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the day allotted to us for preparation of the heart for eternity. That day is in young morning with some of you, with others it is at the meridian, with some again, that meridian is gone, and with others evening's lengthening shades announce the day's approaching final close. But " as the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong," and as we none of us know the Lord's purpose towards us, you that have all the vigour of manhood, nay, you that have all the bloom of youth, (I put it to each class individually,) may be nearer to it than the head which is silvered o'er with age. The benevolent Saviour designs your everlasting safety; do you design it yourselves, do you seek in all points to know and love, in this your day, the things that belong unto your peace? After the door of death is once shut upon you, you will be no longer allowed to seek them; where and how you fall, there and so you must remain ; your fiat will be sealed, your day past, your soul, your immortal, precious, indissoluble soul-but I forbear. Oh! pray that you may be enabled to think of it deeply and fervently. Provoke not Jesus to weep over you, as he wept over Salem, and for the same cause that he wept over Salem. Rather weep for yourselves now, that you may not weep hereafter, to all eternity. If you are not in the way of peace, oh! seek to be found in it, ere it be too late. The compassionate Jesus calls you to it no spirit does he entertain towards you,

but that of love and mercy; he would gather you home with his redeemed, and by his gospel, tenderly does he call out, come unto me. Slight not this invaluable invitation from your best friend: with the deepest grief will you cause him to mourn over you, if you refuse it. The day is not yet closed, its broad and precious light still shines upon you; put not off, then, any longer the prayerful pursuit not more fraught with solemnity than happiness, of becoming united to him for ever in the love and holiness of a renewed soul, and then shall you know, by daily sweet enjoyment, that pure gospel peace, which is the only thing truly above and beyond the world's uncertainties, disappointment, and sway!

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SERMON XIX.

THE TRICENTENARY COMMEMORATION.

1 CORINTHIANS xiv. 14-17.

If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit prayeth, but my understanding is unfruitful. What is it then? I will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. Else when thou shalt bless with the spirit, how shall he that occupieth the room of the unlearned say Amen at thy giving of thanks, seeing he understandeth not what thou sayest? For thou verily givest thanks well, but the other is not edified.

ONE of the particulars which distinguished many of the early converts to the gospel from all others that have followed them, was the miraculous gift of tongues. How that gift was, as it were, inwrought upon any man, so as to enable him at

once, with intelligence and ease, to impart to people of other nations his own meaning in their language, before unknown to him, there is little need to inquire. Sufficient it is for us to know, that the end for which it was bestowed, was to qualify the first disciples of our Lord to announce the glad tidings of redemption to foreign lands in their different vernacular languages, and to bring into the fold of the Saviour, the sheep scattered abroad under every clime. But that which was precious in itself, while used for the heavenly Giver's glory, became an instrument of sinful folly, when perverted to elate the speaker with pride and presumption. Amongst the persons on whom this miraculous faculty was bestowed were the Corinthians, whose common snare was that of vain and empty ostentation; and we accordingly find the apostle remonstrating with them for their open abuse of a gift so truly valuable, when dedicated to the honour of God and the welfare of souls. On one feature of such abuse he especially dwells, and that is, their exercise of the gift towards individuals or communities to whom the tongues spoken were not and could not be known. To be enabled, for instance, to communicate with Arabs in the language of Arabia, or with Egyptians in that of Egypt, in order to the conversion of their fellowsinners there to God, was a qualification for which the possessor had abundant cause to be grateful,

(as in every age or nation every man has, whom the Lord deigns to employ in any way whatever on so glorious an errand as that of feeding souls with the bread of life,) but to speak of the truths of salvation to Corinthians, their own fellow-countrymen, in the language of Egypt or Arabia, would be to feed no souls at all, at the same time that by its absurd vanity it was directly provoking to wrath that gracious Being who had imparted the gift. If consecrated to the eternal welfare of man, the apostle himself could and did own it to be an object of special and lively gratitude: "I thank my God," said he, "I speak with tongues more than you all: yet-" scarcely do these words pass his lips, before he turns to the true and only purpose for which he had been so highly distinguished above them, viz. not for his own personal pre-eminence, but for his greater means of usefulness to his fellow-men, and he therefore immediately adds, " yet in the church I had rather speak five words with my understanding, that by my voice I might teach others also, than ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. And he supposes the best construction it was possible to put on such a practice as that of speaking in a tongue unknown to the persons addressed in the words of our text, he conceives the speaker not to be indulging any vain parade, but actually offering up a sincere mental supplication: "If I pray in an unknown tongue, my spirit

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