exhibited on the part of his guests, was now confirmed by the announcement of the object which they had in view, in visiting the polluted and devotel people among whom he had for a time fixed his abode. That faith, which is the gift of God, and without which it is impossible to please him, or even to approach him, had been implanted in the heart of Lot as a living and active principle of conduct. He listened with reverence to the command of heaven; he believed the message delivered to be the purpose of unerring wisdom, and he obeyed the important, peremptory orders which he had received without one misgiving thought, and with all the alacrity which their urgency demanded. "And he went out and spake unto his sons-in-law, which married his daughters, and said "—the hurriedness of his manner expresses at once his anxiety, his humanity, and his faith-" Up, get you out of this place; for the Lord will destroy this city." He had not the shadow of a doubt as to the certainty of the dreadful catastrophe. "But"-and O, Christians, mark the effect of an evil heart of unbelief-" but he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons-in-law." They had never reflected on the heinousness and bitterness of sin-they had never for a moment considered themselves as sinners; and though perhaps not so fearfully immoral as their countrymen-for we cannot suppose that a religious man like Lot would have "joined in affinity" with them if they had been as openly and regardlessly flagitious as their neighbours-their behaviour testifies that they belonged to that class of self-titled wise men who disgrace every age, by whom any thing like a supernatural communication from the governor of the world is treated as visionary, unworthy of rational attention, and to be spurned away by the enlightened with contempt. "And when the morning arose" -and the sun of that morning would go down on Sodom and all its population, a mingled mass of smouldering ashes-" And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot"-for his heart yearned over objects who had some hold on his affections, and who were so instantly to be exterminated, and bled for souls so soon to be consigned to the blackness of darkness for ever-"Saying, Arise," this is no time for unavailing regrets, thy own existence is in danger, extreme danger, "take thy wife and thy two daughters which are here"-the others perished with their husbands, for they had not married in the Lord-"lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. And while he lingered "How could he leave children, however infatuated and disobedient, to such a fate? Every parent present feels that he could not but linger—“And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife "who was still more reluctant to depart, and as her end shows from very different motives-" and upon the hand of his two daughters, the Lord being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him

without the city. And it came to pass when they had brought them, forth abroad that He"-(here you will observe that the number is changed, and the Second Person of the Trinity, I am disposed to think, is now the speaker)" He said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain: escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed."

The subsequent part of the chapter makes us acquainted with the destiny of the five cities, with their surrounding territories, which were once as the garden of the Lord, but which, having been destroyed by the Omnipotent in his wrath, and by the most dreadful means which imagination can conceive, are now covered by the sluggish, desolate, cheerless, and lifeless waters of the Dead Sea. A drearier scene than what this famous lake and its environs exhibit is not offered any where to the eye of man. The judgments of God are visibly there in all the terribleness of their infliction. Let him that seeth, heareth, or readeth, understand. "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God.”

Such, my brethren, is a short account from Scripture history of one of the most remarkable interpositions on record of the Almighty in the affairs of this lower world; such was the awful vindication of his holiness as a God of retribution; and such the appalling evidence of his abhorrence of sin, given for the warning and instruction of the generations following.

The object which I have in view in drawing your attention to the passage thus briefly and literally illustrated, is of the utmost importance to every descendant of the first transgressor, and therefore himself a transgressor from the womb, who would know his danger and escape from it who would find the indispensable remedy and apply it—and, therefore, in discoursing from the words of the text, it will be my endeavour, in dependence on the Divine blessing promised to the prayer of faith,

I. To direct your thoughts to the reality and magnitude of the danger to which the sinner is exposed;

II. To the means which God employs to awaken him to a true sense of his danger;

III. To the state of his mind after he has been made acquainted with his desperate condition; and

IV. To the conduct which he ought and is enabled to pursue when he feels that God in Christ has been merciful unto him.

All these particulars-and can you say, my brethren, that they are not the most important truths-are clearly contained in the passage before

us; and I earnestly entreat your serious attention while I attempt, in the strength of the Spirit, to explain and enforce them.

I. I observe, then, in the first place, that we are here taught the reality and magnitude of the danger to which the sinner is exposed.

Lot was expressly assured that the Lord would visit with his judgments the incorrigible transgressors by whom he was surrounded, and through whose evil communications some of his family, as we have seen, had been contaminated, and who, as they were thus partakers of their sins, were necessarily involved in their punishment. And what other authority had he or could he have for the melancholy fact of their depravity, than we have or can have for our own? The knowledge in both cases was derived from the Omniscient Witness of men and the Allsearching Discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. But there is another irrefragable proof of the same wonderful and deplorable truth, by which he was, though his corrupted neighbours were not, convinced. He had the testimony of his conscience confirming the declaration of God, that "the wickedness of man was great upon the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil and that continually ;" and the intensest spiritual insensibility, or the most arrogant intellectual pride, alone can prevent us from arriving at the same conclusion—a conclusion, however, be it remembered, to which we must come, if we would be saved. And where had this darkening of the understanding, this perversion of the will, and this ungodliness of the af fections, their source? and on what momentous event in the history of the human race can we fix as the date of their disorganizing, enslaving, and rampant tyranny? In the fall of Adam, as our federal head and representative, and on that act of wilful, deliberate disobedience, by which he set at defiance the power and the threatening of Him, his Creator, his Friend, and his Companion, who had said, as if his all depended on it, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Sin had its origin in the abode of innocence, and death commenced his reign within sight of the tree of life.

As certainly, then, as we are the descendants of the first man created in the image of God, and by transgression fallen from his primeval condition of holiness, dignity, and happiness, and thus made liable to misery here and to everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power hereafter, so assuredly we inherit a nature corrupted by the spiritual disease which, prevailing against him, brought him low, and incur the penalty of that doom to which he was adjudged by the sentence pronounced on the very spot which had been the scene of his rebellion. "As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,

so death hath passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." This doctrine has been often derided and loudly anathematised as unworthy of the belief of any but the slaves of a wretched superstition ;-the rational thinker laughs to scorn such an absurdity. But if the Word of God were silent on the subject, instead of being as express on the point as language can be, the existence of moral evil is manifest in the experience of every man born of woman, and proclaimed by the accusings of conscience even before the individual who is the object of their attack has been savingly awakened to a sense of his guilt, and renewed in the spirit of his mind, and before he can joyfully declare that with him old things have passed away, and that all things are become new. Now, my brethren, if on such grounds we are compelled to admit the reality of the moral plague that has infected with its deadly poison every member of the human family, it inevitably follows that we must admit at the same time the reality of the danger inseparably connected with it. Divine authority is given in attestation of the one as well as of the other; and there is no alternative but belief in the statements of "the lively oracles" or the rejection of revelation as a cunningly devised fable." I will not insult you, my friends, by asking which of these alternatives you are disposed to choose. I take it for granted then that you acknowledge you are sinners, sinners by inheritance, and sinners by wicked works. Are you really aware, on serious reflection, of the perilous state wherein you are living, if Jesus has not, in answer to your fervently and frequently expressed petition, "Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make us clean," replied in the exercise of that love which he beareth unto his own, "I will, be ye clean?" Have you ever thought, as you ought to think, that the Lord, mighty in battle, is the adversary with whom you are contending, and that none hath hardened himself against him, and hath prospered ? Have you ever meditated on the fact of your natural alienation and your practical ungodliness being the causes of all your anxieties and sorrows in time; and of all your apprehensions of suffering, and of your actual sufferings through eternity? Have you ever, in moments when, if you had not been spiritually blind, it must have been evident that the Lord was then condescending to give you a more than usually favourable opportunity of considering what you are, in contrast with what you should be-O have you in such moments as these viewed yourselves as exposed to all the consequences, temporal and eternal, of God's displeasure, existing in a state of exclusion from, and of enmity with, your Creator and Benefactor, subject to the outpouring of his yet restrained wrath, and having nothing to expect but the portion of the reprobates in the abodes of outer darkness for ever and ever? brethren, have you given even a passing glance at these things, and will

O my

you continue to deny that the sinner's danger, and therefore your individual danger, is extreme? and will you not be afraid of the judgments that must overtake and consume you, if you do not escape for your life, and hasten to the city of refuge where the avenger of blood cannot enter, and where you shall dwell in perfect peace under the protection of Jesus, the Head of all principalities and powers, the Redeemer of the guilty, and the Lord your righteousness? "He shall enter into peace ; they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness."Isaiah lvii. 2.

The reality of the sinner's danger is thus proved by the express statements of the Word of God, and by the struggles of conscience, as the Almighty's vicegerent, even in the unregenerated heart. And if the reality be admitted-and it must be admitted whether we will or not the belief of its magnitude follows as a necessary consequence. The Being whom we insult and defy by our obstinate perseverance in evil, is omnipotent, all-wise, and all-compassionate. We can urge nothing in extenuation of our ignorance. We are blessed with the means of acquiring knowledge: we have the law and the testimony as our guides. Christ crucified, the only hope of glory, is set before us in all the freeness and fulness of his offered salvation. We are informed by authority which is infallible, and therefore unquestionable, that if we will none of his counsel, and despise all his reproof, we "shall eat the fruit of our own ways, and be filled with our own devices." And if an incensed God be an object of terror-if acting in direct opposition to the designs of his government be insurrection against his sovereignty, and a mad attempt, however futile, to subvert his throne-if the murder of the soul by our own suicidal deed be unnatural and condemning-if not merely rejecting, but treading under foot the Son of God, and counting the blood of the covenant an unholy thing, be the evidence of a state of mind as deplorable as it is nearly hopeless-if doing despite to the Spirit of grace, by turning away from his warnings, and quenching the smallest spark of that refining fire which he wishes to kindle, and cause to shine within us, be to commit the sin for which the Saviour repeatedly assures us there is hardly any, if any remission--if deliberately choosing death, spiritual and eternal death, with all its deprivations and inflictions, when life, divine and everlasting, with all its present blessings and all its future joys, is graciously and urgently pressed on our acceptance, be procedure as reckless and insane as it is impious, God-provoking, and self-destructive, then is our danger, and its equivalent in wrath "treasured up for us against the day of wrath, and full revelation of the righteous judgment of God" incalculable. "For behold the day cometh that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: