ther we sunk at once beneath the stroke of an apoplexy, or more slowly under the attack of a consumption? Something it would import to us, no doubt, as friends, for we should wish to give our dying counsels; but, as expectants of retribution, what could the time of a week or a month's last sickness avail us? I will answer; and I say, as much-by the most favourable supposition-as much as such a space of time in any part of life could avail us, and no more.

Such then, and so fearful, and proved to be so fearful by the plainest indications, is the moral state of multitudes. Life is given them for the cultivation of a sacred virtue, of a lofty piety, of pure and godlike affections, as the only way to future improvement and happiness. They are not devoting life to this end; they know they are not; they confess they are not; and their hope is—yes, the hope on which they rest their whole being is, that by some hasty effort, or paroxysm of emotion, in the feeble and helpless time of sickness, or in the dark day of death, they shall be able to redeem the lost hope of a negligent life. If only a week or a month of health were offered them to prepare; if that specific time, a week, or a month, were taken out from the midst of life, and they were solemnly told that this would be all the time they would have to prepare for eternity, they would be in despair; and yet they hope to do this in a month or a week of pain, and languishment, and distracting agitation. It is as if the husbandman should sport away the summer season, and then should think to retrieve his error by planting his fields in the autumn. It is as if the student should trifle away the season appointed for his education, and then, when the time came for entering upon his profession, should think to make up for his deficiencies by a few weeks of violent, hurried, and irregular application. It shows, alas! that the world, with all its boasts of an enlightened age, has not yet escaped the folly of those days of superstition, when the eucharist was administered to dying persons, and was forcibly administered, if the patient had no longer sense to receive it; or when men deferred their baptism till death; as if the future state were to depend on these last ceremonies. And as well depend on ceremonies-and more consistently could we do so-as depend on any momentary preparation for happiness: as well build a church or a monastery to atone for our sins, as to build that fabric of error in our imagination.

It is not for us, I know, to limit the Almighty! It is not for us to say that he cannot change the soul in the last moments of its stay on earth. But this we may fearlessly say, that he does it, if at all, by a miraculous agency, of whose working we can have no conception, and of whose results, by the very supposition, we can have no knowledge.

I desire, my brethren, to state this point with all sufficient caution. I not only do not deny that God has power to convert the soul in the last moments of life, but I do not absolutely deny that there may be some such instances in the passing away of every generation. I do not know, and none of us can know, whether such miracles are performed It is commonly thought that the case recorded in Luke's gospel, of the thief on the cross, is an instance of this nature. But I do not think it can be pronounced to be such. We know not how much time he may have had to repent and form a new character. He says, indeed suffer justly;" but the act for which he suffered, may have been

or not.

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a single act, in which he had fallen from a generally good life. But admit that such interpositions do take place: is it safe to rely upon them? We do not know that they do. We do not know that, in the passing away of all the generations of mankind, there has been one such instance. Is it safe to rely, in so tremendous a case, upon what we do not know, and upon what, after all, may never be? My object is to show that it is not safe; and for this purpose, I shall reason upon the general principle. The general principle is, that the future must answer for the present; the future of this life, for the present of this life; the next month for this month; the next year for this year; and in the same way, the next life for this life. I say, then, that the expectation of any hasty retrieving of a bad month, of a bad year, of a bad life, is irrational and unwarrantable, and ought to be considered as desperate.

I. And for the purpose of showing this, I observe, in the first place, that the expectation of preparing for futurity hastily, or by any other means than the voluntary and deliberate formation of right and virtuous habits in the mind; or that the expectation of preparing for death, when it comes, is opposed to the professed import of that sacred volume, which gives law alike to our hopes and our fears.

It is opposed to the obvious, and the professed, and the leading character of the Bible. What is that character? What is the Bible? It is a revelation of laws, motives, directions, and excitements, to religious virtue. But all of these are useless, if this character is to be formed by a miraculous energy, at a perilous conjuncture, or in a last moment. Motives must be contemplated, directions must be understood, excitements must be felt, to be effectual; and all this must be done deliberately, must be many times repeated, must be combined with diligence, and patience, and faith, and must be slowly, as everything is, slowly wrought into the character, in order to be effectual.

But it may be said, "If the rule is so strict, where is the mercy of the gospel?" I answer, that its very mercy is engaged to make us pure; that its mercy would be no mercy if it did not do this; and that, of becoming pure and good, there is but one way, and that is the way of voluntary effort-an effort to be assisted by divine grace, indeed, but none the less, on that account, an effort, and an endeavour, a watching, and a striving, a conflict, and a victory. I answer again, that the mercy of the gospel is a moral and rational, a high and glorious principle. It is not a principle of laxity in morals. It is not a principle of indulgence to the heart. It is a moral principle, and not a wonderworking machinery, by which a man is to be lifted up and borne away from guilt to purity, from earth to heaven, he knows not how. It offers to fabricate no wings for the immortal flight. It is a rational principle, and is not based upon the subversion of all the laws of experience and wisdom. The gospel opens the way to heaven-opens the way to poor, sinful, ill-deserving creatures. Is not that mercy enough? Shall the guilty and lost spurn that, and demand more? It opens the way, I repeat; but then it lays its instructions, commands, and warnings thickly upon that way. With unnumbered directions to faith, and patience, and prayer, and toil, and self-denial, it marks out every step of that way. It tells us, again and again, that such is its way of salvavation, and no other. In other words, it offers us happiness, and pre

scribes the terms. And those terms, if they were of a meaner character, if they were low and lax, would degrade even our nature, and we could not respect them. It would, in fact, be no mercy to natures like ours to treat them in any other way.

In speaking of the scriptural representations on this subject, the parable of "the labourers in the vineyard" may probably occur to you, in which he who came at the eleventh hour received as much as he who had borne the heat and burden of the day. I suppose the parable has no relation whatever to this subject. It cannot intend to teach that he who is a Christian during his whole life is no more an object of the divine approbation, and is to be no more happy, than he who is so for a very small part of it. It evidently refers to the introduction of the Christian dispensation; it relates to the Jews and Gentiles as nations; meaning that the Gentiles, who came later into covenant with God, would be as favourably received as the Jews.

To interpret this parable as encouraging men to put off their prepa ration for futurity till death, if there were no other objection, would contradict, I repeat, all the scriptural information we have on this subject. This would appear, if you should carry to the oracles of divine truth any question whatever about piety, or virtue, or the qualification for heaven. What is piety itself? A momentary exercise or a habit? Something thrown into the heart in a mass, or a state of the heart itself, formed by long effort and care? Does the great qualification for heaven consist in one, two, or ten good exercises, or in a good character? And to what is that judgment to relate which will decide our future condition? Who will render," says the sacred record, “to every man according to his deeds!"

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Open that most solemn and formal account of the judgment contained in the 25th chapter of Matthew; and what is the great test? I still answer, deeds; deeds of piety and charity, the conduct, the character, the permanent affections of each individual. But still further to decide the question, if it can be necessary, let it be asked, what is that heaven of which we hear and say so much? What is heaven? Are we still like children fancying that heaven is a beautiful city, into which one needs only the powers of locomotion to enter? Do we not know that heaven is in the mind, in the greatness, and purity, and elevation of our immortal nature? If piety and virtue, then, are a habit and state of mind expressed and acted out in a life that is holy; if the judgment has relation to this alone; if heaven consist in this; what hope can there be in a brief and slight preparation?

II. No, my friends, the terms on which we receive happiness—and I now appeal to reason in the second place the terms on which we receive true, moral, satisfying happiness, cannot be easy. They are not; experience shows that they are not; life shows that they are not; and eternity will but develop the same strict law; for it is a part of our nature, it is a part of the nature and reason of things. The senses may yield us such pleasure as they can yield, without effort; taste may delight us, and imagination may minister to us, in careless reverie; but conscience does not offer to us its happiness on such terms. I know not what may be the law for other beings in some other sphere; but I know that no truly, morally happy being was ever made here, but through much effort, long culture, frequent self-denial, and abiding

faith, patience, and prayer. To be truly happy, what is so difficult? What is so rare? And is heaven, think you the blessed consummation of all that man can ask,—to be obtained at less expense than it will cost to gain one pure, calm day upon earth? For even this comparatively trifling boon, one blessed day, one day of religious joy, one day of joy in meditation and prayer, one day of happiness that is spiritual, and not physical nor circumstantial-even this comparatively slight boon, I say, cannot be gained without long preparation of mind, and heart, and habit. There are multitudes around us, and of us, to whom, at this moment, one such day's happiness is a thing just as impossible as it would be in that day to make a world! And shall they think to escape this very law of happiness under which they are actually living, and to fly away to heaven on the wings of imagination?-to pass at once from unfaithfulness to reward, from apathy to ecstasy, from the neglect and dislike of prayer to the blessed communion of heavenly worship, from this hour of being, absorbed in sense and the world, to an eternity of spiritual glory and triumph? No; be assured that facts are here, as they are everywhere, worth more than fancies-be they those of dreaming visionaries, or ingenious theologians: if you are not now happy in penitence, and humility, and prayer, and the love of God, you are not in fact prepared to be happy in them hereafter. No; between the actual state of mind prevailing in many, and the bliss of heaven, "there is a great gulf fixed"-over which no wing of mortal nor angel was ever spread. No; the law of essential, enduring, triumphant happiness is labour and long preparation for it; and it is a law which will never, never-never be annulled!

There is a law, too, concerning habits. It is implied in the following language:-"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may those who are accustomed to do evil, learn to do well!" Habit is no slight bond. Slightly at first, and gently afterwards, may it have drawn its silken cords around us; but not so are its bonds to be cast from us; nor can they, like a green withe, be broken by one gigantic effort. No; the bonds of habit are chains and fetters that must be worn off. Through the long process of slow and imperceptible degrees, they must be severed with weariness, and galling, and bitter anguish.

"Can it be supposed," says an eloquent writer and preacher, "that where the vigour of life has been spent in the establishment of vicious propensities; where all the vivacity of youth, and all the soberness of manhood, and all the wisdom of old age, have been given to the service of sin; where vice has been growing with the growth, and strengthening with the strength; where it has spread out with the limbs of the stripling, and become rigid with the fibres of the aged-can it, I say, be supposed that the labours of such a life are to be overthrown by one last exertion of the mind, impaired with disease; by the convulsive exercise of an affrighted spirit; and by the inarticulate and feeble sounds of an expiring breath?"

Besides, the rule is as equitable as, in the divine ordination of things, it is necessary. The judgment which ordains that whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap, is a righteous judgment. It is easy, no doubt, to regret a bad life when it is just over. When death comes, and the man must leave his sinful indulgences and pleasures; or when

he has no longer any capacity for enjoying them; when sickness has enfeebled the appetites, or age has chilled the passions, then, indeed, is it but a slight sacrifice, and a yet poorer merit in him to feel regret. But regret, let it be considered, is not repentance! And while the former may be easy and almost involuntary, the other-the repentance

-may be as hard as the adverse tendencies of a whole life can make it. Yes, the hardest of all things, then, will be to repent. Yes, I repeat, that which is relied upon to save a man, after the best part of life has been lost, has become, by the very habits of that life, almost a moral impossibility.

And the regret, the selfish regret-can it be accepted? I ask not if it can be accepted by our Maker; I doubt not his infinite mercy; but can it be accepted by our own nature? Can our nature be purified by it? Can the tears of that dark hour of selfish sorrow, or the awful insensibility which no tear comes to relieve-can either of them purge away from the bosom the stains of a life of sin? Let us never make the fearful experiment! Let us not go down to the last tremendous scene of life, there, amidst pain and distraction, with the work of life to do! Let us not have to acquire peace from very terror, and hope from very despair; let us not thus trust ourselves to a judgment "that will render unto us according to our deeds; that will render-mark the explanation to them who, by patient continuance in well-doing, seek for glory, honour, and immortality, eternal life; but tribulation and anguish to every soul that doeth evil."

III. From these views of our subject drawn from Scripture and reason, let me, in the third and last place, refer to a no less decisive consideration which is independent of them; a consideration fully borne out by melancholy facts. It is this; that every man will die very much as he lives: I mean, that in his character, his habits of feeling, he will. There is not this wide difference between the living world and the dying world which is generally supposed. Character, as I have contended, and as we all see, indeed, is not formed in a moment; it cannot, upon any known law or principle--it cannot, but in contradiction to every known law and principle, be changed in a moment. Christianity has introduced no law in subversion of the great laws of experience, and rational motive, and moral action, or of its own established principles. Its doctrine of conversion is only misunderstood when it is supposed to provide a briefer and easier way of preparation for heaven, than watching and striving, and persevering in virtue, and patient continuance in well-doing. I say, therefore, and repeat the certain and solemn truth, that every man will die the same-essentially the same— that he has lived.

For the correctness of this conclusion, I have soon to refer to a single, and as it seems to me, momentous fact. But in the meantime, let me remark that there is one question here which I view with a kind of apprehension I scarcely know how to express; with almost a dread, for once, to ask what the simple truth is. My brethren, we are sometimes called upon to pray for a change of heart, in the sinful and negligent man, as he is drawing nigh, in horror and agony, his last hour! It is an awful situation even to him who only ministers at that dying bed. What shall he do-what can be done-I have asked myself. Shall I discourage prayer, even in the uttermost extremity? Can I, when I