which speaks, "Son, give unto me thine heart;" so shall Christ make his abode with you, and bless you in time and for eternity. Remember, brethren, the language of the Saviour is, "I stand at the door and knock; to him that overcometh will I give to sit with me in my throne." As he will make no forcible entrance to your hearts against your consent, so he will not drag you reluctantly to his blessed seat in heaven. Life and death is truly set before you, and on your determination rests the destiny of your immortal souls. Oh! be of wise and understanding hearts. "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, and call ye upon him while he is near."

Brethren, I have now pursued this subject to the extent which I had intended, and I shall only ask your attention while I address to you a few words of concluding exhortation. And I speak, first, to those who refuse to receive the Saviour-the careless, the unconcerned, the impenitent. I call heaven and earth, yea, and your own souls also, to witness that Christ has visited your hearts, and knocked for admission with the most patient and reiterated earnestness. He has been with some of you through the medium of his word; with all of you he has been, through preaching of the Gospel of his grace; and the very exercises of this day; and the exhortations which have reached you this afternoon, are evidences of the fact. With some of you he has been, through the medium of his dispensations of prosperity, and the goodness of God, has preached to you repentance. With others he has been in the dispensations of adversity; and he has come to your hearts amidst the tears, and the sorrows, and the agonies of affliction. With all of you he has been by the agency of his

Spirit, and either by the still small voice of conscience, or by more direct, though indescribable impressions, has visited your bosoms. And yet you are cold, and unconcerned, and careless. You have as yet closed your hearts against him. But oh! remember, that "now is the accepted time, behold now is the day of salvation." He has determinately said, My Spirit shall not always strive with men." The time is coming, rapidly coming, when his calls and his knocking will cease for ever. When your heart has ceased to beat; and when, from your bosom, the vital warmth has fled; when nothing remains to your body but the narrow house; and when there is no companion for you but the loathsome and the devouring worm; when your soul has gone into the eternal world, then no more visitations of mercy can come, no voice be heard, and no knocking felt. In the grave there is no repentance; but after death are the solemnities of judgment. And how, how can you meet in judgment that Saviour whom on earth you so perseveringly refused, and to whose voice you turned so inattentive an ear? Scripture hath for an instant drawn aside the curtain from before the judgment seat, and on its sacred page is written the bitter exclamation, which will burst from the anguished bosom of the despiser of the Saviour's love-" Rocks fall on us; mountains, mountains cover us!"

One word of terror to the lukewarm: I ask you, brethren, who are cold and indifferent and lukewarm, if ever you have heard language more calculated to awaken the most salutary fears? So dreadful is your situation, that the Lord Jesus Christ abhors you; to him you are intolerable; he will cast you off, except ye repent. And if for those who love

not Christ there is in Scripture the solemn declaration, "let him be Anathema Maranatha," what will be theirs who, professing to love, have been cold and dead? Would to God that I could rouse you. This state of things must be overcome, or you are lost. Over this dull and lifeless condition there must come the energy of a new and living principle, which, like the touch of the prophet's body, may rouse the very dead to life. Not to the lukewarm, but to him that overcometh is the promise. Your salvation dwells. in the victory. If your song is not the shout of triumph, your moan must be the moan of despair. But, brethren, so much have I said in former discourses, that now I cannot leave without a word of glorious encouragement to all who will listen to the voice of the Gospel of salvation. Some, I doubt not there are many, I hope there may be, have opened their hearts to the Saviour. Be encouraged to live near to him, and to depend on the communications of his grace. He is faithful, who hath promised, and he will bless you here by those influences of his Spirit which shall pour a celestial sunshine on your pilgrim path to heaven; and if you shall accomplish the victory, and overcome the sinful, and the slavish, and the ruinous tendency to lukewarmness; if, in your renovated course, there shall be life, and spirit, and animation, "he will come into you and sup with you," and fill you with his perfect peace.

I cannot tell the measure of your future glory. Feeble sense is utterly inadequate, and faith and hope but imperfect. Yet cast your eyes upon those sacred pages which contain the promises on which faith and hope are built, and then lift them up to contemplate for a moment that future habitation,

where, in the city of the living God, are the thrones of the redeemed. Behold its walls of jasper, and its foundation of sapphires. The glory of the Lord doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof." See, flowing through its golden streets, that river that makes glad the city of God. See blooming with everlasting verdure, that tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and whose fruit is the sacramental pledge of immortality. Behold it without curse, or night, or death, or tears, or sorrow, or sighing. Oh! let not your thoughts mingle with, or fix upon, the vanities of a world like this in which we now abide. Born, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, even the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever, you are born to a loftier destiny, and are citizens of a heavenly country. Wait but for a little moment, and though it shall not be granted to you as it was to St. John, to see in the flesh the vision of the descending heavenly city, it shall be granted to you to behold it in still more favourable circumstances. He saw it indeed, but it was in a trance, and but for a moment, and he awoke to find himself a prisoner in the flesh, and an exile in Patmos. But, in your case, sight shall be synonymous with possession. You shall no sooner plant your foot on its golden streets, than your exile here shall be no more remembered, or remembered merely to enhance the joys of your deliverance. Your chains shall drop from off you, and you shall walk abroad in your home, your everlasting home, and in all the glorious liberty of the children of God.

Oh, brethren, I know not how to cease these representations. I know not how to stop the current of my feelings. If I could but see an universal anxie

ty among you to become partakers of this blessedness, and if I could but behold an energy put forth commensurate with this feeling; and if I could see you ready to open your hearts to the knocking of a Saviour; if I could feel that an inspiration was breathed which could animate you to the struggle, and make you determine to overcome, there might not be any happiness this side the grave so exquisite as this. Oh let me stir up within you a thirst after righteousness, unquenchable, save by that water of life which Christ alone can give. Oh let me rouse you to a determination to seek and seek till you find, that grace which shall make you meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light, and to be with Christ in his eternal kingdom. Oh let me rouse you to desire a throne with Christ, a seat for ever in his presence.

There shall we see his face,

And never, never sin;
There from the rivers of his grace,
Drink endless pleasure in.

I envy not the man, be he as rich as Croesus, or as honoured as the most favoured child of this world's feeble applause-I envy not the votary of this world's most alluring pleasures, if he cannot bring his soul to an anticipation so rapturous as this. I envy not the man, no matter what his earthly condition may be, who would not exchange earth for heaven. I envy not the man whose earth-bound soul longs not to be with Christ, and who, from his inmost bosom, feels not the force of the interrogatory