shall follow us to an eternal world? Our exclu-sion from heaven then is not to be ascribed to God, but to ourselves. If a man under the clear light which the Gospel imparts, and the repeated opportunities it affords, has never admitted the thought of heaven but with indifference or distaste, if he has never so much as desired its enjoyment, can he justly complain of being excluded from the possession of it? In what our future misery shall consist, we know not. The expressions of Scripture are very general and very fearful. It may be said, that a spiritual body, such as at our resurrection we shall assume, is incapable of pain. This may be so, but we do, not by this supposition get rid of either the difficulty or the danger. There is a pain of the mind, as we all know, severer far than any that the body can sustain; this is the worm that never dies, and which preys on a wounded spirit; for putting our final misery even at the lowest, make it to consist only in an exclusion from heaven; do we lessen the punishment? But after all, this awful question resolves itself in every individual case into the simplest and easiest enquiry. Is there not enough revealed to leave in the breast of every individual, the fullest persuasion of the mercy and justice of God? Have we not, at this moment every one of us the power, if we will use it, to revoke the sentence ofcon

demnation, which we may suppose, and justly suppose, to be suspended over our heads? If this is the case now, and has been the case to every one of us in so many repeated instances during our past lives, can we complain of the final infliction of the blow, or can any man be weak enough to think that the judgment of God will be less severe than it is represented, or that his present indulgence will not be too dearly purchased at the price he will pay hereafter? It is the same enemy of mankind, that whispers in his heart, as in the heart of his first parents, "Thou shalt not surely die." But did our first parents therefore escape? We know the consequences of the first fall, and may God grant that none of us may feel the misery of a second! To this great day and its consequences in our final destination, let our thoughts be ever directed. It is indeed one of our compensations for the enlargement of our trial beyond that of our first parents, that God has placed those things before us in a light so clear and decisive. If the promises of God do not animate us, let his terrors persuade us both are revealed in wisdom and mercy in the day of trial, and each will hereafter be accomplished in the day of our judgment. From this great day, we find on the other hand, every perversion of the Gospel employed to detach our consideration. According to the Unita

rian view of the Gospel, the second advent of our Lord will take place, only to produce a moral renovation upon earth, a notion which strikes deep (as it is intended to do) at the root of future rewards and punishments. So that the advocates of these opinions, in this, as well as in other respects, the nearer they attempt to lower down the Gospel to their notions of human reason, the farther they really depart from it. In the Church of Rome likewise, the sanctions of a future judgment are much diminished by a notion of a previous purgatory, and the discipline which the soul is there to undergo; a discipline, whose duration at last, is not to be determined by the merits of the case, but by the intercession of the church. In fanaticism again, this great day, as a day of proportionate retribution, is ever carefully kept out of sight. With the disciple of fanaticism, it is a day of separation only of the elect, from the reprobate; and in this point of view, has given rise to the cavil of infidelity which I have before noticed. Now this very notion, independently of all the unscriptural doctrines which it involves, must have a tendency to destroy all those moral impressions, which the belief in a future state is designed to make. Never was fanaticism and all its fantastic notions, so self-condemned, as when it refuses to place before its disciples this great day, and all the cir

cumstances attending it, in their vivid and proper colours; or when it refuses to inculcate this great truth, that by our faith we shall be saved, but by our actions we shall be judged: and, that at his final judgment, "God will reward every man according to his works." But awful as the view of this great day must be to all, let it yet be ever uppermost in our minds. It is the link between the present and the future, between the kingdom of trial and the kingdom of glory. If in our youth we suffer ourselves to forget it, in our old age we shall rarely be able to remember it. While thy conscience then is, comparatively clear, while thy account stands unburthened with habitual sin, look onward to the day, when that account must be for ever settled; "Rejoice, O young man in thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart, and in the sight of thine eyes, but remember that for all these things, God will bring thee to judgment."

SERMON X.

JAMES i. 12.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath prepared for them that love him.

HAVING considered the terms of that discipline and trial to which we are exposed, and the nature of those rewards and punishments which follow our final judgment, it will now be my endeavour to shew, that most of the difficulties in which both our opinions and our duties are involved, will be cleared away by just and scriptural views upon these subjects.

To suppose that these, or any other considerations will resolve every doubtful case, or that the mysteries of providence will become matters of demonstration, is at once childish and absurd. If by taking the events of life in a new point of view, we are enabled materially to enlarge the sphere of our vision, and to throw into the back ground those difficulties which once interrupted