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God, who worketh whensoever and on whomsoever it pleaseth him, the only conclusion that any reasonable man has a right to come to, is, that this day, of all days between this and judgment, is the best and likeliest for your conversion; and your dying day-that sad season of tossings and heavings, before the spirit is torn from its earthly tenement-is, in all human calculation, the worst day of your life for turning unto God. When the minister of Christ pulls aside the curtains of your bed, to speak the word of Jesus Christ, the ear that for a whole lifetime has heard the glad message of salvation all unmoved, will, in that hour, hear as if it did not hear. The heart that has so long turned aside the edge of the Word of Life, will then be like the nether millstone. "To-day, then, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts."

III. The call of the Saviour to turn now ought to be obeyed by us, because the Saviour will not always call.-" My Spirit will not always strive with man," was the warning of God given to the antediluvian world. "Now they are hid from thine eyes," was a similar warning given by the Saviour to Jerusalem. And the pas sage immediately following the text, expresses the same sentiment in still more fearful language. And who does not see the solemnity and power which it gives to the call of the Saviour, that the time is at hand when he will not call any more?

Behold yon majestic figure bearing on his body the marks of the Man of Sorrows; but bearing in his eye and words the aspect of Him" who liveth, and was dead, and behold he is alive for evermore." Behold, how he stands in an attitude of unmingled tenderness to sinners, even the chief! Behold, how the beseeching hands are stretched out! Hearken to the soft accents of mercy, of invitation, of promise: "I will pour out my spirit unto you." But remember that attitude of mercy is but for a time: these beseeching hands are stretched out only for a time; these accents of gentleness are but for a time. The day is at hand when he shall come "with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him; and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." This is Christ's attitude of judgment. No more are the inviting hands stretched out beseechingly; for the rod of iron is in his right hand, and his enemies are before him as a potter's vessel. His right hand teacheth him terrible things; his arrows are sharp in the hearts of the King's enemies, whereby the people fall under him. And oh! how fearfully shall his accents of tenderness be changed!

"I also will laugh at your calamity;

I will mock when your fear cometh ;
When your fear cometh as desolation;
And your destruction cometh as a whirlwind;
When distress and anguish cometh upon you."

Oh! what a day will it be, when the tender-hearted Jesus,

that wept at the grave of Lazarus, shall laugh at your calamity, and mock at your terrors! The contrast between these two representations is so striking, that it cannot escape the notice of any one. But what I wish you to observe is, that it is not only a very striking change, but a very sudden one. The transition from kindness to indignation is here not gradual, like the change from day into night. There is no twilight, as it were; the transition is sudden as it is terrible. May not this be intended to teach us that God frequently ceases to strive with men, not gradually, but suddenly? not only that death is frequently sudden, and that the coming of the Son of Man shail surely be sudden, as a thief in the night, but that the withdrawing of the beseeching Saviour from living men who long resist his call, is often sudden and irremediable? Awake, then, brethren, those of you who think it is all one when you repent and embrace the Saviour, provided it be done before you die. Awake, those of you who say: "A little more sleep, and a little more slumber; a little more folding of the hands to sleep." The sun of grace may set not like the sun of nature; there may be no calm and tranquil twilight, when thou mightest bethink thee of the coming darkness, and flee to Him who is the light of the world. However this may be, there is enough surely in the fact, that the Spirit withdraws from those who resist him, whether suddenly or gradually, to move every one of you this day to immediate conversion. It must be now, or it may be never.

On a winter evening, when the frost is setting in with growing intensity, and when the sun is now far past the meridian, and gradually sinking in the western sky, there is a double reason why the ground grows every moment harder and more impenetrable to the plough. On the one hand, the frost of evening, with ever-increasing intensity, is indurating the stiffened clods. On the other hand, the genial rays, which alone can soften them, are every moment withdrawing and losing their enlivening power. Oh! brethren, take heed that it be not so with you. As long as you are unconverted, you are under a double process of hardening. The frosts of an eternal night are settling down upon your souls; and the Sun of Righteousness, with westering wheel, is hastening to set upon you for evermore. If, then, the plough of grace cannot force its way into your ice-bound heart to-day, what likelihood is there that it will enter in to-morrow?-Amen. Larbert, Nov. 15, 1835.

SERMON XXVIII.

A SON HONORETH HIS FATHER.

"A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you."--Mal. i., 6.

THE first conviction that is essential to the conversion of the soul, is conviction of sin; not the general conviction that all men are sinful, but the personal conviction that I am an undone sinner; not the general conviction that other men must be forgiven or perish, but the personal conviction that I must be forgiven or perish. Now, there is no greater barrier in the way of this truth being impressed on the soul, than the felt consciousness of possessing many virtues. We cannot be persuaded that the image of God has so completely been effaced from our souls as the Bible tells us, when we feel within ourselves, and see exhibited in others, what may almost be termed godlike virtues. The heroes of whom we have read in history, with their love of country, and contempt of death, their constancy in friendship, and fidelity in affection, seem to rise up before us to plead the cause of injured humanity. And what is far more baffling, our every-day experience of the kindness of hospitality, the flowings of unbounded generosity, the compassion that weeps because another weeps; and all this among men that care not for Christ and his salvation, seems to raise a barrier impregnable against the truth, that man is conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. When we enter one cottage door, and see a whole company of brothers and sisters melted into tears at the sight of a dying sister's agonies; or when we enter another door, and see the tenderness of a mother's affection toward the sick infant in her bosom; or when we see, in a third family, the cheerful obedience which the children pay to an aged father; or, in a fourth family, the scrupulous integrity with which the servant manages the affairs of an earthly master, we are ready to ask, Is this indeed a world of sin? is it possible that the wrath of God can be in store for such a world? It will be very generally granted, that there are some men so utterly worthless and incorrigible, so far gone in the ways of desperate wickedness, that nothing else is to be expected for them, but an eternity of hopeless misery. There is a crew of abandoned profligates, who scoff at the very name of God and religion. There are Atheists, who openly deny his very being; Infidels, who openly deny that Christ came in the flesh. There are coldblooded murderers, and worse than murderers, who are confessed by all to be a disgrace to the name of man. For these, few would dare to plead exemption from the awful vengeance that

awaits the ungodly. So that there is a felt reasonableness in the dreadful words: "The abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolators, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone." But that the obedient child, and the faithful servant, the tenderly affectionate mother, the hospitable and generous neighbor, the man of intelligence and good feeling, that all these should ever be bound up in the same bundle of destruction, and consigned to the same eternal flames, merely because they do not believe in Jesus this is the rock of offence on which thousands stumble and fall, to their inevitable loss.

There is, perhaps, no way more commonly used by man, to repel all the personal convictions of sin which the Word of God would cast on us. For do I not feel within me all the tender affections of humanity, all the honesties and integrities of our nature? Do I not feel pleasure in being honest and fair dealing, in being compassionate, and generous, and hospitable? How plainly, then, may I say to my soul: "Soul, take thine ease ?" These virtues of thine are a sure token that thou art born for a blessed eternity. Ah! my friends, is it not a most blessed thing that, in the passage now before us, God wrests from our hand the very weapon wherewith we would defend ourselves, and turns. it with a shaft to pierce our worldly consciences? And, oh! if we had minds as intelligent as when Adam walked with God in Paradise, nothing more would be necessary to carry to our hearts the overwhelming conviction of sin than the repetition of the words: "A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master; if then I be a father, where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you." There is a power and a pathos in this argument, which might well break down the hardest and most unfeeling mind; it is as if God had said, as he elsewhere doth: "Come and let us reason together." You say that you have many excellent virtues, that you have tender and beautiful affections; you say that filial and parental love occupy a master-place in your bosom, that integrity and unsullied honesty beat high in your breast. And do I deny all this? Shall I detract from the glory of my own handiwork, so beautiful, even in ruins? No, it is all true; the son does honor his father, the servant is faithful to his master; all is beautiful, when I look only to the earthly relationships. But that is the very thing which shows the utter derangement of all the heavenly relationships; for, "if I then be a father, where is mine honor? if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you." I see that you honor your earthly fathers, and serve faithfully your earthly masters; but that is the very thing which shows me that I am the exception. I see that there is not a father in the whole universe that is deprived of the love of his children, but me -there is not a master under heaven that is robbed of the honor

and service of his domestics, as I am. If, brethren, you and I were sunk into actual brutality, if we had no love for parents, no honesty to masters, then God might have had cause to say of us, that nothing better could be expected from such wretches, than that we should forget our heavenly Father and Master. But, oh! when there are such tender and beautiful affections in our bosoms towards our earthly relations, is not our sin written as with an iron pen, and with lead in the rock for ever, that we make God the exception, that we are godless in the world?

I would now, with all affection and tenderness, beseech every one of you to search his own heart, and see if these things be not so; see if that which you generally take for the excuse of your sins, be not the very essence of your sin. What would you not do, what would you not suffer, for the sake of an earthly parent? and yet you will not expend so much as a thought, or the breathing of a desire, for your heavenly Parent. God is not in all your thoughts. You will toil night and day in behalf of an earthly master; yet you will not do a hand's turn for your hea venly Master. God is the only parent whom you dishonor; God is the only master whom you wrong. "If you were blind, you should have no sin; but now it is plain you see, therefore, your sin remaineth." If you were incapable of affection or fidelity, then you should have no sin; but now it is plain you are capable of both, therefore, your sin remaineth. Imagine a family of brothers and sisters all bound together by the ties of the closest amity and affection. Oh! it is a good and pleasant sight to see brethren dwell together in unity. "It is like precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's beard, that went down to the skirts of his garments. It is as the dew of Hermon, that descended upon the mountains of Zion." What will they not do for each other? what will they not suffer for each other? But, imagine again that all this unity, which is so much like the temper of heaven, was maintained among them, whilst all the while they were united in despising the tender mother that bore them, in turning away from, and forsaking the grey-haired father that had brought up every one of them. Would not this one feature in the picture change all its beauty and all its interest? Would it not make their unity more like that of devils, than that of angels? Would you not say, that their affection for one another was the very thing which made their disaffection to their parents hateful and most unnatural? Oh! brethren, the picture is a picture of us: "A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you."

Oh! it is a fearful thing, when our very virtues, to which we flee for refuge against the wrath of God, turn round most fiercely to condemn us. What avail your honesties, what avail your

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