that we find vice extolled and virtue condemned.

If we all did but know a few instances of those returns to vice, which many a wretched mortal is doomed to undergo, we should soon be convinced of the horror and compunction which ensued. Shame has driven many to their former sinful practices. The ridicule of old companions has been irresistible; and so pliant are their wills and understandings, that the contemptible sarcasm of a fellow creature, has operated more powerfully than the express and awful commands of the Deity.

If, I say, we did but know a few of these returns to vice, how would our hearts melt within us? A disconsolate, abandoned, and insulted wife oftentimes pleads without pity— a numerous, helpless offspring have no claims to melt an obdurate and corrupt heart. Ruined circumstances, imprisonment, and the prospect of premature dissolution-are all sometimes set at defiance, when a favourite lust or darling passion is to be gratified. The remembrance of brighter and better days, creates not one single ray of virtuous reflection. Reputation has now no claim; and the last lingering spark of humanity is extin

guished and thus sallies forth many a

monster, in the shape of a human being, to search for spirits even more wicked than himself: and infamy and punishment alone mark their last state, and stop their vicious career.

If however you could suppose that, on the near approach of premature death, (a punishment due to their crimes,) could such a prospect kindle one ray of reflection, what must be the sensations of such characters? what the agony and compunction which might goad them even to madness? The prospect of another world the undertaking of that journey from whose bourne no traveller returns the expectation of that sentence, ten thousand times more dreadful than the one they have recently received, and which is to consign tham to endless torment the family, the friends, the NAME they leave behind --all this, and much more, which it is impossible for me to conceive or describe, would harrow up their feelings to the most excruciating pitch of despair!

Let us, my brethren, from such a representation, which you must know not to be founded on fiction, learn to beware of a repetition of crime of a relapse into a sinful course of life-for, depend upon it, our last state will be worse than the first.

Men do not become confirmed sinners in a moment. We are not made perfect in iniquity by one flagrant act. It is an accumulation of faults and errors, that first assume not the formidable appearance of crime, which gradually produces the hardened sinner. The progress from one error to another is so easy and rapid- the qualifications and apologies attending their commission are so readily made, that we become tainted with crime, before we think ourselves exposed to danger. We are precipitated into the very abyss of wickedness, when we imagine ourselves hardly advanced towards its brink.

But easy, or difficult and dreadful, as may be the entrance upon a vicious course of life, the return to virtue even is not quite so easy. Some there are who think that they can successfully pursue a sinful career, and atone for it at a future period, by a frank confession of their crimes, and a solemn promise to abstain from them hereafter. But this is trifling with virtue, with time, and with the Almighty. Such a one forgets that the longer he is familiarized with vice, the greater will be his difficulties in returning to virtue. He forgets, too, that his future period of repentance may never arrive: that his to-morrow may

be the commencement of eternity

and he

also forgets that there is an Almighty Judge who hath ordained all things

whose decrees

are as irresistible as they are wise—and that his soul may be required of him on the eve of his repentance-and THEN what will be his defence at the bar of omnipotence?

Dangerous as may be even the first procrastination to return to good, it is certain that a second similar procrastination, after having relapsed into vice, is doubly difficult and dangerous. If all the sense of gratitude we can shew to our Almighty father for having graciously revisited us, and snatched us from the first perilous state of sin, be, a determination never again to partake of virtue, then are we lost and abandoned indeed! Our ingratitude, perfidy, and contempt, deserve the severest punishment. We have voluntarily chosen "to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, to stand in the way of sinners, and to sit in the seat of the scornful," and we must abide by our choice. We have, in short, deserted the Captain of our Salvation, and enlisted ourselves under the banners of Satan. And what will

be the consequences of this choice?—consider it with a reference to this world and the world to come.

Here, we can expect no praise from the honourable and respectable part of society, no mercy or support from characters whose rank only equals their goodness. A stain and digrace are obliquely, but unjustly, thrown upon our relatives and connections. There is therefore no prospect here from which a finished delinquent can hope to receive sympathy and assistance for his very family and friends may be among the first to shun and disown him.

But in reference to a life to come, how truly desperate and dreadful is such a case? I forbear however further to rouse your feelings by a description of its wretchedness and misery. The reflection of it ought, one would think, to arrest the arm of wickedness in its career, and to convert the profligate wretch to a state of comparative innocency and peace.

Nothing but the wiles of Satan could, one would suppose, drive some men to the desperate acts of madness and wickedness which they commit. Insanity not only claims, but receives our pity, when it is the effect of those inevitable and imperceptible causes which are interwoven in our frail natures- but, when it is the result of deliberate folly, predeter