is marked with guilt or folly, how will you answer to your own heart at that awful hour? For, previous to the general doom, Almighty God hath appointed a day of judgment in the breast of every man. The last hour is ordained to pass sentence on all the rest. The actions of your former life will there meet you again. How will you then answer at the bar of your own heart, when the collected crimes of a lengthened life at one view, shall flash upon the mind; when the ghosts of your departed hours, of those hours which we have murdered, shall rise up in terrible array, and look you in the face? What would you then give for that time which you now throw away? ? What would the wretch who lies on a bed of agony, extended and groaning, who feels in his heart the poisoned arrow of death; who, looking back on his past life, turns aside from the view; who, looking forward to futurity, discerns no beam of hope to break that utter darkness which overwhelms him; what would he then give for those hours which you now despise, to make his peace with Heaven, and fit him for his passage into the world unknown? Remember, my friends, that this is no imaginary case; it is a case which may soon be your

own. Be wise, therefore, while wisdom can avail, and save yourselves from the agony of repenting in bitterness of soul, when all repentance may be in vain.

To sum up all: My friends, the time is short. We are as guests in a strange land, who tarry but one night. We wander up and down in a place of graves. We read the epitaphs upon the tombs of the deceased. We shed a few tears over the ashes of the dead ; and, in a little time, we need from our surviving friends the tears we paid to the memory of our friends departed.

Time is precious. The time is now passing that fixes our fate for ever. The hours are, at this instant, on the wing, which carry along with them your eternal happiness or eternal misery.

Time is irrecoverable. The clock is wound up once for all; the hand is advancing, and, in a little time, it strikes your last hour.

SERMON V.

ON REVERENCE AND HOLY FEAR.

PSALM iv. 4.

Stand in awe.

WHEN the Patriarch Jacob departed from his father's house, and entered on that state of pilgrimage, which only terminated with his life, he lighted on a certain place, where he tarried all the night. Agreeably to the simplicity of the ancient world, he laid himself down to rest upon the open plain; without any pillow but a stone of the field; and without any covering but the curtains of heaven, A stranger he was to the elegance and luxury of after times, but he enjoyed pleasures of a higher kind. The God of his fathers was with