annual circuits, and all its present population shall have faded away and perished, like the foliage now fading, falling, and dying around us. Nor are the monuments

of arts and learning scarcely less mutable and transient than they who rear them.

"We turn to dust, and all our mightiest works
Die too. The deep foundations that we lay,
Time ploughs them up, and not a trace remains.
We build of what we deem eternal rock--

A future age asks where the building stood."

Nor is this all. The earth whose revolutions measure the lapse of ages, and whose surface is the scene of incessant changes and death, has its destined periods measured out in the counsels of heaven, and will one day finish its career. It shall become old as doth a garment, and be folded up and changed. It is reserved unto fire against the day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men. It shall then be dissolved. Its massy pillars shall be melted down with fervent heat, and the whole system of material things be wrapped in the unchanging gloom of perpetual annihilation. Come, then, and amidst the surrounding scenery of the present season, give up your minds to the full impression of its solemn and instructive suggestions. While you behold in this "grave of the year," an emblem of the approaching "funeral pile of nature," will you not be led to secure a right to the tree of life" that fadeth not, that you may enter in through the gates into the city which hath foundations?

Again. He who produces and will survive all changes in the material universe, is forever the same. God is immutable. He is Jehovah, and therefore changes not. The flowers fade-the leaf dies-the trees wither-one generation is urged onward by another to the grave-empires rise and fall-worlds are brought into being, perform their destined revolutions, and are swept away, but God remains unaltered. He will remain just, merciful, and holy. His purposes of

grace will never be varied. His promises of pardon, reconciliation, and immortal blessedness to the believing penitent, will forever be sure! Here then, amidst impressive emblems of a passing world-amidst scenes in which the mind must instinctively labor to repose on some object that shall be safe and abiding, when

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Change shall cease, and time shall be no more ;"

here, where nothing seems constant but vicisitude; nothing to have an abiding life, but death, learn the preciousness of the single consideration, that Jehovah is unchangeable. That amidst the fickleness of earthly friendships, the dissolution of earthly attachments, and the disappointments and vanities of secular avocations, we may have one friend who is immutable, permanent and perfect. A friend who will be such at that last day of final account, when all other friendships will avail nothing!

This brings me to the last thought I designed to notice as the peculiar suggestion of the season. Autumn is the season of ingathering. It is the harvest-time of the year. And whose mind does not yield to the train of associations it awakens? Whose mind does not recur to the scene of final retribution-the harvest of the world? There is a season approaching of which the one we now witness is a faint emblem. For the Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them who do iniquity; and shall cast them into a furnace of fire -there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. To the solemnities of that period -to the affecting scene it will unfold to an intelligent universe, the serious mind will be turned by what is taking place around us at the present season.

Some

thing is every day transpiring abroad in the cultivated fields of nature, which is to have a dreadful parallel at the harvest of the world. When the great Husbandman

shall direct the wheat to be gathered into the garner, but the chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire.

To a very few concluding remarks, may I solicit the particular attention of all present, who are conscious of never having yielded to the new-creating power of divine Grace, and of thus having acquired a taste for the beauties of holiness? Some of you, my friends, I doubt not, have a keen relish for the grandeur and loveliness of natural scenery. You linger with fondness around "each gentle and each awful scene," and delight to watch the ever-varying dress which nature wears. Now, I would not turn away your eyes from such views. I would not deaden your sensibilities to such enjoyments. I would not "seal up the book of nature." But I would caution you as you value your highest temporal felicity and the beatitudes of heaven, not to expect or endeavor to acquire "the noblest convictions and confidences of religion in the simple school of nature." Sinners have not in that school, been brought back to God, and educated for a holy heaven. Sinners in that school have not attained a spirit of mind, which opens to them the largest and purest source of pleasure and advantage, even in the survey of that magnificent system of material signs in which they reside." God in Christ

is the medium-the door through which sinners come in to take the most useful and delightful view of the wonderful temple of nature. If you enter not through this door, a dull obscurity will hang over the goodly structure, and shut out from your view its loveliest forms and most attractive features. Let me, then, address each of you in the language of the christian poet

"Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste
His works. Admitted once to his embrace,
Thou shalt perceive, that thou wast blind before-
Thine eye shall be instructed, and thine heart
Made pure, shall relish with divine delight,

Till then unfelt, what hands divine have wrought.”

But I have a higher object than your present gratifi

cation. Your deathless souls are concerned in this matter. It would be a cruel service, could it be accomplished, to scatter flowers along your path down to hell. The decay and dissolution apparent in the vegetable world, teach you that like them your bodies are shortly to decay and die. The mutability and vicissitudes of earthly scenes and objects so strikingly epitomized in the present aspect of nature, while they remind you that you cannot safely build on earth, refer you to the great and solemn fact, that he who presides over, and occasions every change, is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Consider this, all ye that forget God. If he will be eternally holy, must not your hearts-your tastes, and dispositions be changed, before you can enjoy him as he is? If God will be eternally just, then unless you become believing penitents, he is under the holy necessity of his nature, to exclude you forever from heaven. But oh! he will, likewise, be eternally merciful, and therefore under an equally strong necessity, to receive every returning penitent to the full fruition of his presence and glory. Will you not, then, bring yourselves to the point, where you may confidently wait to be made the subjects of this necessity?

Now, with the scenery before you, whose associations must carry the thoughts forward to the harvest of the world, I ask, that you will suffer the familiar descriptions of that event in the word of God, to come along with these associations, and rest upon your minds in their naked impressiveness. Be not reluctant to have your minds filled, and your hearts affected with consid-. erations of that day of unalterable decisions. Yield to the sway of such considerations. Become submissive and humble petitioners at the throne of mercy. Become spiritual disciples of your final Judge. And may God forbid, that eternity should witness your unavailing lamentation-The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!

SERMON XXVIII.

The fleeting Pageantry of Earth.

1 CORINTHIANS VII. 31.

THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD PASSETH AWAY.

SCARCELY can a contemplative mind bestow a moment's attention upon the scene around us, and not perceive abundant evidence of the fact here announced. And yet, perhaps, no fact shows more plainly how unsubstantial is the very broadest and firmest foundation. on which man can rear his structure of earthly good. The apostle, in stating this fact, seems to yield to worldly men all they pretend to claim, and to insist only on things which they are unable to deny. There are many things, which might be truly affirmed of the world, which would go directly to narrow the ground on which they who seek their portion here, endeavor securely and comfortably to rest. The declaration might be made, supported by Scripture and all experience, that the world is base and worthiess. It hangs a depressing weight on the deathless and originally elevated faculties of man. Its tendency is to bring him down from high and ennobling contemplations, and make him grovel in low and profitless pursuits. To this mortifying characteristic, it might be added, that THE FASHION OF THIS WORLD is deceitful. It invites to delude; it flatters to betray; it "leads to bewilder, and dazzles to