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tain of everlasting life, unless you lay a good foundation for it in the day of your health and strength? Let me recommend to you, my brethren, with all the earneftness fo important an object demands, to you who of all men have the least reafon to put off your reformation, not to lose any time in improving the prefent moment. This Hour, a God, merciful and gracious, allows you for repentance-and God only knows, but it may be the last. Such a fudden removal has been the lot of many, and may be of us. Accept then this refpite with thankful hearts, left ye be like Efau, who rejected the offered bleffing, and at lalt "found no place for repentance, tho' he fought it carefully with tears."*

Whatever may be the cafe with the rest of mankind, to you certainly no time can be more important, than

Heb. xii. 17.

than that which reveals your offences, and calls loudly for an alteration in your hearts. In the great day of Judgment, an opportunity of repentance, fuffered to pafs unimproved, will amount to an actual tranfgreffion. Add not then to the reft of your fins this aggravation. Look upon that Crofs, where the Son of God was crucified between two thieves. Reflect upon his Innocence, and your Offences. With his blood wash away your Sins; by his Example reform your lives; and when you addrefs him with true penitent hearts, to remember you in his Kingdom, he will reply," Verily I fay unto you, to-day halt thou be with me in paradise.”

L2 SERMON

SERMON VI.

ON THE LAST JUDGMENT.

LUKE XII. 4, 5:

Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear, fear him, which, after he hath killed, hath power to caft into Hell; yea, I say unto you, fear him.

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ger conviction on the minds of fome than of others, it must apply itself with peculiar force to thofe, who,

by

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by their crimes, have forfeited the benefits of Society, and have incarred the penalties of temporal punishment. Agitated by contending paffions, alarmed by the fearful looking for of Judgment, they be. gin to turn their Eye inward upon their own Souls; they are ftartled at the Sight; and with the affrighted Goaler earnestly enquire, what they muft do to be faved"? + Happy is it for thofe, that even at the eleventh hour are defirous of Employment! Happy would it be for you, my Brethren, if the fame conviction were wrought upon your minds, and that you were fully fenfible that "now is the accepted time, now is the day of Salvation,"

To reflect upon the difference between the prefent State of our Exiftence, which muft in a fhort time be brought to an End, and that which

L 3

Heb. x 27. Acts xvi. 30. 2 Cor. vi. 2

which will be eternal, is within the compass even of a common underftanding. It must also be known, that happiness is the general defire of mankind, and of course that that happiness, which lafts the longest, will be the most defirable. How reasonable then must it be, for every man to pursue fuch methods, as would not only tend to make him happy, but to prolong that Happinefs to an Extent as boundless as Eternity! It is alfo an Argument of equal Importance, that if mifery be a state, at which human nature fhrinks, eternal mifery must be horrible beyond conception; and the moft powerful motive, to induce men to act in fuch a manner, as to avoid it.

Upon this principle does our Saviour apply the words of the text. They are addreffed indeed to men of very different characters from thofe who now appear before me. They

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