despite to them, and wantonly flung them aside! Oh, how shall they be confounded and cast down, when they find how true it is, that every blessing may become a curse from the abuse of it; and the greatest blessing becomes the greatest curse; and they who were most blest are subject to the most fearful condemnation; and the lowest abyss is for those who have fallen from the greatest height!

O,

No: brethren, the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be laid low, and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.' great God! what reasons shall then appear for prostration and self-abasement in thy sight! For then the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed :-they shall be revealed, even to ourselves, with a new and startling clearness; and we shall be conscious of our guilt, as we had never before been. But, if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things.' He will bring back to us, from the books in which all things are recorded; He will bring back to us, as if they were events of yesterday, the thousand and ten thousand offences which had faded from our remembrance ;-the evil imaginations of one kind, long and fondly nourished, and at last driven out of the heart only by evil imaginations of another kind; the projects of wickedness, to which opportunity alone was wanting, and which we reckoned as nothing, merely because they were not put in act ;-the waywardness and disobedience of childhood, the delirious extravagances and wild passions of youth, the grasping covetousness and worldliness of maturity, the obduracy and the repinings of an old age, still perhaps voluptuous. In that day we shall be brought to a trial, where every idle word shall be a witness against us; where wrongful

thoughts shall be charged to us as well as wrongful deeds; and what we have failed to do, as well as what we have done; and the unnumbered omissions of our coldness, and hard-heartedness, and sloth, and selfish ease, as well as the overt crimes, by which those around us may have been corrupted or scandalized. Shall any one of us, then, hope to be exalted, when the memories of us all shall retrace so many sterile and unproductive intentions, so many good impressions never fostered and ripened into fruits of righteousness, so many talents, which our iniquity had misused, or our idleness had buried? And even this may not be the worst. For shalt thou be exalted, O thou licentious man, whose glory was in thy shame? Or shalt thou be exalted, O thou hypocrite, whose words were a lie, whose devotions were a lie, whose actions were a lie, whose life was a lie :-thou, whom the esteem of men had surrounded, because, throughout long years, thou couldst hide a defiled conscience and habits of gross sin, under the cloak of respectability and religion; but who now, in the day of revelation, shalt be stript of thy disguises, and stand forth to undeceive the universe, manifested to be what thou hast always been! God grant that the cry may not also be, And shalt thou be exalted, O thou false priest, who couldst minister to holy things without holy thoughts, and utter divine truths with unclean lips, and turn sacred offices almost into sacrilege?

God, indeed, grant that we may not seek in vain to go into the clefts of the rocks, and into the tops of the ragged rocks, for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his Majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth. God, indeed, grant that we may not call in vain for the caves to swallow us up, and for the hills to fall upon us,

and the mountains to cover us! For then, brethren, there shall be no more concealments, no more deceits, no more false excuses; no more of those pretences, and equivocations, and subterfuges, and sophisms, which our reason had been so fatally ingenious in playing off upon itself. Oh, think of these things, and let not your sins be dearer to you than your salvation. Think of them, ere yet the night cometh, and the sun of your probation has quite gone down. Think of them 'ere yet all the flashes of sensual pleasure are quite extinct, and all the flowers of secular glory are withered away, and all earthly treasures are buried in darkness, and this world, with all the fashion of it, has vanished utterly and for ever.' For, in that day, the Lord alone shall be exalted; and if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?'

My brethren, other thoughts crowd upon my mind, other views open before me :-but I must ask your attention to them at the next opportunity. In the mean time, I would refer you to that Song of the Three Children, when they walked in the midst of the fire praising God;' when they blessed God out of the furnace,' and said, that God alone was to be blessed and praised on the throne of his kingdom, and in the firmament of heaven, and in the temple of His holy glory :—when in that canticle, so remarkable for its beauty, though in our churches so seldom read, they called upon all the works of the Lord,' all things and beings in the creation, to extol, exalt, glorify, and magnify God for ever. I would also recommend to each of you, those reflections upon God, which were made by a pious man, Thomas à Kempis, in days, which we deem less enlightened than our own: Thou, O Lord, thunderest forth

thy judgments over me; Thou shakest all my bones with fear and trembling, and my soul is very sore afraid. If in angels thou didst find wickedness, and didst not spare even them, what shall become of me? Even stars fell from heaven, what then can I presume, who am but dust? There is, therefore, no sanctity, if thou, O Lord, withdraw thine hand. No wisdom availeth, if thou cease to guide. No courage helpeth, if thou leave off to defend. O, how humbly and meanly ought I to think of myself! With what profound humility ought I to submit myself to thy unfathomable judgments, O Lord; when I find myself to be nothing else than NOTHING, and still NOTHING!'

SERMON XXI.

GOD ALONE EXALTED IN THE GREAT DAY.

ISAIAH II. 17.

And the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of men shall be made low: and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day.

IN

N addressing you on this text, I have shewn that the expression that day,' which occurs in it, has reference to the last day;' to a day of judgment, when to all men, as reasonable and moral beings, accountable for their actions upon earth, shall be assigned their final and eternal portion: by the word 'day' being meant, not the space of time, which occurs between morning and night, or which is occupied by the earth's revolution upon its axis; not any particular space of time; but the solemn period appointed by God from the beginning, for the consummation of this mundane economy.

I have shewn that in that day God shall be exalted, none shall be exalted but God.

God shall be exalted, not because the Divine nature can then receive any accession of elevation, dominion, or ascendancy, which it had not always possessed, for that supposition were mere blasphemy;—but because the Almightiness of God shall be then visibly manifested to the universe; and His perfections shine forth as the everlasting light; because then the finite shall be seen to shrivel up before the Infinite, and the creature before